(UPDATED) — Non-Union Utility workers “turned away” in New Jersey?!? (…And why THIS story is indicative of a much BIGGER issue)

****UPDATE #3 –  As of  2:45 pm (Eastern) 11/4/12, this story continues to unfold.

• The IBEW is insisting that no one “turned away” non-union crews. That’s possible: they may have told ’em not to come AHEAD of time: “Amid Sandy’s devastation, Long Island union sent written demand to Florida utilities: Pay dues or stay home“.
• Additionally,  Decatur Utilities issued a press release in response to this story: “Upon arriving at a staging area in Virginia, crews were held in place pending clarification of documents received from IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) that implied a requirement of our employees to agree to union affiliation while working in the New York and New Jersey areas. It was andremains our understanding thatagreeing to those requirements was a condition of us being allowed to work in those areas.”  They then state they were not ‘turned away’.
• AND, this was a big enough issue that Chris Christie “threatened ‘Disaster Control Act’ order to guarantee nonunion utility workers can help restore NJ power“. 

Saturday Night Jive

I just checked the news sites again, and this is up on FOX NEWS, HOTAIR, and the site where it originated, DAILY CALLER.

…..and that’s it.

Now, before you say, “Dude, this really isn’t news, per se…” may I remind you of the many, many, many, many times that not only SNL but the late night comedians are dropped into the news reports (Sarah Palin, anyone?).

This IS news, or at least it should be.

From the Daily Caller:

The Daily Caller has obtained a scrapped sketch critical of President Barack  Obama that was intended for airing at the opening of last night’s “Saturday  Night Live” on NBC.

In the skit, President Obama addresses Americans soon after the first  anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden — and he makes sure to remind  viewers that all credit for the raid on the terrorist leader’s compound belongs  to him.

—

The real President Obama has faced harsh criticism in recent weeks for allegedly politicizing  bin Laden’s death by taking too much credit for the operation that killed  him.

Instead of the skit, NBC opted instead to air  a parody of Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends.” That skit, which also  featured Armisen, mocked Fox News personalities by portraying them as clueless  partisans.

Wait, wait, wait, …..you scrap a sketch that’s critical of Obama, and replace it with one of a Fox morning show? And the kicker: you portray FOX as being overly partisan? (Whoops, my Irony Alert™  just started to smoke…..)

The major Media is constantly trying to say that they have no bias when choosing how to cover news. Obviously, this is balderdash. Not only are they biased in what/how they cover news stories, they are even more biased in what they don’t cover. Case in point, just contrast the Tea Parties and Occupy Wall Street. Doesn’t get any more blatant than that.

Saturday Night Live is under no compunction to make fun of all celebrities/organizations/politicians equally. They’re a private show and can do what they want. Just don’t patronize me by saying, “We’re not partisan”.

At least one SNL alum is honest about it.

Nothing to see here. Move along…

I really had no intention of writing anything else today, but I kinda/sorta promised I would address this as soon as possible.

Earlier this week, while we were highlighting the overt media disparity between the Tea Party and the Occupy crew (It’s the Tea Party… Run For Your Lives!), commenter ‘a2buckeye‘ pointed out that the 5 men who were arrested for planning to blow up a bridge were likely associated with Occupy Cleveland. I deliberately skipped including it in my list of Occupy violence since enough facts weren’t yet known as to their Occupy kinship.

Well, more facts have come to light, and ‘a2buckeye‘ was spot-on.

From Jim Treacher’s blog:

The federal probe that resulted last night in the arrest of five  purported anarchists for allegedly plotting to bomb an Ohio bridge began last  year at an Occupy Wall Street rally in Cleveland that was infiltrated by an  informant who was directed to attend the event by his FBI handlers.

It was at the October 21 OWS event that the informant first met Douglas  [“Cyco”] Wright, 26, who reportedly confided details of his group’s planned  attacks “against corporate America and the financial system,” according to court  filings…

Wright eventually served as the informant’s bridge to the four other men  busted in the bombing plot–despite the fact that the quartet was “unsure” about  the snitch for whom Wright vouched. Of the five men arrested, four were involved  in the Occupy Cleveland movement, according to their Facebook profiles, a news  story, and a federal criminal complaint.

Predictably, Occupy Cleveland has tried to distance themselves from these cretins. Good luck with that. Jim Treacher points out the obvious connections, including:

“…..how did Brandon “Skabby” Baxter spend his time when he wasn’t plotting to murder people? He was organizing an Occupy rally. Last weekend.”

Make sure you read his whole post (complete with video), which will be, …uh, …’problematic” for Occupy Cleveland to dispute.

Gotta love those lil’ Occupy darlings. They’re so cute at that age.

Have a nice day!

You may wish to sit down for this one.

Last year, southern Arizona fell victim to a natural disaster. Dubbed the Monument Fire (since it started in the Coronado National Monument), it claimed roughly 30,000 acres in a two-week period.

 

From WND.com:

(The Monument Fire)…denuded the hillsides of vegetation. After the fire, record-breaking monsoon rains hit the region, triggering huge mudslides that left boulders the size of cars tumbling down hillsides.

The slides crushed Tombstone’s mountain spring waterlines and destroyed reservoirs for the town’s main water supply network.

And from kvoa.com:

Tombstone’s main water source are springs bubbling up in Miller Canyon, but the recent flooding after the fire has messed it all up.

Jack Wright, Tombstone’s Water Operator said, “It’s moved some boulders through here. You have seen caverns that didn’t exist. This was a drivable road a month ago.”

And then, …the real disaster happened. A Federal Government agency showed up.

From the dailycaller.com:

George Barnes, Tombstone’s city clerk and manager, explained to The Daily  Caller that since many of the pipelines are in a “wilderness area,” the U.S.  Forest Service will not allow the mechanized equipment needed to fix the  water-lines into the area for environmental reasons.

“We began working with the Forest Service but then we realized and found what  an incredible boondoggle that could be, even though we are very confident we  have a special status because our rights there pre-existed the Forest Service  and even the BLM [Bureau of Land Management]. We were there long before anything  and all we are asking is to fix our stuff,” Barnes said.

And perhaps my favorite quote:

……instead of allowing repairs as has happened in the past, “federal bureaucrats are refusing to allow Tombstone to unearth its springs and restore its water-lines unless [city officials] jump through a lengthy permitting process that will require the city to use horses and hand tools to remove boulders the size of Volkswagens.”

Got all that?

A town, here in the United States, in the year 2012, needs to get their drinking water back, and a Federal agency says, “Sure, but please use machinery from ….the 1800’s, okay? Have a nice day!”

Tombstone is fighting this in court, but they need to win quickly, since a slow victory will still be a loss for whatever townspeople are left.

—————————————————

This whole fiasco is eerily reminiscent of the California case back in 2009 with the San Joaquin Valley vs. the delta smelt, the main difference being this time the concern isn’t people’s livelihoods but rather their lives.

I have no idea whether this is merely typical, everyday environmental extremism, or just the latest example of federal overreach gone mad. And I really don’t want to consider the possibility that it has anything to do with President Petulant’s previous issues with the state of Arizona.

That would be impossible……wouldn’t it?

A Surfeit of Help

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

OBAMA TO TAKE STEPS TO BOOST OVERSIGHT OF OIL MARKETS

Super.

The article unintentionally encapsulates the hitch with this in only a couple of sentences:

A senior administration official said the president wants to increase the number of “cops on the beat” to stop illegal speculation and market manipulation, though he did not point to any examples of such illegal activity. The official said that oil prices have been rising mainly because of growing global demand and political uncertainty in the Persian Gulf.

So let me make sure that I understand this: the government is going to intervene on our behalf, to stop an illegal practice that we have no evidence is actually occurring, by offering a solution that…..will not address the likely primary cause.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

As we have discussed before, government regulation is often its own worst enemy. It most certainly isn’t a way to make something more efficient, with “government efficiency” being perhaps the best all-time oxymoron. But to make you feel better about them, seemingly every new Rule-&-Reg comes with a feel-good PR campaign, usually along the lines of “this regulation won’t rest while it fights for YOU”. Subsequently, when the regulation achieves hardly any of its stated goals, and instead creates several unintended consequences, what happens? Yep: more regulations to fix the new problems, which the initial regulations elicited.

It’s as if our Government were a morbidly obese yet error-prone chef who always eats his/her mistakes: their solution IS the problem.

Another example: on dailycaller.com, the unintended consequences of the Dodd-Frank law (passed back in 2010) has already had a profound effect on the banking industry, and as you might expect by now, it has not been what you might call ‘positive’.

Quote from the article:

Regulators have written only 185 of the expected 400 rules. But those 185  rules are expected to cost the private sector more than 24 million man-hours  each year to comply.

The tracker has also found that those 185 rules take up more than 5,300  pages.

“For example, let’s just get it down to the community banker — the person  that loans money to most of the small businesses in our country,” Neugebauer  said in a phone interview. “We’ve had a few community bankers come in here and  say, ‘you know, they’re hiring a lot more compliance officer than they are loan  officers.’ That is increasing the cost of banking and, ultimately, they have to  charge higher interest rates and higher fees.”

“The other thing that it impacts for our small businesses is because of some  of the new rules and regulations, there’s a great deal of uncertainty about  certain types of financial activity that some of these entities can engage in,” Neugebauer added. “I think that as these rules come out, what we’re trying to  ascertain, and our committee has had a number of hearings on, is what the  unintended consequences of some of these rules and regulations, but more  importantly, just the sheer volume of them.”

What’s that old line? “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help“?

Maybe they should change their tagline:

Steyn on The Daily Caller

I confess: I love Mark Steyn.

No, no, no…..I’m not cutting out his picture into heart shapes, or stalking the man in parking lots; nothing like that.

I simply mean he’s the funniest and most prescient author/pundit around. He’s like Bob Newhart in his heyday, but with a British accent and a politically conservative bent.

If you haven’t heard him or read him, I’d initially pick up America Alone. Published in 2006, it’s even more relevant now than it was six years ago. It’s simultaneously “laugh-out-loud funny” (that’s a quote from Amazon.com, but I completely agree), and depressing. He may have penned it using a time machine, since so many of his concerns have already begun to occur.

Anyway, please check out Steyn’s latest interview with Ginni Thomas on DailyCaller.com. It’s roughly 20 minutes long, but well worth your investment of time.

*By the way, if you want to see the full list of his books or read some of his current writings, go here.

**And if you want to hear him in more of a speaker-&-audience setting, this clip is a good place to start.