By Nathan Barton

Good morning.  Today, we can take a look at the horrific regulations crushing down on us more and more.

When was the last time you know of that someone got sick and died because their food was hauled in a semi-trailer pulled by a common carrier?  Or just got sick?  I thought so.  No one.  There are lots of ways that food can become contaminated or spoiled and make you sick when you eat it.  But of all the dozens of ways, having a dirty trailer or a poorly-operating reefer van hauling your veggies or fruit or meat is not way up on the list.  But the RISK POTENTIALLY EXISTS.  And government – no, GOVERNMENT must MUST come to the rescue and push for a zero-risk society in which NO one will die of anything but old age and boredom.

Therefore (and NO this is NOT coming from the Onion) the FDA – that’s right, The Food and Drug Administration has decided to REGULATE trucks – “carriers” in government lingo.  Specifically, common carrier trucks that might – MIGHT – be carrying food or liquid, or something that can become food or liquid.  They must inspect for cleanliness and operational equipment and safety.  And of course, SOMEBODY must pay for this.  What is that you say?  Don’t we already have the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and Department of Transportation and Department of Homeland Security?  And about two different agencies for each of the Fifty States?  Of course, but THEY don’t know how to deal with FOOD Safety.  So the FDA will do that and CHARGE the truckers for this vital service, and the truckers will raise their prices to cover the new cost of doing business, and guess who ULTIMATELY pays?  That’s RIGHT: the consumer.  And if the FDA is as good at this as at everything else they protect us from, then we WILL start hearing about people getting sick and even dying because of an unsanitary semi-van or improperly refrigerated lunch meat.  Ain’t guvmint grand!?!

The Nazgul (Justices) uphold most EPA regulation of greenhouse gas “The Supreme Court on Monday mostly validated the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate power plant and factory emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming while imposing some limits on the agency’s reach. The justices still handed the Obama administration and environists a big victory by agreeing there was another way for the EPA to carry out its program.” But the Supreme Court says the agency cannot rewrite specific standards written into existing laws.  Right.

But we have MORE about the religion of manmade global warming (officially “climate disruption” this month: stand by for new name changes in the future!) Well, I have to ask, is this the pendulum already swinging back?  Are we going to go from “global warming” back to manmade global cooling and we are all gonna freeze in the dark?  According to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute of Israel, we are seeing that manmade pollution, specifically aerosols are accounting for actual global COOLING – although whether or not this is enough to counteract the supposed global warming or is too much is not discussed. Keep in mind this is AAAS and “Science” magazine, so not only are they politically-motivated, but it is hard to wade through the jargon.  Here is a good place to get a translation, again with a grain of salt.

Mama’s Note: For more than you ever wanted to know about any “climate” topic, and many other things, Watts Up With That? is the website to visit. Just browse, or use the excellent search engine for a specific item.

At the same time as all this is coming out, it seems that yet MORE evidence has surfaced that the global warming scare (like global cooling) is not just based on flimsy and wrong data, but on data that has been cooked: FAKE data by a whole host of drones who apparently value their politics more than they do their “god” (science).  This announcement came after the Plains of Montana, and mountains in Wyoming and Utah, enjoyed several feet of global warming last week, and hard upon the heels of still more information about how universities and other prestigious “scientific institutions” are not just supported by government, but as incompetent AS government as a whole.  (The recent exposure of 79 staffers to anthrax, at the “world-class, world-famous” Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta shows that a good many science-fiction writers have expected a WHOLE lot more from this government agency than that agency is able to provide.  Specifically, how are they going to protect themselves from the Zombie Apocalypse when they can’t protect themselves from their own stocks of anthrax?)

My oh my, it is almost enough to get me to turn against fracking.  (Not really, but… ) The Government benefits from fracking. Even while the EPA and many state agencies try hard to prevent it.  State and local governments saved a total of $720 million on electricity and gas thanks to fracking. These significant savings are equivalent to the cost of hiring 25,000 full-time employees… Now, is THAT something to turn your stomach or not?  ANOTHER 25,000 government employees? You guys at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER need to have your mouths washed out.

What is the value of a summer job? Teenagers who work in high school have wages 10 to 15 percent higher than their peers after college graduation… or so says the NEW YORK TIMES.  Which is why the bad economy (Crash of 2009, remember?) is bad for young people.  And maybe why governments seek (especially through regs) to prevent more and more teens from working.  Not the only way in which government is damaging us more and more.

For those people who are trapped in the DC area, the truth is: DC’s Transportation Plan positively discourages driving, increasing costs. And damaging the environment, according to their own definitions. Washington, D.C.’s transportation plan will substitute high-cost urban transit for low-cost driving, even though transit emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than driving does.  I suppose this will be an excuse in the future to limit use of public transport as WELL as automobiles, to the “deserving” and those essential to the elite.

A Georgia suburb of Atlanta (Sandy Springs) is being touted now for what a MARRRVOLLLUS job they did by privatizing most of their city government a couple of decades ago.  Actually, this story is a great one, and the biggest problem I have is that it does NOT point out (for a libertarian audience from a libertarian group, ISIL) that privatization is NOT the real answer, simply better than having idiot bureaucrats try to do something productive.  See, privatization is where the government (city in this case) STILL collects the taxes, probably STILL collects the fees, and STILL makes political decisions, but instead of doing the work with in-house employees, contracts out to private, usually for-profit, companies to actually DO the work, from collecting trash to running the water plant and waste water plant (and running and maintaining and repairing the mains) to running the planning and zoning offices and doing the health inspections and all the rest.  (This city (100,000 people, NOT small in my opinion) has contracted out everything except police and fire.)  Following the city’s laws and most of their regulations, of course.  It reduces costs and employees, and usually the company (in a well-written and administered contract) has fewer employees doing the same (or MORE) work than the bureaucrats and wage-grade city workers did.  And not as much problem with unions or pensions or corruption.  But the city fathers (politicians) still call the shots, the taxes still get collected (at gunpoint if necessary) and the people (customers? residents?) still don’t get any choice: they HAVE to use the contracted company for those things.  The solution is “commercialization” – getting the city (and other governments) OUT of the service business entirely, and even the regulatory business and the rest of it.  Let people individually and voluntarily decide who they will contract with for everything from trash collection and power and public health to coordinating planning and development and dealing with stray animals.