Obama pushes green standards for everything but the kitchen sink | TheHill.
The administration says the standards will not only help the planet but also stimulate the economy by saving consumers money on their energy bills that they can spend elsewhere
Well they are probably right when you consider the high cost of energy from solar and wind sources, not to mention the 3rd world reliability these two sources offer.
Bottom line, nothing good comes from this except bigger, nanny state government.
Impossible, you will say, that such a thing could happen in Britain. In fact it is only one of over 1,400 cases, all arising during the course of the last fifteen years in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham, all involving vulnerable girls either in Council care or inadequately protected by their families from gangs of sexual predators. Almost no arrests have been made, no social workers or police officers have been reprimanded, and until recently the matter was dismissed by all those responsible as a matter of no real significance. Increasing public awareness of the problem, however, led to complaints, triggering a series of official reports. The latest report, from Professor Alexis Jay, former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, gives the truth for the first time, in 153 disturbing pages. One fact stands out above all the horrors detailed in the document, which is that the girl victims were white, and their abusers Pakistani.
.Could the problem be as simple as political correctness?
Let slip the mere hint that Pakistani Muslims are more likely than indigenous Englishmen to commit sexual crimes and you will be branded as a racist and an Islamophobe, to be ostracised in the workplace and put henceforth under observation.
No one will be fired
Just how dangerous is political correctness? It appears to be a slow growing, relentless cancer. By the time it’s diagnosed, there is no cure. The UK is a laboratory, pay attention.
Rural Roads In Boulder County – Home.
From the real estate sales reported by the Daily Camera on Oct 13, 2013.
Ernst & Julie Ridinger — 1521 Marshall Road, George & Linda Gerstle, $668,000.
So it appears that Ernst and Julie Ridinger purchased this house from County Transportation Director George Gerstle. Connections or coincidence?
Inquiring minds want to know: Question For Democrats: What Can’t Obama Do?.
Now, run-of-the-mill presidents may only enter into international treaties with approval of two-thirds majority of the Senate. According to the New York Times, though, the Obama administration believes it can “sidestep that requirement.” I realize it’s schmaltzy and archaic and completely reactionary to mention this sort thing: but Obama swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States not to work hard to circumvent the separation of powers.
What most Boulderites/Progressives/Democrats don’t seem to be able to accept is that the polarization that exists in politics is a reflection of the electorate.
Say it ain’t so: Tea party steps in to help riot-racked businesses rebuild in Ferguson — media ignores it – BizPac Review.
But this is the St. Louis Tea Party, a branch of a national movement of everyday Americans that the mainstream media generally treats like the Second Coming of the Klan. It’s a mostly white group working to help the mostly black businesses that were almost destroyed by mostly black rioters – and since that doesn’t fit any mainstream media narrative, most of America will never hear about it.
If you want to hear about this in self absorbed Boulder, it will probably take a short wave radio with tubes in it.
This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails. There are no “missing” Lois Lerner emails – nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be – but dishonestly withheld this information. You can bet we are going to ask the court for immediate assistance in cutting through this massive obstruction of justice.
Hubris.
In disclosing that Lerner’s (and others’) emails still exist, the DOJ also said, essentially, that it thinks searching for those emails would be too much work.
Would that excuse fly with the DOJ or the IRS, or would they frog-march anyone who used that excuse straight to a squad car?
More hubris.
It’s great to be King… until you’re not.
Minnesota Cafe Charges “Minimum Wage Fee,” Liberals Outraged | Power Line.
John Hinderaker asks some common sense questions…
It is “strange” for businesses to pass costs on to their customers? Who, exactly, does Mr. Luneburg think pays those costs? No doubt he has no clue why low-wage workers are being laid off in Minnesota, either. That’s what happens when costs can’t be passed on. Every now and then, it is good to be reminded how dumb liberalism is. (emphasis added)
Boulder reminds me everyday.
Billions of tax dollars are being lost every day to waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government, but President Obama’s administration is blocking inspectors general — the officials who are most likely to find and expose such wrongdoing — from doing their jobs. That’s the disturbing message given to Congress and the American people this week from a majority of the federal government’s 78 IGs. The blocking occurs when agency lawyers deny the authority of IGs to gain access to relevant documents and officials.
The 47 IGs minced no words: “Each of us strongly supports the principle that an inspector general must have complete, unfiltered, and timely access to all information and materials available to the agency that relate to that IG’s oversight activities, without unreasonable administrative burdens. The importance of this principle, which was codified by Congress in Section 6(a)(1) of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended (the IG Act), cannot be overstated. Refusing, restricting, or delaying an IG’s access to documents leads to incomplete, inaccurate, or significantly delayed findings or recommendations, which in turn may prevent the agency from promptly correcting serious problems and deprive Congress of timely information regarding the agency’s performance.”
Three specific examples were described in the IGs’ letter, including blatant obstruction of important investigations at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice and the Peace Corps. But many other IGs have “faced similar obstacles to their work, whether on a claim that some other law or principle trumped the clear mandate of the IG Act or by the agency’s imposition of unnecessarily burdensome administrative conditions on access. Even when we are ultimately able to resolve these issues with senior agency leadership, the process is often lengthy, delays our work, and diverts time and attention from substantive oversight activities.”
What does the Obama administration have to hide, or are these 47 IG’s racists?
Then we have Boulderites such as Marilyn Samson who continue to drink the typical Boulderite Koolaid. Her August 9th letter to the editor, Opposition to Obama is over-the-top, starts out…
How extraordinary to think that a great many politicians of a certain bent believe educated, informed citizens with a knowledge of history and very good memories are taken in by untruths and unheard, and uncalled for hatred for the president.
And it goes downhill from there. One commenter refers to Marilyn as a “low information writer”. I would refer to her as a typical Boulderite.
Ray Hedberg: Boulder commissioners should resign – Boulder Daily Camera.
Ray notes…
They exceeded, abused, and imposed. Have you got that? The commissioners acted illegally! And now how are the commissioners reacted to losing the suit against them? They say they are not going to proceed with their previous plan to start road repairs and they say they don’t have the money.
And he concludes quoting from Judge Lowenbach’s ruling…
The judge’s ruling says “While it clearly had the duty to maintain those roads, the County did not perform that duty.” The commissioners have indicated that “new taxes” will be required — don’t believe them! Commissioner Cindy Domenico, as quoted in the paper says, “the next step is a dialog with property owners on the options” — it seems to me the dialog should be about the commissioners either stepping up to their duty or resigning along with the county attorney who so ill advised them. (emphasis added)
Nail them to the wall Ray. Great job.
David Winters is the portfolio manager of Wintergreen Mutual fund. He was recently interviewed by Barron’s, a weekly publication of the Wall Street Journal. You can also visit the Wintergreen website. In the interest of full disclosure, both my wife and I have funds invested with Mr. Winters.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds –Title IX for our boys.
Didn’t realize I was blogging two of Glenn’s columns in a row when I started this post.
One solution, as William Gormley, a professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, has suggested here in the past, is to hire more male teachers. As Gormley notes, Stanford University professor Thomas Dee found that “boys perform better when they have a male teacher, and girls perform better when they have a female teacher.” Yet our K-12 teachers are overwhelmingly female — only 2% of pre-K and kindergarten teachers are male and only 18% of elementary and middle-school teachers are.
As parents become more and more concerned about their children’s futures and educations — public schools that want to hold on to students or new-model schools that want to lure them away — may want to boost the number of male teachers on staff. Doing so may be crucial not only to their students’ futures, but to their own.
And if they don’t, it may be time for state and federal officials to look into this gender imbalance. If schoolteachers were overwhelmingly male and girls were suffering as a result, there would be a national outcry and Title IX-style gender equity legislation would be touted. Why should we do less en boys are the ones suffering?
Nothing to see here, move along.
Judge orders Boulder County to refund millions to homeowners wrongly assessed for road improvements – 7NEWS Denver TheDenverChannel.com. (video at link includes interviews with BoCo FIRM chairman Chuck Wibby and County Commissioner Elise Jones )
Regarding locating funds to pave the subdivision roads…
Wibby says it’s a simple allocation issue.
“Up until the mid-90s, the County Commissioners would allocated approximately 8-percent of the property taxes that everybody paid, for road maintenance,” he said. “Beginning in the mid-90s, they reduced that from 8-percent to 1-percent.”
I find this comment by Elise Jones troubling…
Jones says the County remains committed to trying to solve the funding issue.
“We don’ have any more money that we did before,” she said. “In fact, we have far less with the increased price tag of flood recovery.”
When asked what the next step will be, Jones replied, “We’re open to suggestions.”
She said they may go to individual subdivisions and ask homeowners if they want to form their own improvement district, but added, “That hasn’t worked in the past.”
Let’s review what Judge Lowenbach said regarding the definition of maintenance and Boulder Counties responsibilities… (I’ve emphasized the portions that Elise Jones needs to pay special attention to)
It is clear that the County faced difficult financial issues that caused the neglect of its dedicated subdivision roads. Roads that are not chip sealed and resurfaced will deteriorate. If deterioration is severe enough, the road will have to be reconstructed. These maintenance activities are necessary to the upkeep of the roads and to keep them operative, and are included in the term “maintenance.”1 Property owners whose roads were accepted for maintenance understood that term to include all activities necessary for upkeep of roads. While it clearly had the duty to maintain those roads, the County did not perform that duty. Had the County abandoned any of the roadways in question, the rebuilding of the road would likely constitute an “improvement.” However, none of that occurred.
The court concludes that the technical meaning of an “improvement” as set forth in the statute does not consist of restoring some item of public property to its former usefulness but rather it means the building of something that is either entirely new or constitutes an appendage or addition to an existing item of public property. None of the intended uses of the funds to be raised by the LID fall into this category.
And as Chuck Wibby notes above, the County did maintain the roads, by the common sense definition, up until 1995. At that time, they started “raiding” the road fund for other activities.
It seems County Commissioner Elise Jones, not to be confused with her Boulder City Council sister Suzanne Jones, believe that because the County (supposedly) doesn’t have the money, then they can once again get the subdivision neighborhoods to pick up the tab. Elise, you and your fellow Commissioners are responsible for re-interpreting the meaning of the word “maintenance”. Boulder County LOST. Take responsibility and pave our roads in a timely fashion.
Vince Hirsch: County commissioners in denial or defiant? – Boulder Daily Camera.
Vince Hirsch asks if the commissioners are “in denial or defiant”. I’d say they are arrogant and stoopid. I agree 100% with his conclusion…
The only option is to restore the road and bridge fund to accommodate subdivision road repairs and maintenance. Just do your duty, commissioners — or you can shirk your legal obligation, be sued again, and wait for your replacements to clean up after you.
The trouble with Boulder County commissioners is they are all basically pawns of Plan Boulder, so from the subdivision road owners point of view, it’s “meet the new BoCo county commissar, same as the old BoCo county commissar”.
I truly hope to be pleasantly surprised and the commissioners take on this duty and handle the road paving on an aggressive 5 year timetable. My prediction, unfortunately, is substantially different. I predict…
I freely admit I could be wrong and I truly hope to be pleasantly surprised. After all, I was wrong in my prediction that they would appeal Judge Lowenbach’s decision. The other point that works against me is that each day the county waits, the more expensive the repairs get. Since it’s part of their bottom line now, they may decide taking action sooner is better than later. Color me skeptical.
In closing, I would also like to remark on the “next step is a dialog with the property owners…” comment from Cindy Domenico
I went to the meeting at last summer at Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot. I was expecting a dialog then. I came away deeply disappointed (color me naive) in the whole attitude of the meeting and most significantly by the pontificating of Dick Piland, a Niwot resident who is actively involved in Niwot’s interactions with the County and no doubt on some type of Niwot board of directors. I could google and figure it out, but it’s not worth the effort. The ONLY good thing that came out of that meeting was the notice on my windshield as I left the meeting (early) from the organization that would become BoCo FIRM.
Voyager 1: The little spacecraft that could | Technology – KHBS .
Hurtling across the Milky Way like an eternal explorer — the Voyager 1 spacecraft continues to nonchalantly reveal the mysteries of the solar system to a captivated Earthbound audience.
Active volcanoes, methane rain, icy geysers and intricate details about Saturn’s rings — the list of revelations attributed to the mission reads like fantastical sci-fi novel but it has revolutionized planetary astronomy.
Thirty-seven years after it launched, Voyager 1 is still out in the vast expanse of space, periodically relaying new data back home. But in 2013, NASA made the groundbreaking announcement that Voyager 1 had left the heliosphere — a magnetic boundary “bubble,” if you will, which scientists use to explain the separation of our solar system from the rest of the galaxy.
Read the whole thing. h/t to Instapundit, the MacGyver of bloggers.
I’m trying to determine if I saw either or both of these launches. I was a cooperative education student, from the University of Tennessee, working at Kennedy Space Center during this period of time.
Here’s a picture of the launch of Voyager I from the Wikipedia website. They reference the Titan launch vehicle, I believe it is a Titan/Centaur (2nd stage) launch vehicle. You can learn more about the Voyager mission at Wikipedia and I’m sure many other places.
Wouldn’t want rents going down or anything! Concerned about too much student housing, Boulder imposes moratorium on Uni Hill development – Boulder Daily Camera.
Do the landlords have close connections to City Council? Perhaps some City Council representatives are landlords themselves, either directly or through a proxy. Inquiring minds want to know.
‘Nonpartisan’! Lois Lerner email bemoans right-wing ‘crazies,’ ‘assholes’ [photo] | Twitchy.
So we don’t need to worry about alien teRrorists. it’s our own crazies that will take us down.
Lois G Lerner
Color me stunned. Boulder County to refund $5.6M in assessments after judge invalidates paving district – Boulder Daily Camera.
Boulder County is moving forward with plans to refund $5.6 million in assessments paid by homeowners after officials announced they won’t appeal a judge’s ruling that the county exceeded its authority in forming a local improvement district to pay for the repaving of roads in rural subdivisions.
In a statement emailed this afternoon, county officials said the board of commissioners “accepts” the court’s decision.
Also, this piece of County propaganda from the Daily Camera/Times Call reporters really needs to stop…
That leaves Boulder County with as much as a $57.6 million gap in what it had expected to collect from those property owners over the 15-year life of the road rehabilitation program.
The collective group of BoCo Commissioners since 1995 are responsible for that shortfall. There IS no one else to blame, certainly not the property owners who have paid their taxes over the years.
Judge Lowenbach sums it up quite nice on page 15 of his ruling…
Property owners whose roads were accepted for maintenance understood that term to include all activities necessary for upkeep of roads. While it clearly had the duty to maintain those roads, the County did not perform that duty. (emphasis added)
Now Commissioner Cindy Domenico says “..the next step is a dialogue with the property owners on the options.” Commenter williambarty responds here (sorry you have to do a search, I can’t direct link)…
Cindy: Please take some time to actually read the Judge’s decision. It focuses on the invalidity (I believe the Judge used the word “abuse”) of the attempt to parse the word “maintenance.” All aspects of maintenance of these roads that the County owns are the County’s responsibility. The Judge did not leave wiggle room on this, so please don’t try to turn it into some sort of negotiation.
Hmmm Cindy, you LOST. About the only thing I can imagine you should be dialoguing about with the homeowners is perhaps in what order the roads will be rehabilitated.
Kudo’s to Boulder County FIRM, for the takedown of the Boulder County Commissioners regarding their refusal to maintain all Boulder County roads.
You can read the ruling below. This excerpt on page 10, which is simply a “note” by Judge Lowenback, could have ramifications much larger than simply road paving:
Counties have limited powers. As political subdivisions of the state, counties have only those powers that are expressly granted to them by the Colorado Constitution or by the General Assembly.
Board of County Comm’rs v. Bowen/Edwards Assocs., 830 P.2d 1045, 1055 (Colo. 1992). Counties are limited to powers that have been expressly authorized. For example, in Board of County Comm’rs v. Bainbridge, Inc., 929 P.2d 691 (Colo. 1996) the court held that where a specific statutory provision controls the maximum school related fee that can be exacted and prescribes when and how it shall be paid, county commissioners have no implied power to require additional monetary exactions after subdivision approval. The court noted that a county is not an “independent governmental entity existing by reason of any inherent sovereign authority of its residents; rather, it is a political subdivision of the state, existing only for the convenient administration of the state government, created to carry out the will of the state,” quoting Board of County Comm’rs v. Love, 470 P.2d 861, 862 (1970); accord Bowen/Edwards Assocs., 830 P.2d at 1055. (emphasis added)
Counties have limited powers? That’s pretty sour medicine for the Boulder County Commissioners.
Obamacare’s Smoking Gun Fires Again – Bloomberg View.
But though I do not fault his honesty, I also think that in January 2012, Gruber did believe that premium tax credits would only be available on state-created exchanges, and that this would give states a strong incentive to create exchanges.
We can draw two conclusions from this: First, the reading of the law by Halbig’s plaintiffs is clearly not ridiculous or dishonest; if it is a mistake, it is a mistake that one of the law’s chief architects could make. And second, we should be very skeptical of people who are now telling us, four years later, what the legislative intent was. Memory really is extraordinarily unreliable, and as we see here, it’s very easy to forget what you believed even a couple of years ago. This is one reason that courts ignore post-facto statements about intent and concentrate on the legal text and the legislative history.
I’m no as willing as Megan McArdle to give Gruber a pass on his honesty but that’s not the point. The points is in bold above.
