Author: Matthew G. Saroff

White House Chooses George W. Bush Level of Stupidity

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According to reliable sources, Obama and senior White House staff believe that the NSA’s personal data driftnet would have saved us from the 911 terror attacks:

Many of President Obama’s closest advisors have embraced a controversial assessment of one of the National Security Agency’s major data collection programs — the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could have been prevented had government then possessed the sort of vast trove of Americans’ telephone records it holds now.

Critics of the NSA program, and some scholars of America’s deadliest terrorist attack, strenuously dispute the view that the collection of phone data would necessarily have made a difference or that the possibility justifies the program now. The presidential task force that reviewed surveillance operations concluded last month that the program “was not essential” to preventing terrorist attacks.

But as the president finalizes plans for a speech on Friday announcing his proposals to change intelligence operations and oversight, the widespread agreement at the most senior levels of the White House about the program’s value appears to be driving policy. As a result, the administration seems likely to modify, but not stop, the gathering of billions of phone call logs.

In recent White House meetings, Obama has accepted the “9/11” justification, aides say, expressing the belief that domestic phone records might have helped authorities identify some of the skyjackers who later crashed passenger jets in New York, the Washington area and Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

He is a F%$#ing moron, and his assessment of the program has him doubling down on stupidity:

He believes the main problem with the program is one of perception: Many Americans don’t trust the NSA, one of the most secretive of spy agencies, to respect civil liberties.

Americans do not trust the NSA to respect civil liberties because they don’t, and have never respected civil liberties.

I’m not sure why, but Obama seems to be dedicated to making sure that the inmates, intel in this case, the banksters in finance, run the asylum.

The US state security apparatus is a tool of US policy, when you allow them to self regulate, the same thing that happens to our civil liberties and due process that happens to our economy when allow the banksters to self regulative.

Can you say, “Gone Native?”

95 Years Ago Today

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The Great Molasses Flood of Boston:

On January 15, 1919—an unusually warm winter day in Boston—patrolman Frank McManus picked up a call box on Commercial Street, contacted his precinct station and began his daily report. Moments later he heard a sound like machine guns and an awful grating. He turned to see a five-story-high metal tank split open, releasing a massive wall of dark amber fluid. Temporarily stunned, McManus turned back to the call box. “Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately,” he yelled, “there’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!”

More than 7.5 million liters of molasses surged through Boston’s North End at around 55 kilometers per hour in a wave about 7.5 meters high and 50 meters wide at its peak. All that thick syrup ripped apart the cylindrical tank that once held it, throwing slivers of steel and large rivets in all directions. The deluge crushed freight cars, tore Engine 31 firehouse from its foundation and, when it reached an elevated railway on Atlantic Avenue, nearly lifted a train right off the tracks. A chest-deep river of molasses stretched from the base of the tank about 90 meters into the streets. From there, it thinned out into a coating one half to one meter deep. People, horses and dogs caught in the mess struggled to escape, only sinking further.

Ultimately, the disaster killed 21 people and injured another 150. About half the victims were crushed by the wave or by debris or drowned in the molasses the day of the incident. The other half died from injuries and infections in the following weeks. A long ensuing legal battle revealed several possible reasons for the flood. The storage tank had been filled to near capacity on July 13 and the molasses had likely fermented, producing carbon dioxide that raised the pressure inside the cylinder. The courts also faulted the United States Industrial Alcohol Co., which owned the tank, for ignoring numerous signs of the structure’s instability over the years, such as frequent leaks.

The rest is even better, because they start to discuss things like Reynolds Numbers.

I got some serious geek on reading this.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Susan G. Komen Foundation

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As a result of their abortive (pun no intended) attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, their revenue has fallen by $77 million, about 22%:

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation committed one of the great PR faux pas of the decade in January 2012, when it summarily cut off funding to Planned Parenthood in what appeared to be a bow to anti-abortion crusaders.

Now, with its release of its latest financial statements, the cost of that decision can be measured: It’s more than $77 million, or fully 22% of the foundation’s income. That’s how much less the Dallas-based foundation collected in contributions, sponsorships and entry fees for its sponsored races in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, compared with the previous year. The raw figures are these: In the most recent fiscal year Komen booked $270 million; the year before that, Komen booked $348 million.

………

The foundation’s decision to cease funding Planned Parenthood was a huge blunder. Komen officials said at the time that they had merely tightened grant eligibility rules to exclude groups under investigation by government authorities — Planned Parenthood was the target of a ginned-up “investigation” by anti-abortion Republicans in the House.

The decision by the nation’s leading breast cancer charity to defund the nation’s leading provider of health services to women sparked a predictable uproar, and Komen reversed the decision after only three days.

But the damage was immediate and, plainly, lasting. There were indications that the original decision had been driven by Karen Handel, the organization’s vice president for public policy, who had joined Komen after losing a race for governor of Georgia on an anti-abortion platform. She resigned from Komen days after the reversal.

The affair led to more public scrutiny of the foundation’s own record. It transpired, for instance, that while the foundation depicted itself as devoted chiefly to research for a breast cancer cure, it spent only about 20% of its donations on research; the biggest expenditure category was public education, at more than 50%. Critics questioned whether “education” really should be such a heavy priority in a field where research issues remain important.

George Herbert Walker Bush’s, “Thousand points of light,” in a nutshell.

All those people who talk about how how private charities can be a replacement for government action are full of it.

Not only are private charities rife with corruption and inefficiency, but we have wankers giving TED talks suggesting that the solution is to allow people to more aggressively loot. (More on that later)

Light Posting Tonight

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I had to apply the flea treatment to RP, and there was some blood, mine, not hers.

Not a whole lot of blood, enough to freak out my wife and my son, but not enough to freak me out.

I’m not sure why they were freaking out, it was my blood, after all.

No need for stitches, just some band-aids.

I have concluded that we are not going to get the feral out of this cat, and since it knows how to get into and out of our house, trap, neuter, and release in our neighborhood is not an option.

Anyone know of somewhere in a 100 mile radius of Baltimore that takes care of stray cats?

Linkage

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Your advertisement of the day: (Funny)

Things that I Really Did Not Want to Know

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Philadelphia police are looking for a scofflaw they call the Swiss Cheese Masturbator:

The cops are looking for him, and now a Philadelphia Magazine writer may have actually tracked down the man who’s been exposing himself in front of “a number” of Philadelphia women and asking them to jerk him off with a slice of swiss cheese.

According to reports, the overweight cheese aficionado likes to drive up next to women in parking lots, show them his genitals, and then offer them money to masturbate him with a slice of swiss. Other Philadelphia women have reported receiving similar messages from him on dating sites like OKCupid.

I should have taken the blue pill.

God Bless The Onion

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This is prize:

My Fellow Americans, Look At Me: Do I Look Like A Corrupt, Vengeful Bully?

 Commentary • Opinion • ISSUE 50•01 • Jan 9, 2014
By Chris Christie, New Jersey Governor

 I must admit, the past two days have been the most humbling of my entire career. I was shocked and disgusted to learn of the deplorable conduct of a member of my staff, who, without my knowledge, orchestrated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, deliberately causing major traffic congestion in order to exact political vengeance against a local mayor who didn’t endorse me for reelection. Though I promptly fired the aide in question and repeatedly stressed that I had no prior knowledge of her actions, many have continued to accuse me of being complicit in this incident. And to those who do, I can only ask that you simply look at me, right now, and just ask yourself one question: Do I look like a corrupt, vengeful, openly antagonistic bully to you?

 ………

Read the reat.

Cows on Beano™

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Scientists are working to develop a flatulence free cow:

A new research project looks into the possibilities of adapting every aspect of cattle husbandry and selection processes to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

You may think that climate change is being caused by burning oil, coal and gas. But not so fast! The emission of methane from cattle is a surprisingly important factor. Methane from cows — a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — makes up 20% of greenhouse emissions from agriculture, or about 1% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases. That’s according to Phil Garnsworthy, professor of dairy science at the University of Nottingham in the UK. He is also one of the project scientists of an EU-funded research project, called Ruminomics, which is using cutting-edge science to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle.

The key to the project, Garnsworthy says, is that cattle vary by a factor of two or three in the amount of methane their stomachs produce. It is therefore possible to imagine a dairy herd producing the same volume of milk for lower greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, different diets mean that cows can produce the same amount of milk with lower emissions. “It is possible to imagine cutting emissions from cattle by a fifth, using a combination approach in which you would breed from lower-emitting cattle as well as changing their diets,” Garnsworthy said.

Different genetic strains of cow emit different amounts of methane. “There are three issues: diet, genetics, and the microbiology of the cow’s rumen. We think that animal genetics may well influence their gut microbiology. However, this link has not been proved and we are still in the data collection phase,” explains Lorenzo Morelli, director of the faculty of agriculture at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Italy, who is a microbiologist and a project scientist.

Until now, the European cattle industry was mainly interested in improving aspects of livestock such as their fertility and their overall shape. But Morelli thinks that the market will soon add lower methane production to the list of desired cattle characteristics. Indeed, a herd that emits less methane is likely to be more productive. “The methane is lost energy that could go into producing milk. So if we can find the right genetic mix, we can find cattle that are less polluting, more productive, and more profitable for the famer,” Morelli said.

I, for one, welcome this effort to push back against bovine tyranny.

Arizona Abortion Restrictions Struck Down

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The Supreme Court has declined to review the appeals court decision invalidating the law, so the the decision stands:

The US Supreme Court on Monday turned aside a request by Arizona officials for the high court to examine the constitutionality of a state statute that sought to restrict abortions after 20 weeks of fetal gestation.

A panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Arizona abortion statute last year, ruling that it violated long-established Supreme Court precedents by depriving a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy prior to the point of fetal viability.

Supporters of the law expressed disappointment over the high court’s move.

“Every innocent life deserves to be protected,” Steven Aden, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“Not only did this law protect innocent children in the womb who experience horrific pain during a later-term abortion, it also protected mothers from the increased risk of physical harm and tremendous psychological consequences that come with late-term abortions,” Mr. Aden said in a statement.

Women rights groups praised the high court action.

I praise this high court action as well.

Regrets………

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Mikhail Kalashnikov, after decades of denying any culpability for the deaths caused by the AK-47, felt profound remorse toward the end of his life:

The inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle apparently wrote to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before he died expressing fears he was morally responsible for the people it killed.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died last month aged 94, wrote a long emotional letter to Patriarch Kirill in May 2012, church officials say.

He said he was suffering “spiritual pain” over the many deaths it caused.

Kalashnikov had previously refused to accept responsibility for those killed.

It does make me wonder how I’ll deal with the end of my life.

As a firmly middle-aged man, my most frequent regret is how few wild oats I sewed during my single days.

Hopefully, my regrets will become more profound as I age, but I’m just not that deep.

Where Maryland Gets Healthcare Right

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Proving once again, that the first problem is not cost it’s price

The Free State is expand an existing plan of price controls for healthcare:

The Obama administration is set to announce Friday an ambitious health-care experiment that will make Maryland a test case for whether aggressive government regulation of medical prices can dramatically cut health spending.

 Under the experiment, Maryland will cap hospital spending and set prices — and, if all goes as planned, cut $330 million in federal spending. The new plan, which has been under negotiation for more than a year, could leave Maryland looking more like Germany and Switzerland, which aggressively regulate prices, than its neighboring states. And it could serve as a model – or cautionary tale – for other states looking to follow in its footsteps.

 “You can put Maryland in the company of Massachusetts and perhaps Vermont as the three states furthest out in trying to invent a new future for cost accountability in health care spending,” added Harvard University’s John McDonough. “Success creates a model that other states will want to look at emulating. And failure means it’s an option more likely to be crossed off the list.”

 For Maryland, the new rules build on past success. Since the mid-1970s, it has been the only state to set the prices that hospitals charge patients. Typically, hospitals negotiate with each health insurer individually, leading to disparate rates. In Maryland, all customers — whether a private insurance plan, public program or uninsured patient — pay the same price. Researchers estimate the system has saved $45 billion for consumers over four decades and prices have grown more slowly in the state.

What they are adding is changing the billing to reduce incentives to provide unnecessary services:

Under the old system, prices in Maryland couldn’t grow faster than the prices set by the Medicare program. But as the cost of health care rose rapidly in recent years, the state struggled to hit that target.

 State officials also worried about the old system creating perverse incentives: The best way for a hospital to make money was to provide the highest volume of services, regardless of whether that care made patients healthier. That meant payers would simply sign checks for as many treatments as the hospitals recommended. The new system intends to end that revenue strategy by capping total spending.

 “It’s essentially moving away from a system that is focused on volume to one that is focused on value,” says John M. Colmers, executive director of Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission, which will oversee the effort.”

 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved Friday Maryland’s proposal to continue setting hospital prices while adding in a cap on all hospital spending. The state will limit hospital spending growth to 3.58 percent for the next five years, largely by giving each of the state’s 46 hospitals a firm budget to work within. That level of growth would be tied to the projected, overall growth of the state economy.

I’m not particularly excited about this second part. I just do not know enough about the healthcare market to know if it works, but if it provides an incentive for other states to implement price controls, this would be a good thing.

The free market is not, and will never be, the salvation of our healthcare system.  That is what the past 60 years has shown.

The Manchurian Democrat Strikes Again

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Congressional Democrats are freaking out at Barack Obama’s repeated attempts to gut cut Social Security:

Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections.

 The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal.

 But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority.

 “I’m not sure why we should be making concessions when the Republicans show absolutely no willingness to do the same,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

 Democrats acknowledge it may be awkward for Obama to rescind his proposal, but say it would unwise of him to repeat the offer in the budget that is due out next month.

 “I think it’s difficult for the president to pull it back after he already floated it but I would love to see it shelved until Republicans show they’re actually going to do something on their side of the ledger,” Murphy said.

Obama proposed nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts in his budget, including a switch to using the Chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which liberal policy experts estimate could cost seniors thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.

Senator Bernie Sanders nails the consequences of such a policy in a nutshell:

“I certainly hope that the president has learned a lesson from this whole process,” Sanders said. “To be honest with you, I just can’t imagine what staff people gave him the disastrous advice to propose a chain CPI, which from both a public policy point of view and political point of view is totally absurd.”

First, it’s bad politics.  Second, the “Chained” CPI does not accurately reflect the cost of living of Seniors, which is dominated by healthcare costs.

Senate Democrats should be more forceful about opposing this proposal, and if some of them were to say that they would support a filibuster of any such proposal, it would be a much needed warning to Obama.

Tom Tomorrow looks more prescient every year:


One Reason that My Insurance is Not Through the Exchanges

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Because Maryland’s insurance exchange is completely f%$#ed up:

More than a year before Maryland launched its health insurance exchange, senior state officials failed to heed warnings that no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan for how it would be ready by Oct. 1.

Over the following months, as political leaders continued to proclaim that the state’s exchange would be a national model, the system went through three different project managers, the feuding between contractors hired to build the online exchange devolved into lawsuits, and key people quit, including a top information technology official because, as he would later say, the project “was a disaster waiting to happen.”

The repeated warnings culminated days before the launch, with one from contractors testing the Web site that said it was “extremely unstable” and another from an outside consultant that urged state officials not to let residents enroll in health plans because there was “no clear picture” of what would happen when the exchange would turn on.

Within moments of its launch at noon Oct. 1, the Web site crashed in a calamitous debut that was supposed to be a crowning moment for Maryland officials who had embraced President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and pledged to build a state-run exchange that would be unparalleled.

Instead, by the next morning only four people had signed up using the Web site — and amazed that anyone had gotten through the system successfully, state officials contacted each of them to make sure they were real. The site’s problems continue to prevent Marylanders from signing up for health insurance. As of Friday, 20,358 people had selected private plans, and state officials have said they do not expect to come close to their initial goal of 150,000 by the end of March.

This report is based on a Washington Post review of thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents, including e-mails, internal reports, audits and court records, along with interviews with dozens of current and former contractors, state officials and others. The review shows that the creation of the exchange was dysfunctional from the start and that there were repeated missteps at almost every level.

I had to do something, MHIP was going away in June, as a result of the implementation of the PPACA, but the web site is a horror show.

It pushed me to take a serious look at the plan offered by the job shop that cuts my paycheck, and it turned out that an HSA offered through my employer, with the attendant tax advantages of pretax contributions, was the best deal.

Kewlest School Bus Ever!* (Updated)

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Updated Pic. Starfleet Transportation

We were driving to an SCA event in DC, and I drove by a school bus, and saw this.

I pointed it put to Natalie, who then snapped these pix.

[on update]

There were issues with the photographs, etc.  because of the mobile posting app.

So I have updated this to include:

  • Proper superscripting.
  • Replaced two identical pictures with two different ones.

BTW, in case you missed it, the bus is from Starfleet Transportation.

*Obviously, I am limiting my set “School Bus” to those vehicles that are actually colored school bus colors.

Posted via mobile.

Libertarians Owned by Colorado Marijuana Legalization

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Over at Pruning Shears, Dan Fejes the incredibly conspicuous silence of Libertarians, and the Libertarian movement on pot legalization in Colorado:

For as long as I can remember the joke about libertarians is that they are Republicans who like to smoke pot. Those who identify as libertarian seem to go to great lengths to point out their ideological differences with Republicans (and conservatives more generally). They stress liberty above all and oppose anything – like, say, non-military government spending – they perceive as even peripherally infringing on it. In addition to heartily approving of the freedom to, say, die without insurance, libertarians have long denounced the drug war as a hateful incursion on peoples’ freedom.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many opportunities to tease out whether libertarians truly are independent gadflies or just slightly heterodox Republicans. To get a solid answer, we would need to see one of their favored policies enacted. Since their ideas (agree with them or not) aren’t really in the political mainstream, their commitment to them never really gets put to the test.

Happily, the decriminalization of marijuana in Colorado provides just one of those rare cases. Libertarians have long criticized the drug war, with leading voices such as Radley Balko and John Stossel weighing in against it, Matt Welch reporting on its hoped-for demise, and so on. (This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive survey. I pick up libertarian names from ambient political noise, so in this post I checked ones I was familiar with.)

………

We aren’t hearing that; what we are mostly hearing is crickets. If this really meant as much to libertarians as they’ve always claimed, they should be shouting the news from the rooftops – but that would not sit well with the GOP establishment. Or: They can either act as gadflies or as slightly heterodox Republicans. Most are choosing the latter. While that’s a little disappointing I can’t honestly say it’s surprising.

This is telling.

Not only are the “mainstream” Libertarians remarkably quiet about all this, but the Ron Paul “batsh%$ insane” wing is quiet as well.

Libertarians: Nothing more than a way for some people to feel good about pulling the lever for Republicans.

Uh-Oh………

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Labor force participation rate

It looks like the Fed was a little bit premature in its decision to ease off quantitative easing:

Today’s U.S. unemployment figures were surprisingly bad. Only 74,000 jobs were added to payrolls in December, barely half what analysts had expected. The news was a reminder of how far from normal the economy still is — and of how tricky it will be for Janet Yellen, who’s about to take over as chairman of the Federal Reserve, to explain the central bank’s policy.

That jobs number by itself is more worrisome than alarming. It’s a noisy statistic, subject to seasonal disturbances and big revisions. But it can’t be dismissed, either. It’s enough to suggest that the economic acceleration that looked to be getting under way in recent months isn’t yet a done deal. Some of the markets’ recent enthusiasm on that score needs to be reined in – – and, thanks to these numbers, it will be.

At first sight, the big fall in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent from 7 percent tells a much happier story. Sadly, no. The fall reflects a further drop in the number of people looking for work. A shrinking labor force reduces the economy’s productive capacity, to say nothing of the effect on the dropouts’ prospects. And the proportion of long-term unemployed — the workers most at risk of dropping out of the jobs market in future months — remains close to 40 percent of the total.

In one way, the implications for policy are clear: This is no time to be tightening either fiscal or monetary policy. Extending unemployment benefits, which already made sense on economic and humanitarian grounds, is now all but mandatory. If this can be financed by extra borrowing rather than by offsetting cuts in other spending, so much the better: Some new fiscal stimulus, however modest, wouldn’t go amiss.

The bad jobs news will make the Fed think twice about its plan to phase out asset purchases — the policy of quantitative easing, which it has been using to supply unconventional monetary stimulus. Until better numbers come along, this policy may be paused or even reversed, a possibility Chairman Ben S. Bernanke mentioned in his last news conference. Financial markets will also expect a delay in any decision to start raising interest rates. On news like this, the Fed will want to avoid any suspicion of wishing to tighten monetary conditions.

It is true that these numbers can be volatile, but it has to give the Federal Reserve a case of gas.

Remember I Promised to Post Maddow’s Video of an Alternate Motive for the Bridge Rat F%$#ing?

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Kinda long, 17:51, but worth the watch

Well, here is the video.

We still don’t have a clue as to why the hell Christie aides, and possibly Christie himself, decided to make the George Washington Bridge the largest parking lot on the Hudson river, but what is presented here is certainly credible.

I really hope that someone rolls on their co-conspirators, because the justification for something this epically stupid will be fascinating.

Because ……… Freedumb!

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Specifically, Freedumb Industries, who just dumped massive quantities of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol-methylcyclohexane methanol into West Virginia’s Elk River upstream of the water treatment plant, leaving hundreds of thousands without water:

A chemical spill along a West Virginia river on Thursday triggered a tap water ban for up to 300,000 people, shutting down schools, bars and restaurants and forcing residents to line up for bottled water at stores.

 Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency for nine counties following the spill of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, a chemical used in the coal industry.

 The spill occurred on the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia’s capital and largest city, just upriver from the eastern U.S. state’s largest water treatment plant.

Why did this Happen? Because ……… Freedumb!

Today, at the time they were shutting off water for all those people, the House of Representatives voted to gut the Superfund act.

Why, Because ……… Freedumb!

The House passed legislation Thursday aimed at easing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules and requiring more cooperation between the EPA and states on environmental cleanup projects.

 Members voted 225-188 in favor of the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act, H.R. 2279. The bill is made up of three Republican bills that were combined together, and it includes some provisions that House Democrats found unobjectionable while they were considered in committee.

 The bill was supported by just five Democrats in the final vote, while four Republicans voted against it.

 Specifically, it removes a requirement that the EPA revise solid waste disposal regulations every three years, and prohibits the government from imposing solid waste regulations on states that overlap current state-wide rules.

 Other language in the bill would require all federally owned facilities to comply with state rules on hazardous substances, and require the government to consult more closely with states before imposing cleanup requirements under Superfund, the federal program that funds the cleanup of abandoned waste sites.

 The legislation would also ensure that if a state has rules requiring companies in polluting industries to post a bond or offer other financial sureties for possible cleanup costs, those rules cannot be affected by possible rules the EPA might develop in the future.

 ………

 But several Democrats criticized the legislation as an attempt to weaken current law. Many argued that the bonding language would let companies avoid the cost of cleaning up pollution, and pass those costs onto taxpayers.

 “The outcome of enacting this bill should be obvious,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). “If polluters don’t pay to clean up their pollution, then it just becomes one more burden to the taxpayer, and none of us should want that.”

 Others argued that the bill could further confuse how the federal government and the states must work together on clean-up efforts, which could slow down that process. That argument was also made by the Obama administration earlier this week, in a statement saying President Obama would veto the bill.

 “H.R. 2279 would unnecessarily increase the potential for litigation between the Federal government and the States, negatively impacting the timeliness and number of cleanups,” the White House wrote.

Why are they doing such a stupid thing, and why are they doing it on the day of what looks to be one of the worst chemical spills?

Because ……… Freedumb!

Un-Dirtyword, Believable