Regulations Cost $108 Billion Each Year

Posted on June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Hey, Obama was are the cost benefits and where is this a part of law? Further, who is watching this and who is challenging the postings? Are they really legal in the first place?

Revealed: President Obama’s 229 Major Regulations Cost $108 Billion Each Year

NationalInterest: The Obama administration is responsible for thousands of new regulations—including a historic number of major regulations. As the costs of these regulations add up, they place more of a burden on economic freedom in America.

In 2015, 43 new major regulations went into effect, increasing regulatory costs by more than $22 billion, according to the latest “Red Tape Rising” study from The Heritage Foundation.

Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, 229 new major regulations have increased regulatory burdens by $108 billion annually. But it doesn’t stop there. As the administration tries to push its agenda before the end of Obama’s term, 144 more major regulations are already in the works.

Among the biggest culprits are the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Energy. Although Congress funds these bureaucratic agencies, the rules they impose do not typically need congressional approval. Some independent agencies, like the Federal Communication Commission, are not even required to perform analyses to determine if their regulations will be cost-effective.

Not only do regulations cost American families and businesses more money, they have a damaging effect on economic freedom.

The Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by The Heritage Foundation, shows a decrease in economic freedom in the United States for eight of the last nine years. To make matters worse, since 2010, the U.S. has been stuck in the “mostly free” category, due in large part to falling scores related to business and labor regulation. In just one year, U.S. scores for business freedom and labor freedom have dropped by 4.1 points and 7.1 points, respectively.

Heritage Foundation researchers James Gattuso and Diane Katz have argued that “the unparalleled increase in regulatory burden spells a decline in economic freedom and individual liberty.”

All that red tape is piling up and Congress needs to take immediate action to prevent further growth in the regulatory burden and to restore economic freedom in the U.S.

**** Additional information for context:

Regulatory Federal Agencies
Agencies, like the FDA, EPA, OSHA and at least 50 others, are called “regulatory” agencies, because they are empowered to create and enforce rules – regulations – that carry the full force of a law. Individuals, businesses, and private and public organizations can be fined, sanctioned, forced to close, and even jailed for violating federal regulations.

The oldest Federal regulatory agency still in existence is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, established in 1863 to charter and regulate national banks.

The Federal Rulemaking Process
The process of creating and enacting federal regulations is generally referred to as the “rulemaking” process.

First, Congress passes a law designed to address a social or economic need or problem. The appropriate regulatory agency then creates regulations necessary to implement the law. For example, the Food and Drug Administration creates its regulations under the authority of the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act, the Controlled Substances Act and several other acts created by Congress over the years. Acts such as these are known as “enabling legislation,” because the literally enable the regulatory agencies to create the regulations required to administer enforce them.

The “Rules” of Rulemaking
Regulatory agencies create regulations according to rules and processes defined by another law known as the Administration Procedure Act (APA).

The APA defines a “rule” or “regulation” as…

“[T]he whole or a part of an agency statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of an agency.

The APA defines “rulemaking” as…

“[A]gency action which regulates the future conduct of either groups of persons or a single person; it is essentially legislative in nature, not only because it operates in the future but because it is primarily concerned with policy considerations.”

Under the APA, the agencies must publish all proposed new regulations in the Federal Register at least 30 days before they take effect, and they must provide a way for interested parties to comment, offer amendments, or to object to the regulation.

Some regulations require only publication and an opportunity for comments to become effective. Others require publication and one or more formal public hearings. The enabling legislations states which process is to be used in creating the regulations. Regulations requiring hearings can take several months to become final.

New regulations or amendments to existing regulations are known as “proposed rules.” Notices of public hearings or requests for comments on proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, on the Web sites of the regulatory agencies and in many newspapers and other publications. The notices will include information on how to submit comments, or participate in public hearings on the proposed rule.

Once a regulation takes effect, it becomes a “final rule” and is printed in the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and usually posted on the Web site of the regulatory agency. Keep reading here.

Missing Hillary Communications Surfacing

Posted on June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Investigators are performing remarkable but tedious work to uncover papertrails and to located items that are missing. Facts, details, dates, times and names are pesky things, while the process is slow, a question remains, how much is actually complete such that details are leaking out?

Clinton’s State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

WASHINGTON (AP)— An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met. The fuller details of those meetings were included in files the State Department turned over to AP after it sued the government in federal court.

The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure — in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror the other, more detailed records of her daily meetings.

At a time when Clinton’s private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the “risk of the personal being accessible” — as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide’s inbox.

The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page calendar with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day’s events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.

*****

Clinton failed to hand over key email to State Department

FNC: WASHINGTON – Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The email was included within messages exchanged Nov. 13, 2010, between Clinton and one of her closest aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. At the time, emails sent from Clinton’s BlackBerry device and routed through her private clintonemail.com server in the basement of her New York home were being blocked by the State Department’s spam filter. A suggested remedy was for Clinton to obtain a state.gov email account.

“Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” Clinton responded to Abedin.

Clinton never used a government account that was set up for her, instead continuing to rely on her private server until leaving office.

The email was not among the tens of thousands of emails Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. Abedin, who also used a private account on Clinton’s server, provided a copy from her own inbox after the State Department asked her to return any work-related emails. That copy of the email was publicly cited last month in a blistering audit by the State Department’s inspector general that concluded Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup violated federal standards and could have left sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.

“While this exchange was not part of the approximately 55,000 pages provided to the State Department by former Secretary Clinton, the exchange was included within the set of documents Ms. Abedin provided the department in response to our March 2015 request,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said she provided “all potentially work-related emails” that were still in her possession when she received the 2014 request from the State Department.

“Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have,” Fallon said.

Fallon declined to say whether Clinton deleted any work-related emails before they were reviewed by her legal team. Clinton’s lead lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The November 2010 email was among documents released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s service as the nation’s top diplomat between 2009 and 2013. The case is one of about three dozen lawsuits over access to records related to Clinton, including one filed by the AP.

Before turning over her emails to the department for review and potential public release, Clinton and her lawyers withheld thousands of additional emails she said were clearly personal, such as those involving what she described as “planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations.”

Clinton has never outlined in detail what criteria she and her lawyers used to determine which emails to release and which to delete, but her 2010 email with Abedin appears clearly work-related under the State Department’s own criteria for agency records under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Dozens of the emails sent or received by Clinton through her private server were later determined to contain classified material. The FBI has been investigating for months whether Clinton’s use of the private email server imperiled government secrets. Agents recently interviewed several of Clinton’s top aides, including Abedin.

As part of the probe, Clinton turned over the hard drive from her email server to the FBI. It had been wiped clean, and Clinton has said she did not keep copies of the emails she choose to withhold.

On Wednesday, lawyers from Judicial Watch, a conservative legal organization, questioned under oath Bryan Pagliano, the computer technician who set up Clinton’s private server. A transcript released Thursday shows Pagliano repeatedly responded to detailed questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as he did last year before a congressional committee.

Dozens of questions Pagiliano declined to answer included who paid for the system, whether there was technical help to support its users and who else at the State Department used email accounts on it. Pagliano also would not answer whether he discussed setting up a home server with Clinton prior to her tenure as secretary of state, according to the transcript.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the November 2010 email cited in the inspector general audit was one of more than a dozen work-related emails that his group identified that Clinton sent or received but later failed to turn over the State Department.

“Contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Mrs. Clinton did not return all her government emails to the State Department,” Fitton said. “Our goal is to find out what other emails Mrs. Clinton and the State Department are hiding.”

The LEAVE Vote Won, What Brexit Means Now

Posted on June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Populism and Elitism finally lost…the people have spoken and the battle for independence is long and hard but ultimately sweet. Citizens are disgusted with being ruled by Belgium.

The dynamics have not been determined and are impossible to predicts.

Given the drop in the value of the UK currency, the U.S dollar has risen however, the markets are going to be volatile for several days. France and Germany are in precarious positions and France has become the 7th largest economy by the drop in the value of the pound.

The Bank of England is working earnestly to calm markets across the globe.

Watch Scotland:

How Could Scotland Protect its EU Links After Brexit?

It is often presumed that Scotland will continue to be part of the EU, either through a UK-wide vote to remain in the EU referendum or by joining the EU after a successful second independence referendum, writes Kirsty Hughes. She argues, however, that it is possible that Scotland could find itself outside the EU following a vote to leave, and that it should consider how to develop a differentiated relationship with the EU distinct from England.

At issue going forward is Article 50:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Prime Minister, David Cameron has resigned and will leave office by October. Cameron is expected to notify the EU this morning that the U.K. is invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, under which the two sides will have an initial two years to agree how their relations will look in future.

Markets were generally unprepared for “Brexit” after the last opinion polls, and more important Britain’s widely watched bookies, before the vote had pointed to a victory for the Remain camp. The Bank of England, the IMF, and OECD, as well as the Fed’s Janet Yellen, have all warned of a severe bout of volatility after a “Brexit” vote, with longer-lasting damage to the economy as a result of higher uncertainty, lower investment and more obstacles to trade. More here from Forbes.