In Texas schools, a picture's worth 1,000 calories

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - A $2 million project being unveiled Wednesday in the lunchroom of a Texas elementary school will use high-tech cameras to photograph what foods children pile onto their trays - and later capture what they don't finish eating.

Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a U.S. school, and will be so precise that the technology can identify a half-eaten pear left on a lunch tray.

Researchers hope parents will change eating habits at home once they see what their kids are choosing in schools. The data also will be used to study what foods children are likely to choose and how much of if they're eating.

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Whatcha Think: Is this an idea that's time has come?

Lawmaker seeks drug testing of welfare recipients


LA State Wire

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A Jefferson Parish lawmaker is hoping he can persuade the Legislature on his fifth try to mandate drug testing of welfare recipients in Louisiana.

Republican Rep. John LaBruzzo's bill is scheduled for a Wednesday hearing in the House Health and Welfare Committee. Though he's gotten it out of committee before, LaBruzzo has repeatedly failed to get the measure passed through the full Legislature.

The proposal would require at least 20 percent of people who receive benefits to submit to drug testing.

LaBruzzo says the bill could help families get addiction treatment and make sure tax dollars aren't spent on drug habits. Opponents say the bill unfairly targets poor mothers, without evidence demonstrating they are more prone to drug problems.


States eye drug tests for welfare recipients

MIAMI (AP) — Lawmakers in more than two-dozen states have proposed drug-testing recipients of welfare or other government assistance, taking a tough stance on aiding the poor in the down economy. Critics say such laws would be unconstitutional — an argument that federal judges have agreed with before.

Similar proposals have been introduced in past years by lawmakers in dozens of states, but none currently requires drug testing because it's difficult to get around the arguments that the tests violate the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches. Michigan's random drug testing program for welfare recipients lasted five weeks in 1999 before it was halted by a judge, kicking off a four-year legal battle that ended with an appeals court ruling it unconstitutional.

No other state has enacted such a program, worrying about legal battles. But lawmakers say they're willing to take the risk, as cash-strapped states struggle to close budget gaps, potentially paving the way for major legal battles. The National Conference of State Legislatures said at least 30 states have proposed to drug test recipients of government aid during the current legislative session.

"It's hard for me to justify to taxpayers that I'm taking your money and giving assistance to people who are buying drugs with it," said Florida state Sen. Paula Dockery, who is sponsoring a bill requiring testing for those who receive temporary cash assistance. The bill passed in the final days of the session and Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign it.

Time to tackle regulatory reform

On the classic TV show “Star Trek,” space was the “final frontier.” In the political world, it’s the byzantine world of the federal regulatory agencies that is the final frontier. While we struggle with health care reform, energy reform and entitlement reform, no reform may be more critical to the health of our country than regulatory reform.
The truth is that we will never be able to successfully reform our health care system — or our energy and environmental policy, or entitlements, or education or, quite frankly, to tackle any other challenge facing this country — until we begin the difficult process of regulatory reform.

When it comes to health care reform, patients, providers, insurance companies and employers all face a tangled web of new and ever-changing regulations as a result of the passage of Obamacare. Some business owners, confused and frustrated, are openly talking about just paying the fines for noncompliance. They are making the business decision that noncompliance might be easier than trying to comply with the new regulations.

While the health care regulations have left the relevant players confused, regulations in the energy and environmental arena have not just created confusion; they have become a bureaucratic dead end. Thousands of jobs have been lost, and energy prices have increased dramatically, as a result of inaction by regulatory agencies charged with overseeing energy exploration.

The truth is that, intertwined in almost every major challenge we face is a complex bureaucracy — a bureaucracy that often undermines well-intended efforts to reform whatever sector that agency oversees.

This is an important first step. Few know more about the unintended, and too often job-killing, consequences of the regulatory bureaucracy than the folks who deal with these agencies every day.

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CL: Lawmakers push for more drilling permits

WASHINGTON — The administration's "slow-walking'' of drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico is costing thousands of jobs and crippling the Gulf region's economy, Gulf Coast officials told Congress Wednesday.

"We continue to feel the burden of regulatory uncertainty, which has led to the freezing of investment and expenditures and consequently a drag on our economy,'' Scott Angelle, secretary of Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources, told members of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Wednesday's hearing focused on the impact of last year's moratorium on deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico.

Gulf Coast lawmakers and officials from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama say, even though the temporary ban was lifted late last year, federal officials have been slow to issue permits. They say that's created a "de facto'' ban on drilling in deep and shallow waters.

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the committee, vowed Wednesday to introduce legislation later this month that would speed the permit process and reverse the administration's plan to ban offshore drilling outside the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Obama administration seems unmoved by thousands of lost jobs, rapidly rising gasoline prices and the threat these high prices pose to our economy,'' Hastings said.

Later Wednesday, Gulf Coast lawmakers, including Republican members from Mississippi, warned again that the administration's inaction in issuing new drilling permits will decimate the region's economy.

Fourth District Rep. Steve Palazzo said last year's moratorium has cost the region as many as 12,000 jobs and has made residents in the Gulf feel "powerless.''

"We just keep getting hit on every front,'' Palazzo said. '"Please, we need these jobs.''

Third District Rep. Gregg Harper also urged the administration to issue more permits and expand energy production in the Gulf.

"Instead of slowing the approval process for new offshore drilling permits, the president should be promoting increased domestic energy production from oil, renewables, natural gas, clean coal technology and nuclear power - ultimately leading to an energy-independent America,'' Harper said in a statement.

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Republicans mount first Dodd-Frank challenge

(Reuters) - Congressional Republicans on Wednesday will stage their first outright challenge to 2010's Dodd-Frank financial regulation reforms with a fistful of bills favoring private equity firms, derivatives end-users and corporate CEOs.

After months of trying to defund and defang Dodd-Frank at the administrative level, Republicans are finally unveiling draft legislation that would repeal or amend parts of the laws approved after the severe 2007-2009 financial crisis.

The bills face a long road ahead. Republicans may be able to obtain House passage, perhaps with Democratic support on some issues. But Senate action could be hard to come by and the Obama administration could veto any measure it opposes.

"It's the first direct assault," said a congressional aide. "Up until now it's been about trying to deprive the agencies of what they need to implement Dodd-Frank."

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Assault on the EPA

No agency is in GOP crosshairs quite like it. Under siege on many fronts, the Environmental Protection Agency is in for a long haul and destined to be a hot button in the presidential campaign.


On Monday the House Energy and Commerce committee began work on blocking EPA regulation of greenhouse gas, a proposal that could also gain traction in the Senate because many Democrats, such as Nebraska's Ben Nelson, are expected to back it. The current 3-week extension of stop-gap funding to avoid a federal shutdown includes EPA funding cuts.

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It really is this simple.

Stupid is as stupid does

Stossel: One-Size-Fits-All Government

A Nevada woman named Michelle Lyn Taylor "kissed a friend’s [13 year-old] child, forced him to touch her breast and asked him to have sex with her."

That's bad, but should the punishment be... life in prison? That was the sentence that she got.

In the sentencing, which is on youtube, the defense attorney argues:

"The sentence here shocks the conscience… The minimum penalty for first degree murder is 50 years. She could get 25 years for 2nd deg murder... She is getting a greater penalty for letting a boy touch her breast than for murder.”

The prosecutor didn't argue that a life sentence was reasonable -- rather, he just informed the judge that there was no choice:

"This is the sentence that the legislature of Nevada has created for this type of crime… now really there’s nothing left to be done except for the imposition of a life sentence."

after delivering the life sentence, The judge offered a confused-sounding explanation:

Ms. Taylor, you were charged with a crime with this sentence and apparently you weren't offered any plea deal... I've done a lot of these cases and I can't figure it out. To tell you the truth I don't know why they charge what they charge... and why they give plea bargans to some and others not, but I know that you had a jury trial, and you were charged, and this is the sentence. Good luck.

Good luck!? Julie Stewart of the group "Families Against Mandatory Minimums" tells us:

We are following this to its bitter end -- fighting to get it overturned in the State Supreme Court -- to try to make sure that this is overturned not just for her case, but that they overturn the law.

Once again, one-size-fits-all government policy imposes its nasty results.

Fox Business

Nanny of the Month

Obamacare’s Cooked Books and the “Doc Fix”

The Obama administration continues to insist (see this post from White House budget director Peter Orszag) that the recently enacted health-care law will reduce the federal budget deficit by $100 billion over ten years and by ten times that amount in the second decade of implementation. They cite the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimate for the final legislation to back their claims.

And it is undeniably true that CBO says the legislation, as written, would reduce the federal budget deficit by $124 billion over ten years from the health-related provisions of the new law.

But that’s not whole story about Obamacare’s budgetary implications — not by a long shot.

For starters, CBO is not the only game in town. In the executive branch, the chief actuary of the Medicare program is supposed to provide the official health-care cost projections for the administration — at least he always has in the past. His cost estimate for the new health law differs in important ways from the one provided by CBO and calls into question every major contention the administration has advanced about the bill. The president says the legislation will slow the pace of rising costs; the actuary says it won’t. The president says people will get to keep their job-based plans if they want to; the actuary says 14 million people will lose their employer coverage, many of whom would certainly rather keep it than switch into an untested program. The president says the new law will improve the budget outlook; in so many words, the chief actuary says, don’t bet on it.

All of this helps explain why the president of the United States would be so sensitive about the release of the actuary’s official report that he would dispatch political subordinates to undermine it with the media.

It’s not the chief actuary’s assignment to provide estimates of non-Medicare-related tax provisions, so his cost projections for Obamacare do not capture all of the needed budget data to estimate the full impact on the budget deficit. But it’s possible to back into such a figure by using the Joint Tax Committee’s estimates for the tax provisions missing from the chief actuary’s report. When that is done, $50 billion of deficit reduction found in the CBO report is wiped out.

And that’s before the other gimmicks, double counting, and hidden costs are exposed and removed from the accounting, too.

For instance, this week House and Senate Democratic leaders are rushing to approve a massive, budget-busting, tax-and-spending bill. Among its many provisions is a three-year Medicare “doc fix,” which will effectively undo the scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare physician fees set to go into effect in June. CBO says this version of the “doc fix” would add $65 billion to the budget deficit over 10 years. The entire bill would pile another $134 billion onto the national debt over the next decade.

If the Obama administration gets its way, this three-year physician-fee fix will eventually get extended again, and also without offsets. Over a full 10-year period, an unfinanced “doc fix” would add $250 to $400 billion to the budget deficit, depending on design and who is doing the cost projection (CBO or the actuary).

Administration officials and their outside enthusiasts (see here) say the Democratic Congress shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix” because everybody knows a fix needs to be enacted and therefore should go into the baseline. (By the way, the history of the sustainable growth rate [SGR] that Ezra Klein provides at the link above is a misleading one. The SGR was a replacement for a predecessor program that too had run off the rails — the so-called “Volume Performance Standard” enacted by a Democratic Congress in 1989.)

But supporting a “doc fix” is not the same as supporting an unfinanced one on a long-term or permanent basis. Not everybody in Congress is for running up more debt to pay for a permanent repeal of the scheduled fee cuts, which is why such a repeal has never been passed before. In the main, the previous administration and Congresses worked to find ways to prevent Medicare fee cuts while finding offsets to pay for it.

But that’s not the policy of the Obama administration. The truth is the president and his allies in Congress worked overtime to pull together every Medicare cut they could find — nearly $500 billion in all over ten years — and put them into the health law to pay for the massive entitlement expansion they so coveted. They could have used those cuts to pay for the “doc fix” if they had wanted to, as well as for a slightly less expansive health program. But that’s not what they did. That wasn’t their priority. They chose instead to break their agenda into multiple bills, and “pay for” the massive health entitlement (on paper) while claiming they shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix.” But it doesn’t matter to taxpayers if they enact their agenda in one, two, or ten pieces of legislation. The total cost is still the same. All of the supposed deficit reduction now claimed from the health-care law is more than wiped out by the Democrats’ insistent march to borrow and spend for Medicare physician fees.

And the games don’t end there. CBO’s cost estimate assumes $70 billion in deficit reduction from the so-called “CLASS Act.” This is the new voluntary long-term-care insurance program that hitched a ride on Obamacare because it too created the illusion of deficit reduction. People who sign up for the insurance must pay premiums for at least five years before they are eligible to draw benefits. By definition, then, at start-up and for several years thereafter, there will be a surplus in the program as new entrants pay premiums and very few people draw benefits. That’s the source of the $70 billion “savings.” But the premiums collected in the program’s early years will be needed very soon to pay actual claims. Not only that, but the new insurance program is so poorly designed it too will need a federal bailout. So this is far worse than a benign sleight of hand. The Democrats have created a budgetary monster even as they used misleading estimates to tout their budgetary virtue.

There is much more, of course. CBO’s cost projections don’t reflect the administrative costs required to micromanage the health system from the Department of Health and Human Services. The number of employers looking to dump their workers into subsidized insurance is almost certainly going to be much higher than either CBO or the chief actuary now projects. And the price inflation from the added demand of the newly entitled isn’t factored into any of the official cost projections.

We’ve seen this movie before. When the government creates a new entitlement, politicians lowball the costs to get the law passed, and then blame someone else when program costs soar. Witness Massachusetts. Most Americans are sensible enough to know already that’s what can be expected next with Obamacare.

Fix Health Care Policy



Health Care Reform

Can I get an Amen?!

I'm not a smoker. I don't want to inhale second hand smoke. I won't go to a place that forces me to do so in order to do business there. That's my choice, and how the free market works.

But I have written before, believe today, and think I will still believe tomorrow, that the government has no place regulating what happens in a private business. Zoning decides if a business fits an area. But, once that is decided no elected official has any right to tell that company how to conduct business.

Kudos to the Aldermen in Booneville! 

Aldermen vote down city smoking ban


BOONEVILLE — The Booneville Board of Aldermen has voted down a proposed ban on smoking in public places.

The vote was 3-2.

The motion to pass the ordinance was made by Alderman David Bolen and seconded by Alderman Wilda Pounds. Aldermen Harold Eaton, Mark McCoy and Jeff Williams voted against the measure.

Aldermen who were contacted by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal chose not to comment.

Business owners said they felt it should be up to a business to decide if smoking would be permitted, and how to accommodate individuals who choose not to smoke.

Several nonsmokers who opposed the ordinance said although they do not smoke, passing the law would be another infringement on individual rights.

Mississippi Business Journal

Madison approves smoking ban

Mississippi Business Journal

MADISON — Madison has adopted a smoke-free-air ordinance, switching from a voluntary ban on tobacco that all city businesses followed.

The change passed unanimously on Tuesday.

Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler is expected to sign the ordinance Wednesday or Thursday. The law will go into effect 30 days after she signs it.

Butler tells The Clarion-Ledger the reason for moving from voluntary to mandatory is because of the growth of the city.

Madison joins more than 30 cities in the state that have smoking restrictions. In the metro area, Brandon, Clinton, Flora and Ridgeland have banned smoking in public places.

Financial Regulation: The foxes are guarding the hen house

This post from CleanGovernmentNow on the upcoming hearings and financial regulation:

Are We At Farce Yet? The Show Trial of Goldman Sachs


What could possibly be more tragic than a 1400 page financial reform bill written by some of the key architects of financial ruin: Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Timothy Geithner ?

How about a convenient show trial for Goldman Sachs, one of biggest beneficiaries of the bailout these clever men cooked up?

On the one hand, you have a handful of elite, well-connected financial intermediaries and their investing clients that loaded up on smart gimmicks that were too clever by half. These derivatives instruments went poof when underlying real estate values declined more than expected. In a normal world, this would mean those dabbling in these hot potatoes would get burned. But lo and behold, these cats, who are perfectly capable of fattening themselves up for slaughter, were saved from their own idiocy by the bailout of their chief casino on credit -- AIG.

That was the tragedy. It is a tragedy that continues with an effort by Dodd, Frank, Geithner to play house to the Wall Street whales -- for a cut of the take of course.

Now comes word that one of the main beneficiaries of the AIG bailout -- Goldman Sachs -- might have done something that might have looked like something that might be connected to something that could possibly be interpreted as greedy speculation.

What I do know is that the timing and subject matter has all the earmarks of a show trial meant to distract from a far greater set of sins that took place within the government before, during and after the financial crisis.

Next on Obama's hit list: small contractors

On April 22 (Earth Day!) new EPA regulations go into effect that could take down many a small contractor.

It’s all about the rules on lead paint removal, which heretofore had been enforced only for work on homes that were old enough to have lead paint and in which small children or pregnant women (the populations at risk) resided. But that’s not good enough for our nanny state; oh no. Now the rules will apply to work done on any home built before 1978, eliminating the previous sensible escape hatch whereby a homeowner could opt out of the regulations if there were no at-risk individuals living in the house.

You might ask why it is that a homeowner contemplating a remodeling job should be deprived of the ability to refuse to pay for costly lead protection procedures that are not needed. Well, here’s your answer: “this option (the opt-out) was ripe for abuse.” In other words, the government can’t trust people to do what’s in the best interest of their own children or pregnancies, and so we all must suffer.

And suffer we will, especially the contractors. To be in compliance by April 22 would mean that every contractor contemplating a job that would disturb more than six square feet of a home’s area (and this includes not just carpentry but plumbing, window installation, and heating and AC installation) would need to have completed a one-day course in the matter, necessitating taking a day off and spending about two hundred dollars. But since there are nowhere near enough certified teachers, therefore the vast majority of America’s contractors could not possibly comply by April 22 even if they wanted to.

But that’s relatively minor compared to larger problems connected with the new rules, such as the fact that they will increase the costs of renovation for both contractor and homeowner just at a time when the industry and the consumer can least handle it.

FCC Net Neutrality Smackdown a Win for Free Market, Limited Government

In a huge win for the free market and limited government, a federal appeals court today put a halt to the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to exert its authority over the Internet and its power play to regulate the companies who provide access to it.

The decision, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, centers around the FCC’s efforts to enact “net neutrality,” a policy that would prevent ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from managing the flow of traffic on the Internet by discriminating among content and applications that put a high load on their networks.

The Foundry

Will we let the government have this too?

The Associated Press is reporting that the FCC has lost a key ruling on it's desire to begin regulating free speech on the internet. We can only hope that this is as big of a setback as the writer suggests. Youtube, Google, and any other major innovation might not be at our fingertips today were this type of regulation in place when they were dreamed up. Net Neutrality is government control. Period. The organization of the TEA Party's, the ability for small Mom and Pop Companies to make a name for themselves alongside the big players of Corporate America, the advent of the blogging writer digging for the truth and putting it out there for the world to see and debate, true and unregulated 21st century dialogue . . . with Net Neutrality it's all gone.

The ruling itself had little to do with content, and focused more on ISP companies participating in what's referred to as traffic shaping. Companies had been traffic shaping in order to penalize users who illegally download copyrighted material such as music and movies, through the use of torrent files.

However, the ruling clearly questions the FCC's authority to control ISP's "network management practices," a clear sign that the content related regulation of Net Neutrality proponents would be an uphill battle. The court’s decision states that while the FCC is permitted to make rules and issue orders to fulfill its own responsibilities, “for a variety of substantive and procedural reasons those provisions cannot support its exercise of ancillary authority over Comcast’s network management practices.”

FCC loses key ruling on Internet `neutrality'

By JOELLE TESSLER - AP Technology Writer

A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations and U.S. broadband expansion plans into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel marks a serious setback for the FCC, which is trying to adopt official net neutrality regulations. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, argues such rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over Internet access to favor some kinds of online content and services over others.

The case centers on Comcast's actions in 2007 when it interfered with an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent, which allows users to swap big files such as movies over the Internet. But public interest groups stressed that the ramifications of Tuesday's ruling are much broader. That's because it undercuts the FCC's ability to prevent broadband providers from becoming gatekeepers for many kinds of online services, potentially including Internet phone programs and software that runs in a Web browser.

"Today's appeals court decision means there are no protections in the law for consumers' broadband services," Gigi Sohn, co-founder of Public Knowledge, said in a statement. "Companies selling Internet access are free to play favorites with content on their networks, to throttle certain applications or simply to block others."

The decision also has serious implications for the massive national broadband plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs clear authority to regulate broadband in order to push ahead with some its key recommendations, including a proposal to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.

In a statement, the FCC said it remains "firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans" and "will rest these policies ... on a solid legal foundation."

Comcast welcomed the decision, saying "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."

At the heart of the court case is Comcast's challenge of a 2008 FCC order banning it from blocking subscribers from using BitTorrent. The commission, at the time headed by Republican Kevin Martin, based its order on a set of net neutrality principles adopted in 2005.

Read more of the AP Report at the Sun Herald

Net Neutrality is government regulation. It is the FCC picking and choosing what it decides is and is not in the best interest of the public. One of the biggest proponents is Al Gore. Need I say more?

The Cato Institute probably put it best when it calls Net Neutrality "A Solution In Search of A Problem.'"

This is a very good video from Reason TV that answers the question, "What the hell is Net Neutrality?"




And below is a video of Candidate Barack Obama endorsing Net Neutrality in 2007 to, as he puts it, "ensure the free and full exchange of information." Remember, he's the one that just gave us a $940 trillion dollar bill that would ensure the free and full exchange of health care for all citizens.




I ain't buying any of it. Reagan reminded us . . .