Is The Government Overstepping Again?

Four Loko had been the subject of many media reports which suggested that Four Loko's mixture of alcohol and caffeine causes young people to engage in risky behavior.(Excuse me, isn't the drinking of alcohol alone a risky behavior?)The drink was even dubbed "Blackout in a Can," and the story soon moved from newsrooms to Congress, where officials like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded that it be pulled from shelves.

"We must protect children(Chuck, you have to be 21 to buy Four Loko) from the severe and deadly consequences of drinks like Four Loko," declared Schumer. The Food and Drug Administration agreed, and in November federal regulators banned Four Loko.

It doesn't take a village... Michelle Obama says it is a government job...

“We can’t just leave it up to the parents."

“Everywhere I go, fortunately, I meet parents who are working very hard to make sure that their kids are healthy,” said Mrs. Obama. “They’re doing things like cutting down on desserts and trying to increase fruits and vegetables. They’re trying to teach their kids the kind of healthy habits that will stay with them for a lifetime.

“But when our kids spend so much of their time each day in school, and when many children get up to half their daily calories from school meals, it’s clear that we as a nation have a responsibility to meet as well,” Mrs. Obama said. “We can’t just leave it up to the parents."according to CNSNews
H/T Fausta

Elizabeth Mort Tested Positive ! ! !

The commonwealth of Pennsylvania took away Elizabeth Mort's young daughter away after the hospital where the daughter was born reported the mother for testing positive on a drug test.......

Elizabeth Mort’s daughter was taken by the state a mere day after they returned from the hospital......
A pair of Lawrence County Children and Youth Services caseworkers and two police officers showed up at Elizabeth Mort’s door bearing a court order legally entitling them to seize the daughter.......

The state grabbed the baby and held her for five days.....

BUT WAIT ! ! !
There was a problem....

According to the ACLU complaint filed on the couple’s behalf, urine tests administered to Mort by her obstetrician during the pregnancy were uniformly negative for drugs......

While a federal employee would fail a drug test if they exceed a threshold of 2,000 nanograms/mL of opiate metabolites, a patient at Jameson Hospital would fail if they exceed a threshold of just 300 nanograms/mL -- or just 100 nanograms/mL for morphine. At such low thresholds, there’s a good chance other parents will have to suffer -- and likely have already suffered -- the pain of having their child taken away from them based on nothing more than their choice of breakfast food.

Republicans won the midterm elections. Now can they survive?

On average, Americans believe Washington DC wastes 50 cents of every tax dollar it receives, Gallup found.

Frank Luntz writes......
Americans' agenda is simple. In broad terms, they want the government to spur job growth, but not by subsidizing more government jobs with taxpayer dollars. They want Washington to balance the budget and reverse the growing influence of government on daily life. They want the government to encourage success, allow failure, punish those who break the law - and then get out of the way. And above all, they want politicians to follow through on their promises, even if that means tempering those promises in the first place.


They also show clear support for the following five ideas:

(1) Balance the budget as quickly as possible through meaningful spending reductions, a hard spending cap and a constitutional amendment so that it never gets unbalanced again.

(2) Eliminate all earmarks until the budget is balanced, then require a two-thirds vote by Congress for future earmark legislation.

(3) Keep taxes down by requiring supermajorities for increases, and eventually enact tax reform with a simple, low, fair rate that drastically reduces the length of the IRS code.

(4) Create a blue-ribbon task force that engages in a complete, line-by-line forensic audit of federal agencies and programs to end waste and reduce red tape and bureaucracy.

(5) And require Congress to provide specific constitutional authorization for every bill it passes so that the government stays within the boundaries imagined by the founders.”
See the full article at the WaPo

“I Want Your Money”

See it at one of these theaters....
* Courthouse 8
Arlington, VA
* Downtown Mall 6
Charlottesville, VA
* Fredericksburg 15
Fredericksburg, VA
* Virginia Center 20
Glen Allen, VA
* Hampton Towne Center 24
Hampton, VA
* Harrisonburg 14
Harrisonburg, VA
* River Ridge Stadium 14
Lynchburg, VA
* Westchester Commons Stadium 16
Midlothian, VA
* Kiln Creek Cinema 20
Newport News, VA
* Mac Arthur Center 18
Norfolk, VA
* Commonwealth 20 Theatres
Richmond, VA
* Valley View Grand 16
Roanoke, VA
* Countryside 20
Sterling, VA
* Harbour View Grande 16
Suffolk, VA
* Strawbridge Marketplace 12
Virginia Beach, VA

89000 mistakes ! ! !

AP is reporting that a government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison.

The Social Security Administration's inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead. The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned.

89000 mistakes with just 1 stimulus check, and people want these same guys to run their health care?????

Fed mandate costs city $27 Million

Feds are demanding that New York City change its 250,900 street signs

from the all-caps style used for more than a century to ones that capitalize only the first letters.
Changing BROADWAY to Broadway will save lives, the Federal Highway Administration contends in its updated Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, citing improved readability.
At $110 per sign, it will also cost the state $27.6 million, city officials said.(Explain to me how many lives will be saved? Explain to me how Broadway is safer than BROADWAY?)
See more here
If there are budget deficits, shouldn't governments determine what is "Nice to have" as opposed to "Have to have"?

"I am from the government and I am here to help"

OH MY ! ! ! He is growing too much food!!!
Stop him before he feeds his friends ! ! "

Local Government tries some "Waterhoarding"

DAM The Residents, Full Speed Ahead....
with annexation
(Thank you Admiral Farragut)

Rock Hill, South Carolina officials plan to Hoard the Water from the taps of York County residents who refuse annexation by today's noon deadline despite being asked for an extension, city officials confirmed Tuesday.

Starting Monday the city plans to phase out service to residents who do not agree to annexation. Those who agree to annexation will not be affected, city officials said.....

Residents of Miller Pond say they should be left out of the annexation because they only receive water from the city and pay around double what city residents pay.

Read more here

Big Brother is Checking Your Garbage ! ! !

Your garbage can gets a bar code

Cleveland is using a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes.

The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection. If a chip show a recyclable cart hasn't been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables.

City Council on Wednesday approved spending $2.5 million on high-tech carts for 25,000 households across the city, expanding a pilot program that began in 2007 with 15,000 households.

See more here

Government Shuts Down a Kid's Lemonade Stand ! ! !

It's hardly unusual to hear small-business owners gripe about licensing requirements or complain that heavy-handed regulations are driving them into the red.

So when Multnomah County shut down an enterprise last week for operating without a license, you might just sigh and say, there they go again.

Except this entrepreneur was a 7-year-old named Julie Murphy. Her business was a lemonade stand at the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Northeast Portland. The government regulation she violated? Failing to get a $120 temporary restaurant license.
See the full story here

Breaking News: Budget Cancelled by Dems..

Sonnie Johnson Speaks

Sonnie Johnson speaks at the Frederick Douglas Society

H/T VaVirtucon

Sowell Speaks on Government Action

Thomas Sowell Writes...........
Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table( "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway).
Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed-- and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.
This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

What the government decided to do in June 1930-- against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it-- was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

OH Yeah, I want these guys running "Cap and Tax"

Feds Fooled 75% of the time

The federal government has been approving "energy-efficient" ratings on products that don't even exist.

a "bogus space heater with a duster stuck to it,"
an "alarm clock powered by gasoline,"

a "metal roof panel,"

a "geothermal heat pump,"

These fake products were submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy for approval as part of an undercover investigation by the Government Accountability Office.
Of the 20 products submitted for approval, 15 were given the thumbs up. GAO reported that the federal government generally did not ask for critical evidence to back up its claims about how energy-efficient -- or real -- its bogus products were.
See the full story here

Why don't we put the EPA
in charge of Obamacare too???

"The Government Can"

See more Tim Hawkins here

The Government Option

One arm of the local government said, “We’re going to do some new streetlighting. These cast poles will look super in our town.”

Another government office said, “This is a historic building. The storefronts and the awnings need to stay where they are.”

Here is the government option.....


And just for fun....

A Depressed Woman writes a letter, and Doctors fear Assault Charges

It is reasonable that someone who is reasonably healthy and wants to commit suicide is not playing with a full deck. It is also reasonable that what that person writes might not be written by a competent person.
Well The government doctors in England gave it credence. They were afraid to aid a suicidal person because of their fear of litigation. They were more afraid of a darn lawyer than saving a life. I don't agree with the severity of Shakespeare in "Henry the Sixth", but we do need to do something about lawyers.

Kerrie Wooltorton, of Norwich in eastern England, is believed to be the first person to use a living will to commit suicide, The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.
She wrote the document on Sept. 15, 2007, three days before she poisoned herself. She called an ambulance, which took her to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. There, she gave doctors a letter addressed to "To whom this may concern." .....

"If I come into hospital regarding an overdose or any attempt of my life, I would like for NO life saving treatment to be given,"...........

Doctors said they feared they would be charged with assault if they treated her because she had made her wishes clear, The Telegraph reported.

Hillary said,"It takes a village". Michagan says OK, if you are licensed.

Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood's children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don't see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she'd be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. "But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense," Boyd said.

"We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable," she said. "When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene."
See the story here