Regulation Nation Strikes the Family Farm

Obama's regulation nation now includes the family farm.

The family farm has typically been defined as one "with ten or fewer employees."  The Wall Street Journal notes that OSHA has been prohibited from setting foot on farms with less than ten people...until now.  This administration's modus operandi has been to make up the rules as they go: Obamacare is one example of that.  Now this also applies to the family farm:

But OSHA officials have found a novel way to circumvent this statutory restraint. The regulators have simply claimed the authority to rewrite the definition of farming. A remarkable 2011 memo from OSHA's enforcement chief to regional administrators at first acknowledges that the law prevents the agency from regulating small farms engaged in growing and harvesting crops and any "related activities." But then the memo proceeds to instruct employees on how to re-categorize small farms as commercial grain handlers. So OSHA inspectors have recently begun to descend on family farms, claiming the authority to regulate their grain storage bins. 

This has inspired the normally mild-mannered Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) to take to the Senate floor recently to condemn OSHA's "absolutely incredible" and "absurd" position, which he called "a blatant overreach in violation of the law." 

Mr. Johanns grew up on a farm and pointed out that "every farm has grain storage." That's because it's not practical and at times nearly impossible to sell all of a crop the moment it is harvested. Without grain storage, farmers would be forced to immediately unload everything they grow and therefore have to accept lower prices.

Senator Johanns cited as an example a farm with just one employee that was fined $130,000 by OSHA for, among other things, failing to have a plan to address dust.  The senator spoke about this case recently on the Senate floor:

During a speech on the Senate floor this week, the Nebraska Republican said the agency has levied $132,000 in fines against a small Nebraska farm despite a prohibition against doing so with farming operations that have 10 or fewer employees. 

Johanns said OSHA inspectors said the farm willfully violated OSHA regulations associated with atmospheric tests in a grain bin, failure to wear OSHA-approved gear when entering a grain bin and other issues.

Senator Johanns thinks OSHA "is using the fines as a testing ground for future regulation of family farm operations and their grain systems."

Clearly there is little that this administration doesn't desire to regulate and if it can't be done under current policy then policy just must be rewritten.

Regulation nation.

Next Black Market Item: Light Bulbs

Tomorrow marks the end of the incandescent bulb.

Jan. 1. marks the end of a seven-year effort to outlaw the ordinary lightbulb, thanks to a 2007 law that raised minimum efficiency standards for traditional incandescent bulbs far beyond what the technology can manage. 

It’s lights out for the traditional light bulb, in other words, which was essentially killed by that bill. 

“The government started phasing out incandescents in 2010, starting with the 100-watt bulb, and then followed by the 75-watt,” explained Melissa Andresko, communications director for lighting-automation company Lutron. 

“Come January 1, both the 60- and the 40-watt bulbs are going away. And that’s really going to have the most impact on consumers because those are the most popular incandescent bulb types right now,” she told FoxNews.com earlier this month.

Because we all want the federal government telling us what kind of light bulbs we can use, right?  Freaking nanny state.  The Heritage Foundation:

The “so what” is that the federal government is taking decisions out of the hands of families and businesses, destroying jobs, and restricting consumer choice in the market. We all have a wide variety of preferences regarding light bulbs. It is not the role of the federal government to override those preferences with what it believes is in our best interest.

It's not too late to stock up on bulbs.

Graphic via Heritage Foundation

Get Ready for Higher Gas Prices

Get ready to dig a little deeper; via Heritage:

The EPA’s new Tier 3 regulations require a reduction in the amount of sulfur in gasoline to an average of 10 parts per million (ppm) by January 2017, down 70 percent from the current average of 30ppm today. The new regulation is similar to those standards of California, Japan, and South Korea. 

A study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute found that reducing sulfur to 10ppm will increase gas prices 6 cents to 9 cents per gallon—although the study does not specifically analyze the newly proposed EPA regulation. The analysis also mentions that if the EPA proposes an additional vapor reduction regulation, that cost increase will skyrocket to 25 cents per gallon.

The environmental impact is expected to be negligible.

The best part:

Because refineries operate on such thin margins already, implementation of these regulations could result in a number of refinery closures. Such closures could squeeze supply chains and further increase the price of gas.

EPA unhinged.  Just in time for summer.

The Coming EPA War on American Energy

It is the calm before the storm election. 

Maybe "calm" isn't the right word.  Have you seen the photos of the Romney rallies?  This one is from Pennsylvania today:

It looks rather like folks in Pennsylvania might have heard about Obama's new EPA agenda.

Certainly everyone in coal country should pay attention to this unleashed EPA.  The agenda is just chilling and is certain to doom the American economy for good. 

From Forbes:

Titled “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013: Numerous Obama EPA Rules Placed on Hold Until After the Election Spell Doom For Jobs and Economic Growth”, it lists and describes new rules concocted over the past year ranging from additional restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, tougher water guidelines and tightening of the ozone standard. Taken together, they will further drive up pump prices, impose construction bans on local communities, and cripple oil, natural gas and coal production.

In sum, Larry Bell outlines what we can expect:

Greenhouse gas regulations will be so regulated as to basically eliminate coal.  The emissions standards will apply to even the smallest church, school, and farm.  "The cow tax" will apply to some 37,000 farms and affect 90% of the livestock population in the United States.

(Think that'll drive up your food and energy prices much?)

There's more:

The EPA is just one of some fourteen bureaucracies working to regulate and eliminate hydraulic fracking.  The EPA will dramatically expand the Clean Water Act and increase regulatory burdens on the states.  There will also be an expansion of regulations on storm-water systems which will require expensive retrofitting on storm water sewers and severely increase the cost of future development.  New gasoline regulations will limit the amount of sulfur in gasoline which Bell says will add at least nine cents per gallon to your gas bill.

Add to this list the Boiler MACT:

EPA’s Boiler MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) standards are so strict that not even the best-performing sources can meet them, so many companies will have no choice but to shut their doors and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. The rule has been projected to reduce U.S. GDP by as much as 1.2 billion dollars and destroy nearly 800,000 jobs.

Can't wait to see what THAT does to the unemployment numbers.

There's also a "Cement MACT" which could close 18 plants and cost 80,000 jobs.

Read Bell's article because there are many more regulations there including the infamous Farm Dust regulations and cooling tower regulations.

If just half of these kick in we are still in a world of trouble.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air:

 Coal miners and coal powered plants already have a big problem, as we have pointed out repeatedly. But it looks like those problems may grow by several orders of magnitude in the coming months if the current White House occupant remains in office. The President has already been seen to bristle at criticism from his own Left flank over how he hasn’t done enough for the environmentalists who can’t understand why the oil companies are still in business four years later. Unrestrained by the need to win another election – having a lot more “flexibility,” as you might hear from Vladimir – these folks can really run amok.

Even the most far left liberal has to see that these regulations will be the death of American business and energy development.  We must have a strong petroleum industry and this will never happen under these expensive and burdensome regulations.  You can't fill your gas tank with wind, and you can't charge your electric car without electricity (which relies, of course, on coal).  Our power grid is already strained and in trouble. 

We can't afford another term of Obama unleashed.

(H/T:  Hot Air)

Regulation Nation

Via Rush Limbaugh, this is fabulous:

Obama Denies Small Business Owners Impacted by ObamaCare

In yet another example of Obama's total lack of business acumen or experience, in an interview with KTIV (Sioux City) Obama denies the possibility that Obamacare is pushing serious burdens on small business owners.

Via The Washington Examiner:

"That'd be kind of hard to explain," an incredulous Obama told KTIV of Sioux City, Iowa. "The only folks that have been impacted in terms of the health care bill are insurance companies who are required to make sure that they're providing preventive care or they're not dropping your insurance coverage when you get sick," he said. "And so, this particular company probably wouldn't have been impacted by that." 

 It would be difficult to be more out of touch or insulated from the complexities of small business ownership than that.  "The only folks...impacted...are insurance companies"?

Yet consider Scott Womack who owns several IHOP franchises:



He currently provides insurance to only his management staff yet ObamaCare would require him to provide insurance to every full time employee.  Mr. Womack explains that his current profit per employee is $3,000  yet the Obamacare mandate would cost $7,000 per employee.  He's looking at major cuts including cutting employee hours and services.

Mr. Womack was planning on building more restaurants throughout Ohio yet the Obamacare mandate will preclude that.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how that cuts into economic growth.

The regulations of the Obama administration, and Obamacare in particular, are certainly stifling economic recovery.

In the interview with KTIV, Obama insisted that his administration has enacted fewer regulations than "the previous administration."

"I know that there's a perception sometimes that there's all kinds of regulations coming out of Washington," Obama said. "The truth is we've seen fewer regulations coming out of my administration than the previous administration." 

 Again, misleading.

It's not necessarily the number of regulations coming out of his administration so much as it is the cost of the regulations and their effect on growth that is at issue here.

Last November Bloomberg reported that while Obama had (at that point) instituted fewer regulations, they have cost more.

The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms.

And of course, the kicker here is that these numbers do not include independent agencies such as the SEC and the EPA.

In 2009, Michigan Science did an extensive study on the effect of the EPA's Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.  It's not pretty.

His his book, The Great Destroyer, David Limbaugh recounts the story of Peter Schiff who explained the impact of government regulations on his investment company.  Mr. Schiff testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Regulator Affairs in September 2011:

Regulations have substantially increased the costs and risks associated with job creation.  Employers are subjected to all sorts of onerous regulations, taxes, and legal liability. The act of becoming an employer should be made as easy as possible. Instead we have made it more difficult. In fact, among small business owners, limiting the number of employees is generally a goal. This is not a consequence of the market, but of a rational desire on the part of business owners to limit their cost and legal liabilities. They would prefer to hire workers, but these added burdens make it preferable to seek out alternatives. 

In my own business, securities regulations have prohibited me from hiring brokers for more than three years. I was even fined fifteen thousand dollar expressly for hiring too many brokers in 2008. In the process I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold. 

The evidence that this administration is stifling job growth is insurmountable.

For anyone to believe Obama's misleading gibberish is inconceivable.

Obama has often been touted as a great orator and while I fail to see that or to agree with it, it is safe to say that he is a master at just saying whatever he wants to say and expecting you to believe it for no other reason than that he said it.

Shame on you if you do.

Obama says that only insurance companies have been hurt by Obamacare?

Shame on him.

A Lot of Red Tape

Your chart of the day courtesy of The Heritage Foundation:

Note:

This week’s chart tests Obama’s claim by looking at the number of major regulations imposed by each administration. Major regulations, as defined by the government, are regulations that cost up to $100 million or more each year.

In his first three years of presidency, President George W. Bush imposed 28 major regulations at a cost of $8.1 billion. Obama imposed 106 major regulations at a cost of $46 billion.

That's a lot of red tape.

Hands Off My Beef Jerky!

I guess along with incandescent light bulbs I need to start stocking up on salt. 

Did the Founding Fathers ever anticipate that one day government would be regulating salt in my diet?  This is what nanny state we end up with when we allow a bunch of nimrods to pass some boneheaded health care bill under the misconception that it's also the government's business to see to it that every American is provided with health care.  If the government is going to be sure everyone has health care then by god we've got to cut those costs by forcing them to be healthy.  We've raised taxes on cigarettes...let's go after salt now! 

Next thing you know, you won't even be able to buy a package of Kool-Aid at the grocery store or the sugar to make it with.  Bags of sugar will become rationed, hot black market items!  Snickers bars and marshmallows....gone.  My imagination runs wild.

Imagine a life with little or no salt.  What will bacon taste like?  No more beef jerky?  How are we Southern women supposed to cook vegetables?  What about my salt meat that I throw into almost every pot of peas I cook?  If the government is restricting the amount of salt in processed foods, how long before they come after the salt shaker itself? 

Just ridiculous.  I wish the government would watch the border and not my salt intake.  I wish they'd quit trying to regulate every aspect of my daily life.  Between cap and trade regulating light bulbs, water and energy use, and now dietary restrictions, it's difficult sometimes to remember that this is the land of  the free.