Largest U.S. banks face $120 billion shortfall under new rule

Six big U.S. banks need to raise an additional $120 billion, most likely in long-term debt, under a rule proposed on Friday by the Federal Reserve. The requirements are aimed at ensuring that some of the biggest and most interconnected banks, which include Goldman Sachs Group Inc, (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co, (JPM.N), and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), can better withstand another crisis by turning some of their debt, particularly debt issued by their holding companies, into equity without disrupting markets or requiring a government bailout.

Read more at Reuters
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

More fraudulent science from EPA

The Obama Environmental Protection Agency recently slashed the maximum allowable sulfur content in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 ppm. The agency claims its new “Tier 3” rule will bring $7 billion to $19 billion in annual health benefits by 2030. “These standards are a win for public health, a win for our environment and a win for our pocketbooks,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insists. But according to Environ International the finalized Tier 3 gasoline sulfur rules will bring bogus benefits at a high health and welfare price.

"... regardless of their ultimate cost, the rules will reduce monthly ozone levels by just 1.2 parts per billion during rush hour, says Environ. That’s equivalent to 12 cents out of $100 million or 1.2 seconds out of 32,000 years. These minuscule improvements could not even have been measured by equipment existing a couple decades ago. Their contribution to improved human health will be essentially zero."

Read more at Joe For America Read More......

We are only as free as the government says we are

Would the US government let Jesus cure cancer? (Hat tip: Kristie H.)
In the 1990s, I watched a federal trial in a Los Angeles courtroom. The defendant was charged with selling medical drugs without a license to practice medicine. The defendant was prepared to argue that a) the substance he was selling was naturally produced in the body and b) it was effective. The prosecution moved to exclude such testimony, on the grounds that it was irrelevant. The judge agreed. Therefore, the trial was nasty, brutish, and short. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to prison for several years. This is how the federal bureaucracy operates. “Do you have a government-issued license to heal? No? You’re a criminal.” ✧ I believe that if Jesus of Nazareth were walking the Earth today, in the United States, he would be arrested on the same grounds. This would be particularly so if he were curing cancer. Jesus wouldn’t be granted a license. No license? Guilty. More importantly, the trillion-dollar cancer industry survives and makes its money by treating cancer, so curing it would be a major threat.

Imagine this extreme case: in a stadium packed with 50,000 people who have been diagnosed with cancer, Jesus of Nazareth waves his hand and cures all of them in a few seconds. Read more at Activist Post...

Feds forced churches to get baptism permits
For as far back as anyone can remember, Missouri Baptists have gathered on river banks for Sunday afternoon baptisms. ✧ The preacher leads the new believers into the water, draped in white robes as a choir sings, “Shall We Gather at the River.” ✧ It’s the way it’s been done for generations – baptizing in creeks, lakes, and rivers “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” ✧ But now the long-cherished tradition of “taking the plunge” has been drawn into a controversy with the federal government. Read more at Todd's American Dispatch...

Really? --bc Read More......

Obama's Second Term Transformation Plans

By Steve McCann - The most significant accomplishment of Obama's first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency. Read more at American Thinker...

(Hat tip: Carolyn Webb and others)  Read More......

Riparian Issue: Albany poised to act on controversial Goal 5 rules

9/25/2011 - The Albany City Council is poised to act on new land use regulations potentially affecting an estimated 1,000 property owners, but how much depends on the individual case. ✧ The city staff says the changes are intended to protect natural resources such as fish-bearing streams and streamside habitat, along with significant wetlands. Read more at the Democrat Herald... Read More......

WSJ: EPA Again Delays Greenhouse-Gas Rule

9/15/2011 - WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency is again delaying a plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, saying it needs more time to propose the rule. ✧ The move comes amid intense pushback from business groups and Republican lawmakers who complain a recent slate of EPA proposals are chilling business investment and hindering the economic recovery. Late last month, the White House forced the EPA to abandon an air-pollution rule that business groups said would kill millions of jobs. ✧ An EPA official said the agency is committed to the rule, which it is legally required to propose. "We are working on a schedule and will release it as soon as possible," the official said. "This is EPA's decision. It's a complex rule. We just needed more time." Read more at the Wall Street Journal... Read More......

End of the Line

Why the EPA Train Wreck Must be Stopped - Behind the scenes, while Washington and the United States focus on the debt crisis, President Obama’s EPA has been quietly implementing one of the most radical and costly policies of his administration. Ever since the failure of cap-and-trade, the administration has turned to the EPA to carry out its radical environmental agenda. Immediately after the 2010 election Obama was quoted saying “Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way.” The EPA is in the process of completing and finalizing 30 major regulations and 170 major policy rules that would impose hundreds of billions of dollars of compliance costs on the economy, killing jobs and threatening the economic recovery. Because of the disastrous affects that the EPA’s new regulations will have on the already struggling economy, many have taken to calling the administration’s aggressive stance the “EPA train wreck.”

Read more at Freedom Works Read More......

Stossel: Attack on Freedom

TOWNHALL by John Stossel - Something's happened to America, and it isn't good. It's become easier to get into trouble. We've become a nation of a million rules. Not the kind of bottom-up rules that people generate through voluntary associations. Those are fine. I mean imposed, top-down rules formed in the brains of meddling bureaucrats who think they know better than we how to manage our lives. ∴ Cross them, and we are in trouble. Read more at Townhall... Read More......

Sen. Jim DeMint takes on Sen. Jeff Merkley over HC bill provision

CNSNews.com, 1/5/2010 - Senate Health-Care Bill Provision Would Make it Impossible for Future Congresses to Repeal Parts of Bill: A provision deep within the Senate’s 2,000-page health-care overhaul bill would make it impossible, once approved, for the legislation to be repealed or changed by future Congresses -- a provision that a Senate Republican and a conservative analyst say is unconstitutional.

On page 1,020, the bill states: “It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”

The provision appears in Section 3403 of the Senate bill, which creates an Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB). The objective of the board would be to “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending,” which has ballooned in recent decades. The IMAB would recommend changes to the Medicare program to limit its spending growth -- recommendations that would automatically go into effect unless Congress votes to block them. Read more for the DeMint (R-SC)-Merkley (D-OR) exchange...

Notes: 1) IMAB is what Sarah Palin referred to as "Death Panels." Kudos to Sen. DeMint. 2) Sen. Merkley will hold a town hall meeting on Jan. 15. Please see Events Calendar --bc Read More......