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Such is the reign of terror now being imposed on innocent English families by social workers that scores of parents have been fleeing with their children to Ireland to escape their clutches. I have followed a dozen such stories over the past two years, and in all of them two things stand out. One is that the English social workers seem prepared to stop at nothing to get the children back. The other is the extraordinary contrast between them and the Irish social workers, who again and again have satisfied themselves that the children are at no risk from their...

The result of this two-party charade is that Americans – and those in most other countries in the Western World – are the victims of a great deception. Voters have been fooled into thinking they are participating in their own political destiny when, in reality, they are being herded into a high-tech feudalism entirely without their consent and, to a large degree, even without their knowledge. This is accomplished by the mirage of a meaningful choice at election time when, in fact, the major parties and their candidates are merely two branches of the same tree of collectivism. Voters today...

Clovis Elementary Monday: President’s Day — No school Tuesday: Breakfast — Breakfast pizza. Lunch — Spaghetti and meat sauce, green beans, ranch salad and bread stix and fruit smoothie. Wednesday: Breakfast — Cinnamon roll. Lunch — Porky rib on a bun, baked french fries, coleslaw and fruited Jell-O. Thursday: Breakfast — Mini pancakes. Lunch — Pizza pasta bake, mixed veggies, chilled fruit and cookie. Friday: Breakfast — Taco omelet. Lunch — Beef and cheese soft taco, seasoned pinto beans, lettuce, tomato, salsa and seasonal fruit. Clovis junior high/high School Monday: President’s Day — No school Tuesday: Breakfast — Frudel. Lunch...

Rick Santorum is touting his promise to eliminate corporate taxes on manufacturers...[that's] coming under scrutiny from conservatives who are decrying it as thoroughly unconservative. ...[Santorum] added: “We need to have a manufacturing base in this economy. Why? Because of our national security.” ...advocates for other sectors of the economy quietly gripe that they’d be effectively underwriting manufacturing...by paying a higher tax rate... “Giving a preferential rate is picking winners and losers through the tax code,” said Curtis Dubay, a tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation... “This is not free-market economics, this is trying to tilt the market toward manufacturing,...

One of the central, driving questions in our politics is this: Why are people who are themselves reliant on government programs so prone to electing anti-government politicans who want to put them on the chopping block?Paul Krugman talks to experts about this conundrum and comes away with some important conclusions that are directly relevant to this year’s presidential race:Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent...

Link only per posting rules: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2012/02/obama-bypasses-congress-on-climate-change/1#.Tz6MF8mF_9I

The American Petroleum Institute Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Howard Feldman warned of a "veritable tsunami" of new EPA air regulations for refineries that could "put some refineries out of business, diminish U.S. fuel manufacturing capacity, and increase our reliance on imported fuels" recently in a conference call with reporters: "The president himself has called on federal agencies to take into account the impact of regulations on jobs and the economy," Feldman said. "EPA should follow through by ensuring that their regulatory proposals are necessary, practical, and fair." Four U.S. refineries closed last year, according to Feldman. He said...

HERNANDO, Miss. -- DeSoto County has formally objected to the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to list it as "nonattainment" on ozone levels. DeSoto County officials also want the EPA to abandon a "misguided" proposal to list the county with Memphis as falling short on ozone standards. In December, EPA announced a proposal to include parts of DeSoto with Memphis, which has ozone emissions above allowable limits set by federal regulation. The plan would include urban areas of DeSoto County and Crittenden County, Ark., in the Memphis ozone "non-attainment" area. Ozone non-attainment could impair industrial recruitment by requiring prospective firms to...

Navistar International Corp on Thursday confirmed that it has received notice from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of an investigation into diesel-engine production that could lead to as much as $285 million in fines. In a letter dated Jan. 30, the EPA informed the Lisle, Illinois truck and engine maker that it is investigating whether 7,600 engines built in 2009 were properly certified under the Clean Air Act. Each violation carries a fine of up to $37,500. The engines in question were so-called transition engines, or engines built at a time when the company was preparing to launch a new...

When it comes to dealing with climate change—and reducing carbon emissions, the top man-made cause of warming—the international community is doing a crap job. The U.N. process is bogged down, with ambitions that seem to shrink each year even as the summits themselves grow longer and longer. So with the front door locked on climate action, it might be time to try the back. That’s why the U.S.—as well as representatives from the U.N. and several other countries—is getting behind a new initiative to reduce black carbon, methane and other “short-lived” greenhouse gases, so called because they remain in the...

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Thursday the formation of a new global coalition to fight emissions other than carbon dioxide that contribute to climate change. The coalition—which includes Sweden, Mexico, Canada, Bangladesh and the U.S. will be funded with $15 million, mostly from the U.S. It hasn't yet determined which actions it will take to reduce the emissions, nor has it identified specific reduction targets. The administration is also putting up federal dollars for clean-energy investments, unveiling a 2013 budget plan this week that sets aside hundreds of millions of dollars for wind, solar and other clean-energy...

Like the mythical monster Hydra—who grew two heads every time Hercules cut one off—President Obama, in both his State of the Union address and his new budget, has defiantly doubled down on his brand of industrial policy, the usually ill-advised attempt by governments to promote particular industries, companies and technologies at the expense of broad, evenhanded competition. Despite his record of picking losers—witness the failed "clean energy" projects Solyndra, Ener1 and Beacon Power—Mr. Obama appears determined to continue pushing his brew of federal spending, regulations, mandates, special waivers, loan guarantees, subsidies and tax breaks for companies he deems worthy. Favoring...

General Motors Co. on Thursday reported a record profit of $7.6 billion for 2011, but losses in Europe and thin profit margins in the fourth quarter underscored challenges the company faces in 2012. But GM lost $747 million in Europe, where it is racing to turn around its troubled Opel unit. The company said its 47,500 United Auto Workers-represented hourly workers will receive profit-sharing checks of $7,000, the highest amount workers have received. In addition, they will receive $250 each for meeting quality targets.

  Unrecoverable Stall: Air France 447, America David C. Stolinsky Feb. 16, 2012 The closest I ever came to flying a plane was sitting next to a colleague who was piloting a small plane. But even I know that what enables a plane to fly is lift. As the plane moves forward, the angle and shape of the wings cause the air rushing by to produce an upward force. This lift must exceed the drag caused by the friction of the air, and still be enough to counter the plane’s weight. Unlike balloons or blimps, airplanes are heavier than...

Greece's austerity measures are being met with anger and grief by the people of the debt-ridden country. Days of violent protests couldn't stop Greece's parliament from passing a European bailout deal -- but now the country faces massive cutbacks. Whole government departments will be shut down and as many as 15,000 public servants will be thrown out of work. The crisis is even prompting a spike in suicide attemts. One of the things that has forced the Greek people to the precipice is the corrupt and inefficient government that everyone agrees must shrink. For decades, politicians have been handing out...

President Obama heads west today for a three-day, three-state swing aimed largely at filling the coffers of his re-election campaign and honing his message to supporters in key states. Obama will headline eight fundraisers across California and Washington through Friday night. The events are expected to net at least $8.6 million for the Obama Victory Fund. Much of Obama’s focus will be on mingling with some of his wealthiest – and most famous – supporters in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who will play a key role in underwriting his bid for a second term. Later he’ll dine with 80...

As the liberal website Slate has explained about Obamacare, President Obama's signature legislation "combine[s] an express mandatory insurance requirement with tax penalties . . . for noncompliance." Which is why the Obama "administration’s lawyers have cited . . . the tax . . . power in support of the mandate," and that remains a central tenet of the administration's Supreme Court case in defending Obamacare. It is not the White House is mandating care, they are telling the Supreme Court, but it's that one will be taxed if he does not get health care. But today on Capitol Hill, acting...

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama. Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms. During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants...

Unemployed Americans who started businesses last year was the lowest in at least a quarter-century. In 2011, 3.3% of out-of-work Americans started businesses, compared to 4.7% in 2010. But recent start-up activity is anemic compared to 1989 when 20.3% of unemployed were starting businesses. Until 1997, start-up activity was typically in double digits. “Basically, it was not a very inviting environment for would-be entrepreneurs,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “While big business definitely began to reap the benefits of the recovery in 2011, conditions were not nearly as fruitful for existing small business, let along...

President Obama released his FY 2013 budget [Monday] morning. By his own numbers, his budget raises net taxes over the next decade by $1.56 trillion (Table S-9, page 225). As a percentage of the economy, tax revenues would rise all the way to 20.1% of GDP in 2022, far higher than the historical tax revenue average of 18.3% of GDP (Table S-1, page 205). Here are some of the tax lowlights: All 20 of the new or higher taxes in Obamacare are assumed to take place. That means that there will be a 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income....

Amidst flowery February orations, in retrospect, the Civil Rights movement’s main beneficiary appears to be Washington. State segregation ceased, which is well, but forced federal integration remains, well, wrong. Washington rightly overturned denials of freedom oppressing southern blacks, but did so by infringing on others’ liberties elsewhere. En route, civil rights became the sine qua non of American statism. Civil rights legislation provided the primary catalyst for government’s escalation since WWII. Sadly, the Civil Rights Act brought neither legal equality as proposed in theory; nor equality of outcomes to which the Left strove in practice. The CRA failed doubly. First,...

RUSH: This is from Rayford, North Carolina. Carolina Journal. I'm gonna read it to you exactly as it printed out here: "A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet US Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." Again, let me read this to you again: "The...

Say goodbye to the much-loathed Alternative Minimum Tax and hello to the Buffett Rule. Sweet relief. The AMT has perplexed taxpayers and agonized accountants for decades. But wait: Are the AMT and the Buffett Rule really so different? The two take aim at different types of tax avoidance, so the details have little in common. But the headline is the same: Both were designed to make sure that wealthy citizens pay their fair share of income tax -- without creating a tax monster that somehow reaches down to regular people. When the AMT came into being in 1969, rich people...

Margaret Thatcher once famously pointed out the core problem of socialism: “They always run out of other people’s money.� California has been intent on demonstrating exactly what Thatcher meant with its highly progressive income-tax system that relies heavily on hitting the higher-income earners to fund their government. As the state has been discovering for the past few years, it’s a recipe for amplifying disaster in an economic downturn: Gov. Jerry Brown wants to hit California’s highest-income taxpayers with billions of dollars in new taxes, and is jousting with other groups with their own tax-the-rich measures over which, if any, will...

Gene Sperling, director of the White House's national economic council, said today at an official meeting that "we need a global minimum tax": “He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually...

California is in the middle of a far-reaching demographic shift: Hispanics, who already constitute a majority of the state’s schoolchildren, will be a majority of its workforce and of its population in a few decades. This is an even more momentous development than it seems. Unless Hispanics’ upward mobility improves, the state risks becoming more polarized economically and more reliant on a large government safety net. And as California goes, so goes the nation, whose own Hispanic population shift is just a generation or two behind.

Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago. Many of the trends, problems and disasters of our time are a legacy of that era. We can only imagine how many future generations will be paying the price — and not just in money — for the bright ideas and clever rhetoric of our current administration. The two giants...

Athens, Greece (CNN) -- Police turned tear gas and stun grenades on protesters outside Greece's parliament Sunday as lawmakers inside debated another round of austerity measures. Riot police dispersed many of the demonstrators, who were protesting plans for new cuts in government spending, wages and pensions in return for a new eurozone bailout of the debt-stricken country. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has urged approval of the deal, warning in a speech to the Cabinet Saturday evening of "social explosion, chaos" if it fails. "The state will not be able to pay salaries and pensions or import basic goods" such as...

President Obama's top aide addressed the latest controversy over contraception coverage, saying on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the latest iteration of the new rule, which was announced Friday, will go forward. "We're going to go ahead and implement it," White House Chief of Staff Jack Law said. After being pressed by host Bob Schieffer about the White House's latest change to its contraception coverage policy and the push-back the administration is receiving from the Catholic Church, Lew said the White House is comfortable with its decision. "We have broad consensus - not universal consensus - that this...

The squabble over whether Catholic social service institutions, universities and hospitals must offer insurance covering contraception under the new health plan contains a subplot with roots deep in history. It’s the relationship between women and organized religion — a relationship that, over the centuries, has been hostile to the aspirations of women for a larger role in the family, the world and religion itself. Organized religion, in short, has been a clerical stag party. It is against this historical background that the tussle between what religious conservatives see as a First Amendment right and many women see as a health...

Venezuelans lined up to vote on Sunday in the country's first-ever opposition presidential primary, choosing a single challenger they hope will have what it takes to finally defeat President Hugo Chavez after 13 years in office. Opposition supporters seemed less interested in the proposals put forth by the five candidates competing in Sunday's vote than their chances of defeating Chavez in October's looming presidential election. The outcome will set the stage for what many are billing as the most anticipated presidential vote since Chavez's first triumph in 1998, and Venezuelans on both sides of the nation's political gap are eager...

There is an old political axiom that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, and more recently Gerald Ford, that says, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” Those words took on new meaning in January when we found out that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, was issuing new regulations with regard to President Obama’s signature health care law. For the first time in history, the federal government would force faith-based institutions to pay for coverage of products and services they find morally objectionable or against...

... Despite his oath of office, in a blatant effort to win the female vote and pander to the pro-choice movement, the president and his administration has mandated that all Catholic churches, schools, universities and hospitals must provide health insurance for their female employees that cover abortion and contraceptive services. This was not a political miscalculation and it is not “women's health” my friends, it is a president and an administration that has determined he can tell any religion what beliefs it can and cannot hold. This is precisely the kind of authoritarian edict that prompted our Founding Fathers to...

FReep This Poll! Contraception Controversy Should health insurance companies be required to give women free contraceptives? - Yes - No Note: Go to the link provided here to the Fox 5 San Diego homepage. Scroll down a bit and look for the poll on the right side of the homepage (a bit above Chrissy's Outfit of the Day) Vote your choice.

... A new mini-report from the environmental group Climate Nexus points out that climate change is poised to wreck Valentine’s Day, or at least change it significantly, by threatening chocolate production. That’s right. Global warming is very bad for chocolate. Research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture found last year that as temperatures rise, the principal growing regions for cocoa could shrink. Other elements of the Climate Nexus report say similar changes are already affecting the best sugar cane areas of the world, and are partially responsible for a 30% decrease in sugar production in Indonesia in 2011. Also,...

(Reuters) - U.S. health insurers said on Friday they feared President Barack Obama had set a new precedent by making them responsible for providing free birth control to employees of religious groups as he sought to defuse an election-year landmine. "We are concerned about the precedent this proposed rule would set," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group. "As we learn more about how this rule would be operationalized, we will provide comments through the regulatory process." Zirkelbach said insurers "have long offered contraceptive coverage to employers as part of comprehensive, preventive benefits that...

The Obama administration is attempting to persuade U.S. corporations about the benefits of investing in renewable energy in an effort to help the industry after a government grant program expired. The Department of Energy-led effort includes a planned March 13 meeting at which senior financial-firm executives and Energy Secretary Steven Chu would speak. The 79 invitees include some of the largest corporations in the U.S., from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Walt Disney. The idea is to tell companies with big tax bills about the "attractive rates of return and brand benefits" that come with entering the so-called tax equity markets...

Lucas Papademos, the Greek premier, faced pressure to reshuffle his cabinet on Friday after five ministers and undersecretaries resigned in protest against fresh austerity measures imposed by international lenders in return for a second, €130bn bail-out. Three resignations came as the rightwing Laos (People’s) party announced that it was pulling out of his national unity government. Marilena Xenoyiannokopoulouaratzaferispademos, a senior socialist serving as European affairs minister, also stood down, saying she was opposed to labour reforms included in the package. Yannis Koutsoukos, the socialist deputy labour minister, resigned on Thursday. Ms Xenoyiannokopoulouaratzaferispademos accused Greece’s European partners of “violating” the union’s...

If not the religious institutions….or the women….who pays for the contraceptive services? The Obama administration claims it pays for itself, pointing to this new report: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/contraceptives/ib.shtml “While the costs of contraceptives for individual women can be substantial and can influence choice of contraceptive methods, available data indicate that providing contraceptive coverage as part of a health insurance benefit does not add to the cost of providing insurance coverage. Evidence from well-documented prior expansions of contraceptive coverage indicates that the cost to issuers ... is zero.” We shall see what the insurance companies say…

Two of the nation’s most prominent attorneys general sparred Thursday over federal health care reform in a precursor to next month’s U.S. Supreme Court battle on President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a staunch critic of the Affordable Care Act, and his Massachusetts counterpart Martha Coakley, whose state’s health care law served as a model for the federal law, offered vastly different visions for how the high court will ultimately decide the case in June during a forum at the National Press Club. Cuccinelli, a Tea Party darling, predictably opined the Supreme Court would ultimately rule...

(Reuters) - Americans felt worse about their personal finances in early February, even as they saw a light at the end of the tunnel for the jobs market, a survey released on Friday showed. An improving financial situation was reported by just 23 percent of all consumers surveyed in early February, down from 29 percent in January and last year's 30 percent. One in four families reported declines in income in the early February survey, even as official data have shown overall U.S. income growing since last August, albeit at a slow pace. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan overall index...

If you aren’t creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren’t listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up. When a bunch of wealthy white women and elite Washington bureaucrats defend the trampling of religious liberties in the name of “increased access” to “reproductive services” for “poor” women, the ghost of Margaret Sanger is cackling. As she wrote in her autobiography, Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916 “to stop the multiplication of the unfit.” This, she boasted, would be “the most important and...

Obama began to increase his divide-and-conquer Class Warfare rhetoric as his financial losses began to increase sharply. Obama has had a lifelong, consistent hatred of America, and class warfare was merely a means to his end of Destroying America, in 4 years. Unable to accept responsibility for his financial failures, Obama has consistently blamed men who have demonstrated strong support for the core values of America, such as President George W. Bush, as well as men who have made profits, such as JPM CEO Jamie Dimon. This week Obama blamed America's Founding Fathers for making it difficult for Obama to...

An American Indian tribe sued some of the world's largest beer makers Thursday, claiming they knowingly contributed to alcohol-related problems on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota said it is demanding $500 million in damages for the cost of health care, social services and child rehabilitation caused by chronic alcoholism on the reservation.

There’s been a lot of discussion over whether we should have had a smaller or larger stimulus package. But a lot of these arguments leave a key question unanswered: How much stimulus did we actually pass? There was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, of course. That was the big gun. But after that, there were dozens of smaller measures passed. For instance: The White House only put a single year of expanded unemployment insurance into the original stimulus. They did that, in part, because they expected they would be able to get unemployment insurance extended on its own. That...

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve announced on Thursday it has reached an agreement with five U.S. banks on penalties totaling $766.5 million over problems in their mortgage servicing businesses as part of a larger $25 billion foreclosure deal struck between the banks and state and federal agencies. Under the agreement the banks would not pay their fines to the Fed and would instead make them as part of the programs that comprise the broader state-federal deal. Under the Fed agreement the breakdown of what each bank has agreed to pay is $175.5 million for Bank of America, $22 million for...

(MoneyWatch) Student loan debt is pushing a growing number of Americans into bankruptcy and an organization of bankruptcy lawyers predicted this week that the college debt problem could become as big a catastrophe as the home mortgage crisis. "Take it from those of us on the frontlines of economic distress in America, this could very well be the next debt bomb for the U.S. economy," warned William E. Brewer Jr., president of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. The association just released a survey of 860 bankruptcy attorneys that revealed some disturbing trends. Here are some of the most...

India and Norway are embroiled in a diplomatic row after Norwegian social workers took two young Indian children into care because they slept with their parents and their mother fed them with her fingers – both widespread and normal in India.

Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don't qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.

STOCKTON - The city has a tentative plan to combat climate change, more than three years after reaching a legal settlement with the Sierra Club and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown. It wouldn't be cheap. If adopted by the Stockton City Council later this year, the plan could cost the city $28.5 million and could cost the private sector $240 million, the document says. The plan itself acknowledges it would require "substantial effort on the part of the entire Stockton community" at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open.