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Dr. Brian Callister, a doctor in Reno, Nevada, says he had two patients recently who both needed life-saving treatments. “Not palliative care, not hospice, these would have been curative procedures.” One patient, he said, was from California, and the other was from Oregon, which both have passed physician-assisted suicide laws. Instead of offering to pay for their treatments, Callister said the insurance medical directors in both states offered his patients assisted suicide.

Death panels. It’s the only way — to get rid of Californians and Oregonians.

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Sure, the hugely popular augmented reality game was getting kids (and adults!) to roam around outside—probably doing more to get kids moving than Michelle Obama ever did—in the hopes of catching and battling their fictional “pocket monsters,” but Milwaukee County officials were worried about how the game’s popularity was affecting parks and other public spaces. Augmented reality games like Pokemon Go require gamers to be in certain physical locations in order to collect pokemon or complete in-game tasks, and public parks became hot spots for the game’s overlaid reality.

Rather than being thrilled to see people of all ages flocking to places like the city’s Lake Park to enjoy a new form of recreation, though, Milwaukee County implemented new rules requiring permits before anyone could engage in “electronic gaming” in parks and other public spaces.

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Every year, almost every industry improves.

We get more choices—usually better choices, for less money.

“But of all the products we make and the services we provide, there’s one that stands out as an exception,” according to the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson. “One activity in which excellence doesn’t spawn countless imitators or spread on a massive scale: schooling.”

They fail because they are run by government employees, and government employees screw up everything they touch, and politicize what’s left.

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We know that President Obama had it in for Gen. Michael Flynn. The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was a persistent critic of Obama’s feckless policies, especially regarding ISIS. Obama reportedly advised president-elect Trump not to offer Flynn a high level position.

According to this report from Circa, the FBI’s Andrew McCabe also had an ax to grind with Flynn. A few years ago, Robyn Gritz, a supervisory special agent, filed a discrimination/retaliation claim against the FBI. Flynn supported Gritz’s claim. According to Circa, he wrote a letter of support in 2014 on his official Pentagon stationery, backed her in a 2015 public interview, and offered to testify on her behalf. (The FBI opposed allowing Flynn to testify. As I read Circa’s story, it appears that he did not testify.)

Well. So much for that fake news.

Nobody keeps a grudge like a Democrat. Ask any of the Clinton victims.

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California will add glyphosate, the main ingredient in agro-chemical giant Monsanto’s weed spray, to a “list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer,” the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced Monday.

…

The science is all but settled on the issue. The Environmental Protection Agency recently published, then removed a report which claimed glyphosate posed no risk to humans.

California bureaucrats: Science deniers.

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Dubbed “the Uber of the skies,” startups like Flytenow and AirPooler aimed to connect pilots whose private flights were not yet filled to passengers eager to reach their destinations without suffering the horrors of commercial air travel. Founded in 2013, the services were a great win-win for both parties: Pilots no longer had to simply eat the cost of empty seats on each trip, and passengers got to enjoy the thrill of small-scale flight for a very affordable price. For the first time, it seemed like consumers would have a real inexpensive alternative to the hell of economy class travel.

That is, until the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) caught wind of all this innovation and decided to quash it once and for all. In a sneaky bid to shut down this kind of arrangement, the FAA decided to expansively interpret its own definition of a “common carriage” operator so that non-commercial small-scale pilots using these services would be legally put on the same level as the big boy commercial flights—with the same expensive regulatory and licensing requirements.

This is why we can’t ever have anything nice.

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Soon after Imran Awan joined the staff of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina, and his brother’s wife Natalia all appeared on other members’ payrolls, supposedly as IT administrators. His best friend Rao Abbas landed on the payroll too. Most of them made salaries ordinarily only chiefs of staff earn, but they were rarely seen or heard from in Hill IT circles.

The crew is now the target of a U.S. Capitol Police criminal information security probe with assistance from other law enforcement agencies as needed. Politico reported the “House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”

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Taxpayer-funded bonds sold to raise revenue for parks and schools in cash-strapped Detroit will instead be used to lure its professional basketball team back into the city.

…

Taxpayers are already on the hook for more than $300 million of the $900 million construction cost for new Little Caesars Arena, built to host the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League. The additional spending will make the arena suitable for basketball and help pay for new practice facility and front office for the Pistons.

This is what happens when Democrats run your city.

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How about that great government-provided health care! Don’t you wish we had a system like that in America?

Reminder for the dimwitted: When a service is free, the demand increases to infinity — and eventually you run out of other people’s money to pay for it.

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The New Hampshire Senate passed a bill ruling you can freely kill your own child but will get charged with murder if you kill someone else’s kid.

Perhaps the next step is that you can sell kids into slavery as long as they are your own kids.

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More self-segregation. We don’t even have to do anything to keep these proglodytes out of our state.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott was non-plussed over California’s travel ban, relaying though his spokesman John Wittman, “California may be able to stop their state employees, but they can’t stop all the businesses that are fleeing over taxation and regulation and relocating to Texas.”

Indeed. We especially welcome health care providers subjected to the new taxes.

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Sen. Mike Enzi on Wednesday said that Republicans aren’t going to listen to Democrats in their attempt to alter the new Health care bill due to the fact that Democrats didn’t listen to Republicans on Obamacare.

“We’re not trying to give the impression that we’re going to listen to them. They never listened to us,” he told the Washington Examiner.

What goes around comes around.

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The government-provided insurance system is going  broke, so the government taxes the people providing medical services. Yeah, that’s going to work.

Whom will they tax when the providers of medical services decide that they’d rather be practicing in, say, Texas?

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Mystery solved: No, President Trump doesn’t have recordings of former FBI director James Comey.

“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea … whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” Trump said in a pair of tweets Thursday.

Trump did not explain why he made the suggestion that he secretly recorded conversations with his former FBI director in the first place, which came in a May tweet shortly after he fired Comey.

He was yanking the chains of the DemLegHump Media. He does that now and again just to keep his hand in.

Pass the popcorn.

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I guess the whole Free Speech thing still has some friends in high places. Wonder how long it will last.

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A high-level employee at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2014 appeared to give leaders of liberal-leaning groups preferential treatment for posting and publicizing comments on the agency’s public forum for the net neutrality debate.

Details of the highly friendly support were first described by then-The Washington Post’s Nancy Scola, who referred to it as an “unusual collaboration” in an in-depth report on the FCC’s filing system. Those details became significantly more incriminating after Mike Wendy, director of the market-oriented nonprofit MediaFreedom, recently received once-classified pieces of electronic communications years after he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Wendy alleges that, along with other conservative organizations, they were not given the same effortful and enthusiastic treatment their liberal counterparts received.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Well, you don’t want to rush these things.

At least it didn’t take them as long as the telephone tax that was to finance the Spanish-American War.

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Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess introduced a bill in 2015 to place a $25 tax on every firearm sold and a 5-cent tax on every ammunition round sold.

Since the tax took effect, gun violence has risen and gun sales have decreased, leading to a much smaller payout than the city expected, Fox News Reports.

Amazing how that works.

Dave Workman believes the city should have predicted the rise in violence. “All these gun control laws affect the wrong people. The gang bangers don’t go in and buy ammunition at retail, at least not around here. It certainly hasn’t stopped them from getting their hands on firearms.”

Read it.

During a multi-year wild blueberry glut, government agencies have been using subsidies and grants to encourage Maine farmers to keep growing the crop. Too bad no one seems to want them. Maine has a glut of the berries, and now the governor of Maine hopes to help sell them off by spending $2.5 million on agricultural marketing.

Farmers have been growing wild blueberries in Maine since the mid 1800s. The berries perish quickly, so 99 percent of the crop is frozen, making it easier for a berry surplus to continue from previous years.

ZMan cuts to the chase.

Most of the issue that plague our modern societies stem from the unwillingness of our policy makers to consider the obvious solutions. In the 80’s, we had a bum crisis due to the states being forced to fling open the doors to their nervous hospitals. The former patients had no one willing to care for them and no ability to care for themselves, so they ended up on the streets as bums. The obvious answer was to put them back into the asylums, but that was ruled off limits and we still have a bum problem to this day.

…

The thing is, the Cloud People do not have a bum problem. They “solved” the “homeless” problem by agreeing to use their tax dollars to build flop houses in your neighborhood and they also make sure the bum services industry is located in your neighborhood. You will never see a homeless shelter next to a Starbucks. The cops in Cloud Country are adept at putting the stray bum on a bus and sending him to Dirt Country, where the shelters are located. After all, they are public servants and that is the humane thing to do.

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The highrise in London which recently burned, killing many was so devastating because it was recently clad with exterior insulation material to make it more energy-efficient.

The fire started in a lower-floor kitchen and rapidly spread up the entire building due to a “chimney effect” caused by the cladding.

Insulation keeps heat in. Basically, they converted the building into a giant kiln.

Jeremy Corbyn blames cuts to local council funding for the tragedy, but this cladding was part of a multimillion-dollar renovation.

About 30,000 other buildings around Britain have also been covered with this insulating cladding.

Read it.

Well, that’s what happens when your city is run by Democrats. Just ask the people in Chicago, and Detroit, and D.C., and ….

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Does the Environmental Protection Agency care more about its image than it does about the environment?

Its behavior in response to the massive 2015 Gold King Mine disaster in Colorado would suggest a very clear “yes.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is hiding its incredible recklessness in the affair by giving official accounts that are clearly contradicted by ample evidence in the government’s possession.

Government employees skate from things that would put businessmen in prison.

Read it.

The head of the Michigan health department, Nick Lyon, was charged Wednesday with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct regarding Flint’s lead-contaminated water.

…

Chief Medial Executive Eden Wells was also charged with obstruction of justice and lying to a police officer. Both are charged in connection with the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in the Flint area that led to 12 deaths after the city’s water supply was switched to the Flint River in April 2014.

…

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has so far charged over a dozen current or former government officials linked to the Flint water crisis.

Not often bureaucrats get tagged for their mistakes, even when those mistakes kill people.

Read it.

How about that government-provided health care! Don’t you wish we had a system like that in America?

Remember: When the government provides something ‘for free’, the demand for it can never be satisfied.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Senator Barrasso lays it out.

After seven years of Obamacare, it’s important to remember the many ways Obamacare has failed us—and why consumer-friendly, market-driven health care should remain the goal.

Here are five ways Obamacare’s track record shows why expanding government’s role in health care would be an even bigger disaster.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

The oldest commercial wind power facility in Canada has been shut down and faces demolition after 23 years of transforming brisk southern Alberta breezes into electricity — and its owner says building a replacement depends on the next moves of the provincial NDP government.

BLUF: Wind power sucks. It only exists when the government takes money from your pocket and gives it to their cronies in the ‘green’ industry, to use the latter term loosely.

TransAlta Corp. said Tuesday the blades on 57 turbines at its Cowley Ridge facility near Pincher Creek have already been halted and the towers are to be toppled and recycled for scrap metal this spring. The company inherited the now-obsolete facility, built between 1993 and 1994, as part of its $1.6-billion hostile takeover of Calgary-based Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. in 2009.

“TransAlta is very interested in repowering this site. Unfortunately, right now, it’s not economically feasible,” Wayne Oliver, operations supervisor for TransAlta’s wind operations in Pincher Creek and Fort Macleod, said in an interview.

And that tells you everything you need to know about ‘green’ energy.

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Government employees one again set records for incompetence.

County officials, however, had intially planned to tax distributors, who would pass along the cost in the final sale price of a sweetened beverage. Last Thursday cancelled that plan when the Cook County Revenue Department pointed out the sales price would still be subject to a sales tax.

A tax on a tax is illegal in Illinois.

Oops. (Well, so are guns, but that doesn’t stem gun violence among the underclass.)

When the county made the soda tax a line item at the point of sale it ran afoul of the Department of Agriculture, which advised it was against federal law to tax transactions paid for with benefits from its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) program.

The SNAP waiver exempts roughly 873,000 Cook County residents from the soda tax.

Oops again.

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Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial transactions of over $10,000 trigger bank reporting requirements. If there are multiple transactions of just under $10,000—by a business, for example—the IRS may become suspicious that there is nefarious activity occurring.

That suspicion can result in assets being seized from innocent Americans. As the House Committee on Ways and Means reported last year:

Current law allows the Federal government, including the IRS, to use civil procedures to seize assets the government believes are involved in illegal activity without ever having to prove that the owners of the assets actually were engaged in criminal activity.

Current law circumvents ancient concepts like due process and innocence until guilt is proven. The federal government then places the burden of reclaiming the assets on the citizen it targeted.

Read it.

President Trump has made some outstanding appointments (although one of the best, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recently offered to resign in the face of criticism from the president). Right now, my favorite Trump appointee is U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

In the tradition of our best U.N. ambassadors — Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick — Haley has been a powerful voice against U.N. hypocrisy. Most notably, she has denounced U.N. hypocrisy regarding Israel.

In addition to denouncing hypocrisy, Haley has moved to counter it. She has warned that the U.S. will pull out of the abomination known as the U.N. Human Rights Council unless it mends its way, in general, and alters its anti-Israel stance in particular. She has noted that the Council allows obvious human rights violators to remain members — e.g., Cuba and Venezuela — while chronically condemning Israel.

Say what you will about Trump, his appointments so far have been entirely satisfactory.

Read it.

And probably raaaaaaacist.

Participation in the food stamp program plunged by 85 percent in 13 counties in Alabama after officials required that recipients must work, look for work, or get approved job training, a state agency says.

In those 13 counties, enrollment in food stamps dropped over four months from 5,538 able-bodied adults without dependents to 831 such recipients.

Statewide, a total of 13,663 able-bodied adults without children or other dependents were enrolled in the food stamp program before the change implemented Jan. 1, according to the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the news site AL.com reported.

As of May 1, that statewide number had dropped to 7,483, the agency said.

Read it.

Journalists like to talk about “evergreen” topics, and is there anything more evergreen right now than the anarchy at Evergreen State College? The college is back up and running again, but not until after a student mob took it upon themselves to roam the campus with baseball bats smashing windows of science buildings, because science, with its dedication to objectivity and standards and all, is oppressive.

Read it.

Democrats never think that the rules, or even common courtesy, apply to them.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) brutally suspended Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) from speaking during the Senate Intel hearing when she refused to let assistant attorney general Rod Rosenstein answer any questions.

Rosenstein was trying to explain why special counsel Robert Mueller cannot be fired by the president when Harris cut him off.

“Sir, if I may, the greater assurance is not that you and I believe in Mueller’s integrity…it is that you would put in writing an indication based on your authority as the acting attorney general that he was full independence,” she said.

Rosenstein looked annoyed during her entire question, and started to respond, “He has the full independence as authorized by those regulations,” before Harris stopped him again.

Read it.

The Connecticut legislature unanimously passed a bill Tuesday increasing penalties for hate crimes, changing intimidation based on bigotry or bias from a misdemeanor to a felony.

The penalty increase also affects hate crimes against houses of worship and classifies a first-degree hate crime as anything inflicting “physical injury” based on bigotry or bias, lowered from the previous “serious injury” standard, the Wall Street Journal reports. Those convicted of hate crimes will face one to 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. Lawmakers said the changes are a response to the growing rate of hate crimes across the country.

Funny how ‘antifa’ thugs never get charged, or even arrested, for ‘hate crimes’ (as opposed to, I suppose, ‘love crimes).

Better learn to love Big Brother … or else.

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But, according to Democrats, illegal immigrants don’t get food stamps or any other form of welfare because they’re, you know, not eligible.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

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But why do public university budgets keep getting the ax? It’s not (at least not primarily) about the selfishness of wealthy taxpayers. The real answer is more inconvenient for the Democratic coalition: Namely, that exploding public pension costs are putting tremendous pressure on state budgets, and higher education is the softest political target for the belt-tightening needed to make up for it. So argue Daniel DiSalvo and Jeffrey Kucik, political science professors at the City University of New York, in a new Manhattan Institute report that they summarize at U.S. News.

…

So long as public sector unions have a powerful grip on state legislatures, and so long as they can extract inviolable pension commitments (and paper over the magnitude of these promises by assuming unrealistic rates of return) discretionary programs without guaranteed funding carveouts will continue to be squeezed. You won’t hear many progressive activists making this case, but the single best avenue for ensuring that public colleges are fully funded is to roll back collective bargaining rights for unionized public employees so that pension obligations can be put on a sustainable path.

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Connecticut’s wasteful spending and regular tax hikes have triggered an exodus from the state, with high-income earners fleeing to sunny, low-tax Florida. Tax revenues are falling, and even Democratic Governor Dan Malloy acknowledges that tax increases are no longer a solution to shrink the state’s runaway deficits. Nonetheless, state legislators plan to impose yet another new tax, and are deciding whether to install electronic tolls on Connecticut’s roads.

…

People vote with their feet, and this onslaught of taxation is causing Connecticut’s wealthiest citizens to run, not walk, from the state. Surveys show that more people are leaving Connecticut than arriving, and retirees make up 21% of this outbound migration.

Dem ol’ Blue State Blues: Catch a falling Dem and watch him pick your pocket, never gonna go away….

Read it.

The point is not only to provide another trough for the piggies, but also to accustom the American people to being treated like concentration-camp inmates.

Those worried about whether Trump is going to ‘send them to a camp’ ought to Fly the Friendly Skies and turn that nightmare into a reality; Trump has nothing to do with it.

Read it.

In 1982, the Twin Cities had the 35th-worst congestion in the nation. By 2016, it had grown to be the 17th-worst and amount of time the average commuter spent in traffic had quadrupled. If you are stuck in traffic in the Twin Cities, says this new report, don’t blame population growth; blame the Metropolitan Council, the region’s metropolitan planning organization.

The Metropolitan Council’s official attitude is, “We can’t build our way out of congestion, so we will provide alternatives to congestion” in the form of light rail, bike paths, and maybe a few high-occupancy/toll lanes. The council’s 2040 plan has $6.9 billion programmed for transit improvements, $700 million for bike paths, and $700 million for road improvements. That means 8 percent of the funds goes for the 90 percent of the people who drive to work while 83 percent goes for the 6 percent who take transit.

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As the only option for low to moderate income individuals to obtain health insurance in those states, There is a great deal of money to be made from individuals who purchase plans and the federal government in the form of Obamacare subsidy payments.

And government is all about monopoly.

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During the final year of the Obama administration, federal regulations drained more than $1.9 trillion (about $15,000 per family) out of Americans’ wallets, and the number of rules created by the federal government grew to an all-time high.

That’s the real Obama Legacy.

Read it.

Washington lawmakers plan to discuss legislation Thursday to privatize Evergreen State College, which dominated headlines recently for hosting an event segregating white and black students, as well as caving to protester demands.

Whaddaya know — looks like everyone in Washington State isn’t a knee-jerk proglodyte. Color me amazed.

Republican State Rep. Matt Manweller is leading the effort to strip Evergreen State of $24 million in state appropriations after protests rocked the Olympia, Washington campus in late May, according to Campus Reform.

Today’s lesson is: Actions have consequences, and stupid actions have unpleasant consequences. Daddy might even take your Xbox away.

“[Evergreen State students and faculty] are trying to re-institute a Jim Crow approach to education that Americans rejected over 50 years ago,” said the Republican state representative to Campus Reform. “We must never go back to a segregated society—whether it be drinking fountains, buses, or school buildings.”

Tell that to the BlackLivesMatter crowd; they don’t appear to believe it.

“The administration bears direct responsibility for this situation,” continued the representative to Campus Reform. “They hired the professors who have elevated the pseudo-science of ‘social justice’ to a religious movement. Now all dissent is crushed by threats of violence or actual violence.”

That flapping sound you hear is chickens coming home to roost. Feel the Bern.

Representatives will introduce the bill to deprive Evergreen State of state funding alongside a letter directed at Washington state’s Human Rights Commission to investigate possible civil rights infractions at Evergreen.

Oh, good luck with that. Really. (While you’re wishing, wish for a pony.)

Read it.

A federal aid program President Donald Trump proposed cutting is under investigation for giving out nearly $1 billion in loans to several nearly bankrupt solar companies, according to a Reuters report published Tuesday.

The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID OIG) is auditing $890 million of loans approved by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a program used to advance loans to overseas business ventures.

This is the sort of proglodyte virtue-signaling at taxpayer expense that the Obama administration specialized in.

USAID OIG initially began its audit in 2016 but kept it under wraps. The probe is centered on OPIC’s decision to fund five Chilean solar farms and a hydroelectric project in 2013 and 2014 – many of the loans are unlikely to be repaid, according to the report.

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The California Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $400 billion universal health care bill Thursday with no plan to pay for it.

The essence of any Democrat agenda. If they think people are leaving the state now, wait until this kicks in.

Oh, people will be moving in, of course — poor people and illegal immigrants. Good luck with that.

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Wastewater treatment plants operate on the same principle that drove Rachel Carson to organize the effort that led to EPA’s creation. In Silent Spring, she documented how DDT and other water insoluble chemicals are biomagnified up the food chain as they concentrate in the body fat of birds and other animals. Wastewater treatment plants remove trace amounts of these pollutants by concentrating them in the animal fats contained in sewage sludges, which collect in settling tanks.

The question was what to do with sewage sludge. It contains, at millions of times higher concentrations, all of the pollutants EPA strictly regulates in air and water. Since Congress passed Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, but no Clean Soil Act, EPA simply deregulated virtually all pollutants in sewage sludge and encouraged municipalities to reduce odors with lime and apply treated sewage sludges to any available land, from farms and forests to school playgrounds.

EPA’s only challenge was to explain how trace amounts of petrochemicals and other industrial wastes it strictly regulates in air and water become harmless when mixed with sewage sludge at far higher concentrations, and tons per acre of it are spread on land where animals graze and children play. The answer EPA’s Office of Water came up with was to fund research projects at land grant universities across the United States to “support the science and substance” of its 503 sludge rule, and “overcome misinformation spread by opponents.”

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Chicago saw approximately 52 people shot during Memorial Day weekend, despite a heavier police presence throughout the city.

Thank God for those strict gun control laws in Chicago. Otherwise the place would look like Texas.

Oddly enough, they don’t say how many of these victims were black, since (after all) Black Lives Matter.

Read it.

Unfortunately, it’s nothing that a normal person would care about.

I, however, am in hog heaven.

Read it.

One of my recent articles predicted that the Fish & Wildlife Service’s endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee would lead to its being used to delay or block construction projects and pesticide use on hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland. The abuses have already begun.