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Once you accept the government’s coin, you must dance to the government’s tune.

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Instead, the Department of Education announced Thursday that income would be listed “from a dependent student’s legal parents regardless of the parents’ marital status or gender, if those parents live together.” Instead of “father,” the societally-sensitive term “Parent 1” will be used. And for “mother,” the term will be “Parent 2.”

After all, these archaic categories are just so fifteen minutes ago.

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I’ll just bet they do.

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Which will only encourage them to spend more. As Maggie Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

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So when the owners needed a bartender last year, they sought someone who knew the territory. “Energetic and enthusiastic men and women with an appreciation of craft beer, good food, whisky and real football (a k a soccer),” the Craigslist ad read in part. “Being British definitely works in your favor.”

The résumés trickled in. One applicant, however, was not really looking for a job. She already had one: trolling the classifieds for the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Soon, Longbow received a legal notice. The bar, it said, had violated discrimination law “by giving a preference to employment applicants based on their national origin.”

The commission offered to settle the matter for $2,500.

How generous. Nice to know that justice in New York can be bought.

 Justin Brannan, spokesman for the local city councilman, Vincent J. Gentile, had some choice words for the commission’s efforts, including “quintessential ‘letter of the law,’ versus ‘spirit of the law’ ” and “predatory ‘gotcha’ enforcement” that he said belied the city’s pro-small-business cant. “They’re not enforcing these laws to protect the public,” said Mr. Brannan, who is also president of a club, the Bay Ridge Democrats, that has held events at Longbow. “They’re enforcing them to generate revenue.”

Oh, ya think? (And to look good in front of their bosses.)

 On Thursday, Ms. Colbert said, she got a call from a commission official who warned that the fine could rise to $7,500 if she went to trial before an administrative law judge. “He also had the audacity to tell me that according to my requirements, I was not qualified to work in my own pub,” she added.

The official, Ms. Colbert said, urged her to pay the fine before the date of a coming “conciliation meeting.” The meeting is to be scheduled for next month, she said.

In other words, pay us now or pay us more later. Stand up for your rights and common sense, and the price goes up.

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This is huge, and stunning, even for critics of Medicaid: A randomized-controlled study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by a group of the nation’s top health policy scholars has found that Medicaid has no measurable effect on any of the objectively measured physical health outcomes the study examined.

In its second-year results, the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which randomly selected 10,000 people in Oregon to get Medicaid (only about 6,300 actually got the benefit), and then compared them with a randomly selected control group, found that those who got Medicaid did not on average have healthier blood pressure, cholesterol levels, or diabetic blood pressure control than those who did not get Medicaid. Those with Medicaid did see some reduction in out of pocket health expenses. They were also less likely to be diagnosed with depression.

The Medicaid recipients also ended up utilizing a lot more health care—care that has to be paid for—than those who didn’t get coverage. But they didn’t use the emergency room any less than the control group.

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Problems bedevil the white elephant project. The High-Speed Rail Authority needs to buy land in order to build the railroad, but it has received no contractual authority to build from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company, which owns a freight line that occupies the space for the new bullet train. Federal grants are contingent on the project having contracts that guarantee the possibility of building. At the same time, the feds are trying to assert authority over the project via the Surface Transportation Board.

Meanwhile, it now turns out that the California Senate Transportation Committee is investigating the bidding process behind the first segment of the railroad. The review process for bidding was changed to allow bidders who had not met technical specs. The winning bid came from a firm with the lowest technical score in the field. The company that won the bid, Tutor Perini Corp., has done work with the state for years. The losers, it has been suggested, will be forced to keep quiet in order to receive reimbursement for their bidding costs.

That’s not the only problem with the bidding process. The High-Speed Rail Authority, behind closed doors, authorized a process that would require bidders to consent to a massive union giveaway in order to be considered. The board did not vote on the relevant Project Labor Agreement, and the Federal Railroad Administration may not have approved it. As the Modesto Bee points out, “A cynic would suggest that the presence of the head of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California on the HSR board might have encouraged the project labor agreement. Nevertheless, state union leaders knew how the bread was buttered. Union-affiliated organizations comprised seven of the top 10 donors, including the top five, to pass Proposition 1A in 2008.”

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

William A. Jacobson takes a look at ‘high speed’ rail.

Look at the travel time scale.  First it assumes the train will move at 220 mph — quite a feat.  If you ever have taken the Acela train in the Northeast Corridor you know that this is pie in the sky.  Plus, even at that unobtainable speed, the trip from New York to L.A. would take almost a day of actual travel time — as opposed to a few hours on a plane.  Good luck selling those tickets.

And cost?  We have covered the massive cost overruns and time delays just to build a high speed rail from L.A. to San Francisco.  Imagine that on a national scale.

It’s easy to poke fun at low information voters.  Until you realize how much they cost.

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Nothing to see here. Move along, move along….

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Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the health policy and management school at Emory University, estimates that 95 percent of spending in Medicare goes to patients with one or more chronic conditions — with enrollees suffering five or more chronic conditions accounting for 78 percent of its spending. “This is the Willie Sutton rule,” he says. “If 80 percent of the spending is going to patients with five or more conditions, that’s where our health-care system needs to go.”

Health Quality Partners is all about going there. The program enrolls Medicare patients with at least one chronic illness and one hospitalization in the past year. It then sends a trained nurse to see them every week, or every month, whether they’re healthy or sick. It sounds simple and, in a way, it is. But simple things can be revolutionary.

Most care-management systems rely on nurses sitting in call centers, checking up on patients over the phone. That model has mostly been a failure. And while many health systems send a nurse regularly in the weeks or months after a serious hospitalization, few send one regularly to even seemingly healthy patients. This a radical redefinition of the health-care system’s role in the lives of the elderly. It redefines being old and chronically ill as a condition requiring professional medical management.

Health Quality Partners’ results have been extraordinary. According to an independent analysis by the consulting firm Mathematica, HQP has reduced hospitalizations by 33 percent and cut Medicare costs by 22 percent.

Others in the profession have taken notice. “It’s like they’ve discovered the fountain of youth in Doylestown, Pa.,” marvels Jeffrey Brenner, founder of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers.

Now Medicare is thinking of shutting it off.

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A government watchdog group has discovered that the United States government is advising Spanish-speaking residents that they need not declare their immigration status to qualify for food stamps.

A statement on the flyer—emphasized in bold and underlined—reads, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

So come on down! ‘It’s free! Just swipe your EBT!’

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Aren’t you glad the government is on your side? Imagine what life would be like if it were not.

Hm, no, you’re right, I don’t see much difference, either….

Read it.

Jihad? What’s that?

As U.S. service members risk their lives to combat violent jihadists abroad, military leaders, both uniformed and civilian, capitulate to stealth jihadists at home. By bending to Islamists’ appeals for religious sensitivity, these leaders ignore the most crucial lesson of the Fort Hood massacre: Political correctness can kill.

Read  it.

What went wrong? Plenty. The stimulus was rushed to passage based on economic assumptions that remain hotly contested. Its implementation was marred by politics, logistics, and red tape. And the aid it directed toward the country’s least well off may have undermined the very recovery it was designed to hasten. This is what happens when politicians insist that something big must be done, even if they’re not sure what that something should be.

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“It kind of reminds me of welfare,” said disabled former truck driver James Ottesen. Ottesen told the Wall Street Journal he would “like to get re-educated to do something” because “my body is broke but my mind is not.” Still, says Ottesen, he’s reluctant to leave the disability program because it is like “a blanket covering you, and to walk out from it… at my age, it’s a little intimidating.”

Disability enrollments have exploded under President Barack Obama. Since 2009, 5.9 million people have been added to the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, a 23% jump over the last five years. During that same period, just 2.5 million new jobs were created.

Read it.

The Obama administration is proudly shattering welfare records with an astonishing number of people collecting public benefits long term, especially food stamps.

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IN 2010 a panel created by the White House estimated that American taxpayers spend 7.6 billion hours and some $140 billion a year keeping the IRS off their backs. According to the Washington Post over 80% of taxpayers use software or pay someone to file their taxes. The national taxpayer advocate, a sort-of in-house IRS watchdog, once said, “If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States.” But of course, it is an industry.

It is an industry made up of accountants and companies like H&R Block and Intuit, which makes the TurboTax software used by many Americans. And it is an industry that, according to ProPublica, has worked hard to keep the IRS from preparing your tax returns for you for free. Intuit, for example, has spent millions lobbying the federal government, opposing bills that would allow the IRS to send you pre-filled-in returns (the agency already has most of your relevant information) and supporting bills that would ban the practice.

Nick Gillespie lays out some inconvenient truth.

Over at Investor’s Business, the always-interesting John Merline sends word of a troubling development when it comes to Obamacare: The very people it was supposed to help the most – the uninsured – don’t seem to want the damned thing.

The ungrateful swine.

Read it.

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

The USDA stated, “In 2011, program costs totaled $75.7 billion. Using the most recent data on trafficking available, USDA estimated that trafficking would be 1 percent of $75 billion, or approximately $750 million.”

But in the years 2006-2008, the USDA stated, “Trafficking diverted an estimated $330 million annually from SNAP benefits – or about one cent of each SNAP dollar – between 2006 and 2008. About 8.2 percent of all stores trafficked.”

After the free Obama Phone, I guess the free Obama Food is not a big stretch.

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In order for her Just Cupcakes LLC to remain profitable in the face of higher expected labor costs, Ms. Hesseltine believes the customer-ordering process “would have to be more automated” at the Virginia Beach, Va., chain, which has two strip-mall locations as well as a food van. Thus, she could eliminate the 10 workers who currently ask customers what they would like to eat.

Come to think of it, I have yet to see an iPad with a tattoo or a pierced eyebrow.

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Sometimes it is nice to belong to an oppressed minority.

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The report suggests that the much-touted Welfare to Work policies of the 1990s that appeared to successfully move welfare recipients off the public dole may have been a mirage. States have figured out that shifting people from welfare to disability frees up substantial funds, as states have to pay the costs of welfare, but the federal government picks up the tab for disability.

Read it.

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

They are, however, among the dependent class that can be counted on to vote for the Santa Clause Party (Democrats). Funny how that works.

Read it.

Grade-schoolers may want to stock up on Rice Krispies, Fruit Roll-Ups, Doritos, Welch’s Fruit Snacks and Smartfood white-cheddar popcorn. Those products are among scores of popular food items that may no longer be sold at schools under newly proposed federal regulations.

You may ask: What business is it of the Federal government what food items are sold at schools? That’s a very good question.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month released draft rules, spelling out what kinds of foods may or may not be purchased on school grounds under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

Of course! The way to Hunger-Free Kids is to ban them from eating certain types of food. Hmm … not sure I follow that one….

Signed by President Barack Obama, the law aims to reduce childhood obesity. It imposes healthier food standards on schools participating in the federally subsidized breakfast and lunch programs administered by the USDA, covering most of the public education system.

Ah. They take government money for ‘subsidized breakfast and lunch programs’, so they dance to the government’s tune.

The agency laid out a complex set of criteria for determining what foods can be sold.  (It also estimated the number of extra man-hours a year that local and state administrators nationwide would have to spend on compliance:  926,935 hours or more than 100 years.)

Well, of course. It’s the government: Paperwork-R-Us. Sounds like yet another reason to keep your kids away from government schools.

A person claiming to be a teacher from North Carolina took a dimmer view, likening the regulations to “Soviet Russia.”

Ya think?

Read it.

The same week that President Obama’s administration announced that due to sequestration, White House tours would be cancelled, sources at the White House announced that it would be hosting megastars Adele and Beyonce at Michelle’s 50th birthday party next year. “America’s First Lady will be holding a huge celebrity-packed party for her birthday at the White House next year and, as she adores Adele and Beyonce, she has asked them both to sing,” the source told the UK Daily Mail. The source did say that “The Obamas will pay Adele’s expenses as it’s a private party, not a State one.”

But will they pay all the expenses of the party? Security arrangements? Food? Cleanup? White House parties are expensive affairs.

Reminds me of a story — oh, yes:

And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich [man] had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor [man] had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him. — 2 Samuel 12:1-5

Obama and the Democrats sittin’ in a tree — A.S.S.H.O.L.E….

Read it.

In the next few days, the Obama Administration will cancel self-guided tours of the White House. The cancellation comes in the wake of the White House having to trim around $600,000 from its annual budget. If anyone on the West Coast was planning a trip to DC next week, perhaps they can instead snag a seat at one of two wine tastings, sponsored by the Agriculture Department. Spending cuts for thee, but not for me is the Obama Administration’s approach to the sequester.

Next week, the USDA is sponsoring a California Small Farm Conference, which will featuring tasting receptions of regional vineyards and breweries. Next month, the agency is sponsoring the Priester National Extension Health Conference in Oregon. That event will also feature a wine tasting from local vineyards.

We can still spend money on frivolous shit, so long as it only benefits government employees and not the public. Don’t want to lose track of our priorities, after all.

Read it.

As the federal budget goes off the rails, Joe Biden’s getting back on — with Amtrak.

The looming sequester is forcing the veep to once again take the train — as opposed to military aircraft — to his weekend trips home to Delaware.

Poor baby.

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Because the Obama administration classified the shootings, which ended with 13 people dead and 32 others wounded, as workplace violence, those who survived have not receive Purple Hearts and medical benefits normally extended to people wounded in action.

Why, sure — everybody Going Postal in the workplace is of Arabic descent and shouts ‘Allahu Akbar!’ when they’re shooting up the local grocery store. Nothing to see here, move along, move along….

Read it.

The U.S. government spent about $2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven’t proved they are eligible to receive them.

And why should they? It’s the Free Obama Phone!

The Lifeline program—begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren’t cut off from jobs, families and emergency services—is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless-phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service.

Isn’t that what government is all about? Taking money from wage-earners and giving it to freeloaders?

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If you’re already feeling nostalgia over the recent ending of National School Choice Week, take heart – there’s always a new horror to uncover connected to the operations of our public education system. Auditors have discovered that some of California’s largest school districts are skimming money meant to pay for meals for low-income students and spending it elsewhere.

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

The state Senate report concluded that the eight California school districts examined dramatically understaffed school cafeterias and tended to serve processed foods rather than more expensive fresh foods. Consequently, they were able to hoard large sums of federal and state student meal money that they then diverted to illegal uses, the report said.

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And I’d say more than half are underqualified for their jobs.

Vedder, whose study is based on 2010 Labor Department data, says the problem is the stock of college graduates in the workforce (41.7 million) in 2010 was larger than the number of jobs requiring a college degree (28.6 million).

And yet the government keeps pushing people into college — at taxpayer expense. One of the pervasive flaws in modern public policy is taxpayer-funded oversupply of politically fashionable goods, such as college graduates, ‘family’ farmers, school administrators, and (dare I say it?) government employees.

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No good deed goes unpunished in New York: the state has abruptly cut off a contract with the independent auditor who found that the state had been wasting federal money meant to be spent on Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts.

Thomas Sadowski, the fired consultant, told the Times Union that he was escorted out of the building when he visited the New York Office of Emergency Management shortly after he filed his report on November 17.

The state hired Sadowski for his extensive experience in emergency procurement management with the federal government. The certified public accountant also did similar work for 10 years at the U.S. Department of Interior’s Inspector General’s office. Sadowski also trained the U.S. Forest Service, Alaska Fire Service, National Interagency Fire Center, Colorado Wildfire Academy, and other government agencies.

“I didn’t believe I did anything to be escorted off the premises,” Sadowski told the Times Union. “I wasn’t trying to get back at anybody or get anybody in trouble.” But Sadowski said he believed he was fired for finding the waste. “I was relieved of my duties because I identified these problems,” he said.

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

Read it.

President Obama has signed a law that will give himself and all presidents Secret Service protection for life, reversing a law passed during the Clinton administration that gave former presidents a security detail for only 10 years after leaving office.

What does he know that you don’t, hmmm?

Read it.

The British regular forces are to receive their first new pistol since World War II, as the long-serving Browning 9mm sidearm is replaced by a new weapon from the well-known Austrian firm Glock.

At that, they’re still ahead of the American armed forces, which has used the 9mm Biretta M9 since 1980. There are plans afoot to pick a newer standard pistol — in fiscal year 2013-14 … if there are funds available to pay for the study.

The Glock has triple safety mechanisms which mean that its firing pin will not move forward unless the trigger is back, the trigger cannot be moved back unless a finger is pressing on its front and the weapon will not fire if dropped. The weapon’s hammer is internal, and as such cannot snag on clothing or be bumped inadvertently into a different position.

Glocks have been available commercially since 1982.

One of the most amusing aspects of all of these ‘CIA plot to do something nefarious’ movies (yeah, Jason Bourne, I’m lookin’ at YOU) that Hollywood keeps cranking out is the firm belief on the part of moviemakers  that government agencies not only have the latest and greatest toys to play with, but even better toys than civilians are allowed to have. Any government employee (and military service members are government employees) know that this is ludicrous nonsense — rare is the government organization that gets equipment that is only ten years behind what is available to civilians, much less better than.

Oh, ya think?

A lawsuit recently filed in the United States Court of Claims may shed further light on the corruption of the Obama administration’s “green energy” programs. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of XP Vehicles, Inc. and Limnia, Inc., companies that competed for Department of Energy loans under a Congressionally-authorized program. The owners of XP eventually realized that there was no real competition, and that the whole Department of Energy program was a scam intended to funnel money to Obama and Democratic Party campaign contributors and political allies. They allege in addition that DOE misappropriated proprietary technology that they submitted in connection with their loan applications, and gave that technology to Obama administration cronies.

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

Read it.

The federal government has emerged as one of the most potent factors driving income inequality in the United States – especially in the nation’s capital.

The capital is totally under the control of the Federal government. If they can’t get D.C. right, why believe that they can get anything else right?

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In a classic tale illustrating the “law of unintended consequences,” a new report concludes that President Barack Obama’s $3 billion “Cash for Clunkers” taxpayer-funded boondoggle artificially drove car prices up, not down, and unleashed an “environmental nightmare” through shredding, not recycling, many of the 690,000 cars people traded in for an up to $4,500 car credit.

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

Read it.

In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.

The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.

That’s because the Crust pay themselves first, and very well indeed. They don’t really care what happens to the poor; that’s just rhetoric to fool the Great Unwashed into keeping them in power with ‘low-information’ voting.

The federal government does redistribute wealth down to struggling Americans. But in the years since President Lyndon Johnson took aim at poverty in his first State of the Union address, there has been an increasingly strong crosscurrent: The government is redistributing wealth up, too – especially in the nation’s capital.

The beneficiaries are not the billionaire financiers and celebrities who have come to personify income inequality in the 21st century. Yet the Washington elite are just as much part of the trend, having influenced laws and decisions that alter the entire country’s distribution of income.

Government doesn’t alleviate poverty — to the extent that there is a bureaucracy dedicated to alleviating poverty, they will strive to preserve poverty in order to safeguard their own jobs and perks.

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It’s extremely hard to lose a government job, even when your poor performance results in the deaths of other Americans under your responsibility. Despite claims that heads were rolling after a report identified egregious security lapses in Benghazi, it appears the individuals responsible are merely being reassigned to new jobs.

The Crust takes care of its own. As John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, always says: ‘GET A GOVERNMENT JOB!’

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Are government employees overpaid? A six-part Bloomberg report answers that question with a resounding “Yes.” It also singles out one state as the biggest spender by far: California. This isn’t a case of a handful of isolated incidents. The team of Bloomberg reporters found a pattern of fiscal irresponsibility characterized by:

• Lack of control in overtime pay and unused vacation time payouts;

• Lack of coordination among state agencies which in one instance launched a costly salary bidding war for qualified personnel; and

• Compensation for pension fund managers that bears little relation to performance.

Unions are, by their nature, criminal organizations — the only tool in their toolbox is extortion. ‘Nice business you got here. Pity if something happened to it.’

Combine that with the natural tendency of government workers to squeeze the maximum amount of money out of the minimum amount of work (which miminum is often zer0), this result comes as no surprise.

Read it.

Hint: No. The purpose of government, as Jerry Pournelle never tires of saying, is to hire and pay government workers. Any money that eventually survives to reach it’s intended uses is an anomaly that they seek constantly to eliminate.

Read  it.

A newly-released report from the conservative Americans for Limited Government (ALG), obtained by Breitbart News, found that taxpayers are footing a $4.8 million bill for the salaries of 35 union officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The ALG report used documents the group obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showing that taxpayers are actually paying these 35 union officials’ salaries. Only three of them make less than $100,000 per year, and the average taxpayer-funded union boss salary is $138,175 per year.

Eight of the union bosses on the taxpayer payroll at the Department of Transportation make more than $170,000, too.

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The Senate Budget Committee reports that total spending on means-tested federal programs, if divided by the number of households living below the official poverty line, works out to $168 per day. How much is that? Well, the average American household lives on $137 per day.

That’s $21 an hour. For doing nothing. I should have such a job….

Read it.

After all, priorities are priorities.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Our first exposure to the folks from FEMA was a few days after Hurricane Sandy, which devastated our neighborhood on Long Island Sound. A platoon of FEMA agents, readily identifiable by their official-looking jackets with “FEMA” emblazoned on the back, spread out across the neighborhood offering the distraught residents oodles of sympathy—oodles—and plenty of forms to fill out and web sites to visit.

…

Yesterday I spoke to, let’s see, eight, maybe nine different FEMA agents. Each one was there to help. Each was polite, sympathetic. Oodles of sympathy. Almost all had a form for me to fill out, a web site to visit. Each of the long, long line of people who came to see these agents went away with forms to fill out, web sites to visit.

…

You then talked to one nice person after the next. There was this form, and that form, and a web site you could visit, and handbook you could read. At one stop I was given, for free!, a longish pamphlet explaining what I could do to make my property less liable to flood damage: “Mitigation Ideas For Reducing Flood Loss” it said on its cover. After a flood, it told me, a house needs to be dried out and cleaned. “Move things you want to save to a safe dry place.” Noted. “The longer they sit in water, the more damaged they become.” I was glad to know that.

Read it.

After all, what could be more fair than sticking America’s taxpayers with the tab for cleaning up New York?

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

As New Jersey residents without heat try to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy, new federal energy standards regarding furnaces will force them to pay thousands of dollars more to buy furnaces that are compliant.

The new rules require those purchasing furnaces after May 1 must buy “energy-efficient natural gas furnaces,” which will cost residents in New Jersey thousands of dollars; in addition to the cost of the furnace, it “must be vented directly to an outside wall rather than through the chimney, which can increase installation costs dramatically,” according to home contractors.

And the Blue States discover that the chickens do eventually come home to roost.

Read it.

In America today, an expanding network of surveillance cameras tracks our bank deposits, our shopping expeditions, and our workplace trysts in the supply closet. When we venture online, hundreds of companies diligently note the websites we consume, the files we download, and the comments we make. Our smartphones are even worse stool pigeons than our computers, constantly keeping tabs on our precise geographic coordinates. If you grow weary of such oppressive attention, if you long for a little Waldenesque solitude outside the crosshairs of our panoptic culture, there is still one place you can go to get away from it all: the borderlands of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Read it.

Only one of 479 DHS employees surveyed by the inspector general’s office was actually able to use the common channel, according to the report. Most of those surveyed—72 percent—didn’t even know the common channel existed. Another 25 percent knew the channel existed but weren’t able to find it; 3 percent were able to find an older common channel, but not the current one.

The investigators also found that more than half of the radios did not have the settings for the common channel programmed into them. Only 20 percent of radios tested had all the correct settings.

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

Of course, as we all know, the real problem is that taxes are too low.