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Category: Regulation

Jan 16 2025

AT&T Forced to Cancel 5G Home Internet in New York

Moonbattery is often why we can’t have nice things. An example from the People’s Republic of New York:

A new broadband law is going into effect this week in New York state requiring internet provider to offer low-income residents access to monthly broadband rates of $15 for 25Mbps or $20 for 200Mbps. As a response, AT&T has decided that it no longer plans to offer its 5G home internet in the Empire State…

As anyone with even a junior high understanding of economics is probably aware, price controls mean shortages. Ultimately the shortages result in products and services disappearing entirely.

“While we are committed to providing reliable and affordable internet service to customers across the country, New York’s broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state,” the company said in a statement provided to CNET.

As it descends into end-stage moonbattery, New York becomes less a part of the USA. Kevin O’Leary has advised against trying to do business there.

If the Empire State were to become its own country, private internet providers would be taxed and regulated out of existence. The government would step in to replace them, resulting in little if any internet service. But at least it would be free, meaning that someone else would be forced to pay for it.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Nov 20 2024

Free the Toyota HiLux Champ

With moonbats pried loose from power, cars can be made affordable again:

For instance, the 2024 Toyota HiLux Champ. It is a basic – a stripped down – version of the Tacoma pickup Toyota is allowed to sell here that stickers for $31,500 to start. The HiLux Champ stickers for about $13k to start. But Toyota is not allowed to sell it here.

Why not? Because it does not comply with pointlessly repressive federal regulations.

There is no legitimate reason for barring affordable vehicles like the HiLux from entering the U.S.market. There is only . . . bullsh[**]. Federal regulatory bullsh[**], for its own sake. For the sake of the make-work of the federal bureaucracy. And once he is formally the president, Trump could end it.

Maybe Javier Milei can lend him a chain saw to cut through the red tape moonbats have been using to suffocate us.

On a tip from R F.

Sep 05 2024

Mr. Wonderful: Blue States Uninvestable

Detroit was once the wealthiest city in the USA. Then came moonbattery. The Paris of the Midwest succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral, whereby liberal policies drive out productive citizens and investment, leaving behind an ever more toxic concentration of government-dependent losers who vote for ever more pernicious left-wing politicians. Rather than learning a lesson from this tragedy, we have allowed the cancer to spread. Now whole states are succumbing. Kevin O’Leary a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful has tried to warn us:

In a March 2023 clip that went viral this week, investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary sharply criticized Democratic economic policies and called blue states “uninvestable” during an CNN appearance.

“I don’t put companies here in New York anymore,” O’Leary then told “CNN This Morning” cohosts Kaitlan Collins, Poppy Harlow, and Don Lemon. “Or in Massachusetts, or in New Jersey, or in California. Those states are uninvestable.”

It isn’t just the greedy levels of taxation. As O’Leary observes,

“The regulatory environment is punitive.”

Democrats may kid themselves that after they consolidate control of the federal government, the whole country will be New York, so there will be no red states to escape to. However:

“I had a project in upstate New York behind the grid in Niagara Falls for electricity, a global data center we were building. Eventually, it got so bad with the politicians in the local region and the state policy, we moved it to Norway. … Norway has it now. Thousands of jobs.”

Leave liberals in control and they will do to the entire USA what they did to Detroit.

On a tip from MrRightWingDave.

Sep 05 2024

Illinois Democrats Crack Down on Shampoo Bottles

Freedom is a current theme of Democrats. By “freedom,” the Party of Government means freedom to indulge in degeneracy and kill any children who result. Everything else is to be tightly regulated by Big Government — even shampoo bottles:

The days are numbered for small shampoo bottles in Illinois hotels because of a new law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Hotels with more than 50 rooms are banned from providing single-use plastic bottles of shampoo, mouthwash and other toiletries starting July 1, 2025.

Illinois Democrats couldn’t find a reason to make shampoo bottles mandatory; therefore, they are forbidden.

Providing guests with the convenient bottles will result in fines of up to $1,500.

From big ways to small, Democrats never rest from their mission to make your life worse.

On a tip from R F.

Apr 28 2024

NYC Dictates Warning Labels for Soda and Hot Chocolate

Anarchotyranny means that even as the streets devolve into such violent chaos that the homicidal maniac John Hinkley Jr steers clear of New York City, businesses like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks are not permitted to sell their harmless products without warning labels:

Fast-food chains and coffee shops in New York City would have to slap a warning on menu boards and packaging under a new rule from the Adams administration.

The city Health Department’s first-in-the-nation edict will mean labels warning on food and drinks with more than 50 grams of added sugar, including frozen coffee drinks from places like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, fountain sodas and even hot chocolate.

Hordes of sociopathic scumbags looting and burning in the name of antiwhite race hate? No problem. Gangs of illegal aliens beating up police officers just off Times Square? No problem. People drinking soda and hot chocolate? Big problem, but no worries; Eric Adams is on it.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Apr 23 2024

Sheetz Set Upon by Feds for Not Hiring Criminals

Running a business? Prefer not to hire criminals? Hire them anyway — or our Democrat rulers will smash your kneecaps with the racism club:

Sheetz Inc., which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check, according to U.S. officials.

That’s the beauty of the “disparate impact” ploy. Since blacks are more likely to commit crimes, you have to hire criminals or you are discriminating against blacks.

Criminals may be the only identity group more likely than blacks to support Democrats. That’s why they get special treatment at everyone else’s expense.

The feds aren’t going to haul you into court for hiring someone who isn’t a criminal. So play it safe and hire the guy with a record. When the crook cleans out the till, chalk it up to the price of doing business in a country ruled by liberals.

The Feds explicitly do not allege that Sheetz has committed racial animus. They just cite the disparate impact.

They are going to make this hurt:

The EEOC, an independent agency that enforces federal laws against workplace discrimination, is seeking to force Sheetz to offer jobs to applicants who were unlawfully denied employment and to provide back pay, retroactive seniority and other benefits.

Some coincidence:

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Wednesday, the day Biden stopped at a Sheetz market on a western Pennsylvania campaign swing, buying snacks, posing for photos and chatting up patrons and employees.

The absurdly hypermanaged Biden evoked facepalms at this event, which invited comparisons to Trump that did not favor Creepy Joe:

[T]he overall response to his presence seemed incredibly tame for a sitting president only a few months away from his re-election bid.

Whereas,

On Tuesday evening, Trump had visited a bodega in Harlem, New York, where he was met with cheering, energetic crowds.

It makes quite the contrast:

At least he managed to refrain from sniffing the little girls. The sunglasses indoors are a reminder that he needs to be heavily drugged even to shuffle across a floor; behind them, his eyes probably look like spinning pinwheels.

Then there is Trump, behind enemy lines in deep blue New York:

This underscores that Trump represents the American people, whereas Biden personifies the hostile liberal establishment.

Maybe the bodega will be accused of civil rights violations by the federal bureaucracy too. A worker there has already been prosecuted persecuted by Soros stooge Alvin Bragg for defending himself from a criminal.

On tips from Franco, KirklesWorth, and Heckrules.

Mar 02 2024

Biden Regime Comes After Water

They want to take away bacon, eggs, coffee, hot showers, and even toilets. Still we tolerate moonbat rule. Maybe there will be pushback now that the Biden Regime is targeting water:

Without so much as a whisper of pushback from Congress, the White House is bulldozing forward with a regulatory proposal that could cost the average household up to $10,000 extra in water costs.

The pretext for tightening the garrote another notch is regulation of polyfluoroalkyl substances a.k.a. PFAS. The authoritarian WHO recommends governments limit them to 100 parts per trillion. That’s not good enough for Biden’s EPA…

… which is trying to reduce its advisory limit of 70 ppt to a hard limit of 4 ppt for two prevalent types of PFAS, PFOA and PFOS, for all drinking water.

As Democrats consolidate power through the regulatory state, America will make the smothering nanny states of Australasia look free by comparison:

The new standard would be 4% of the WHO’s recommendation and less than one-tenth of 1% of that of Australia and New Zealand.

Typically of Biden policies, this will cost us — as much as $11,150 per year for a household, according to a Black & Veatch report commissioned by the American Water Works Association.

No worries. Biden can just print money to subsidize water, then pass it out on the basis of membership in favored identity groups.

For perspective,

The EPA limits arsenic in water at 10 parts per billion and cyanide at 200 parts per billion. Thus the EPA is asking that taxpayers pay tens of billions of dollars to bring the prevalence of some plastics to a level less than a fraction of a percent of what we allow for literal poisons.

The arbitrary limits proposed may be absurd from the perspective of public health. But with Democrats, the issue is never the issue. The issue is always increasing their power.

On a tip from R F.

Aug 08 2023

Michelle Wu Introduces Boston to Democrat Death Spiral

One problem with putting people in positions of authority based exclusively on their status as left-wing Women of Color is that you end up having to live under the likes of Kamala “Heartbeat Away” Harris, Ketanji “I Dunno What a Woman Is” Brown Jackson, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu:

Wu signed an executive order that prohibits city-owned buildings from being constructed or renovated in a way that allows for the use of fossil fuels.

As with her extravagant electric bus campaign, taxpayers will be saddled with the cost.

Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern civilization. Without them, society would collapse. Most of us would perish of starvation. Yet liberals have decreed that fossil fuels are politically incorrect.

While the new order only applies to city-owned buildings, Wu is moving forward with a plan she announced last year that would ban fossil fuels in new residential building projects throughout Boston.

Warns Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil:

[I]f Boston is not a conducive business environment for development, I am sure other nearby communities would welcome the enhancement this would mean to their property tax base.

Like Chicago, New York, and before them the slum that was once the wealthiest city in the USA, Boston has entered the Democrat Death Spiral.

Unsurprisingly,

Chicago’s far-left Mayor Brandon Johnson praised the move.

Wu’s election suggests that Boston has already passed the tipping point:

Wu is a self-professed “progressive” who campaigned on so-called “climate justice.” While delivering her victory speech in November 2021, she said that Boston was “ready to become a Green New Deal city.”

Difficult as it may be to imagine, those who follow Wu will be worse still. As productive citizens are driven out, ever more radical leftists will be elected by a population comprising an ever-rising percentage of kooks and parasites.

On tips from Franco and MrRightWingDave.

Aug 08 2023

Biden Regime Comes After Ceiling Fans

Yesterday the temperature here in Phoenix broke 110° for the 37th time in the past 39 days. No worries; even after the Democrats have deliberately made air conditioning prohibitively expensive, at least we will still have ceiling fans. Or maybe not:

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding energy conservation standards for ceiling fans. If adopted, the new “energy efficiency” standards would apply to all standard ceiling fans, hugger ceiling fans, large-diameter ceiling fans and high-speed belt-driven ceiling fans. …

The proposed rule comes as part of the Biden administration’s “climate change” agenda.

Anyone who believes that restricting ceiling fans will have any perceptible effect on the climate is encouraged to get in touch regarding great deals on oceanfront properties in the Phoenix area.

Add ceiling fans to the list, along with air conditioners, refrigerators, heat pumps, washing machines, dishwashers, water heaters, showers, gas stoves, gas generators, cars, et cetera.

The face of tyranny perpetually changes to trick us into letting our guard down. Here’s what it looks like nowadays:

By the time the ChiComs get around to invading, they will be welcomed as liberators.

On a tip from Dr. Kufi Tutite.

Jul 24 2023

Democrats Have Cold Showers on Tap

Do you like taking cold showers? Too bad:

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed energy efficiency standards on water heaters it said would save consumers $11.4 billion on energy and water bills annually.

Sounds wonderful. Except that was the liberal spin. Here’s reality:

Some won’t be able to afford the upfront cost regardless. Good thing we won’t need hot showers. With Democrats running $trillions through green energy money-laundering boondoggles, the whole country will be taking a bath.

On tips from Wiggins and Franco.

Jul 24 2023

Democrats Come After Gas Generators

When Democrat energy policy inevitably results in rolling blackouts as in California, don’t expect to fall back on a gas generator. The Biden Regime is all but banning them:

A proposed Consumer Product Safety Commission rule limits the amount of carbon monoxide a product can emit, with the commission admitting that 95 percent of portable gas generators on the market cannot comply with its new standard. As a result, industry leaders say, the rule will prompt widespread generator shortages, as manufacturers only have six months to design generators that meet the proposed regulation. That process normally takes years, Portable Generator Manufacturers’ Association executive director Susan Orenga told the Washington Free Beacon.

They know we will be needing the generators. This latest decree…

…comes as many Americans face an increased risk of power outages as the country increasingly relies on green energy to produce its electricity. A whopping two-thirds of North America faces an “elevated risk” of power blackouts this summer, a leading grid watchdog found in May, a vulnerability that stems from America’s increase in green power generation and decrease in fossil fuel power plants. California, for example, saw power outages in the summer of 2022 as electricity demand surged.

Portable gas generators can help those who experience a power outage keep the lights on, and nearly five million households use them. Should the Biden administration finalize its rule, however, the generators could become difficult to obtain. The commission’s rule prohibits manufacturers from stockpiling non-compliant generators prior to the rule’s enactment.

Given the conspicuous malevolence of many prominent Democrats, banning generators might be attributed to sheer malice. More likely, it is part of a strategy.

Consider the Black Lives Matter riots that were aggressively encouraged by the entire liberal establishment, prominently including the mainstream media, the Democratic Party, and virtually every major corporation. Consider the violent chaos that has been deliberately unleashed by openly pro-crime attorneys general installed throughout the country by the Democratic Party’s #1 donor, George Soros (e.g., Alvin Bragg [New York] George Gascon [Los Angeles], Kim Foxx [Chicago], Larry Krasner [Philadelphia], Chesa Boudin [San Francisco], Kim Gardner [St Louis], Marilyn Mosby [Baltimore], Monique Worrell [central Florida]). Democrats believe that societal collapse works in their favor.

Leftists have gotten a lot of mileage out of the January 6 kerfuffle. Imagine how they will exploit the genuine political instability that will inevitably result from their pretended attempts to control the global climate through repressive regulations that leave us shivering in the dark.

All they need is enough unrest to justify door-to-door gun confiscations. If that flies, it is game over. Off to the gulag for Moonbattery readers.

On tips from R F and Stormfax.

Jan 10 2023

Feds Move Against Gas Stoves

There is no basic component of our lives so innocuous that moonbats won’t ban it mainly because they can. The petty tyranny starts in Petri dishes of wokeism like Berkeley, where authoritarians banned gas hookups in new buildings as of 2020. It moves on to blue states like California, which is banning gas-powered furnaces and water heaters by 2030, and New York, which is coercively phasing out gas heating. With Democrats in power, it soon goes nationwide, potentially moving beyond harassment actions like the recent stealth tax on natural gas to a federal ban on gas stoves — although it looks like the Regulatory State may hold off for now on confiscating politically incorrect stoves currently in use:

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission backtracked on claims it was considering banning all gas stoves across the United States over health concerns.

Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, said that potential regulations would only ‘apply to new products’ in a tweet Monday. ‘CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products,’ he added.

At least we don’t have to worry about heavily armed FBI agents showing up to confiscate our current stoves as dinner cooks. We just won’t be able to buy new ones.

Progressives borrowed this approach from a similarly totalitarian ideology, Islam. Mohammad allowed Christian churches to exist in the territory he conquered. But construction of new churches was forbidden.

If the name Trumka sounds familiar, that’s because Richard Trumka Sr was a left-wing labor leader. Big Government has as incestuous a relationship with Big Unions as it does with Big Media; all are run by power-hungry Democrats.

In his backtrack Monday, Trumka added that people who choose to switch to electric stoves would receive an $840 rebate due to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Only Democrats would pretend to reduce inflation by printing increasingly worthless money to hand out for free. If a private company were run by people this economically inept, it would go bankrupt within a month.

Democrats have it in for natural gas because it is a cheap, abundant, clean-burning fossil fuel. Energy must be expensive so as to lower our standard of living, because people are harder to rule when they aren’t focused on just trying to survive. This is what drives the global warming hoax, and is probably the impetus behind recent claims that the gas stoves we have been using for generations could cause higher rates of asthma and even cancer.

As always with moonbats, the jihad against gas stoves has a cultural Marxist component. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep Don Beyer (D-VA) sent a letter to the CPSC last month demanding action against gas stoves due to the “cumulative burden on black, Latino and low-income households that disproportionately experience air pollution.”

More to the point, low-income households are disproportionately affected by unnecessary regulations that raise the cost of household appliances. Rather than banning stoves, people should be encouraged to turn on the range hood for proper ventilation.

Trumpka told Bloomberg gas stoves were a ‘hidden hazard,’ and added that ‘any option is on the table’ and ‘products that can’t be made safe can be banned.’

Next, they will announce that forks must be phased out so that you don’t poke yourself in the eye with one.

On tips from Varla, THOUGHTCRIMINAL2084, and Ed McAninch.

Dec 03 2022

Regime Pigs Out on Lobster While Repressing Industry

Meanwhile, as the Liberal World Order prepares to make us eat bugs (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc), the globalist ruling class fattens itself on less humble fare. Two hundred Maine lobsters were brought to the District of Corruption for Biden’s dinner with Emmanuel Macron on Thursday:

The choice in cuisine comes as the traditional lobster-fishing industry in Maine is under the pressure of new regulations imposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

Fortunately the Regime’s attack on lobster fishing has been stalled in federal court for the time being.

The regulations are intended to protect the endangered right whale from becoming entangled in lobster fishing lines…

Is saving the whales still a thing? I thought moonbats were saving the flourishing polar bears now.

Even a Democrat congresscritter is fed up:

How our rulers will stuff their faces with lobster after fishermen have been driven out of business by punitive regulations never occurs to Biden et al, whose slogan is “Après nous, le déluge.”

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

Jul 03 2022

Elderly San Franciscans Forbidden to Park at Own Home

Absolute moonbattery means absolute government. That means being at the mercy of the sort of arrogant a-hole bureauweenies who run ultraliberal San Francisco.

It isn’t easy to find a place to park in San Francisco. Fortunately for Ed and Judy Craine, they have a car pad, where they had been parking for the past 36 years — until:

Out of the blue, the couple got a ticket for parking in their own driveway. …

It came with an enormous fine: $1,542 dollars, plus another $250 per day if they didn’t get the car off their carpad.

The city’s Planning Department said maybe they could get a waiver and be allowed to use their own property — provided they could “prove that parking was a historic use on the lot.”

The couple dug up and submitted various photographic evidence that cars had been parked there since at least 1938. But bureaucrats sniffed that the proof was unsatisfactory.

Why was this elderly couple suddenly forbidden to park their car at their own home?

Planning Chief Dan Sider … said someone made an anonymous complaint to the city.

Two types benefit from government hypertrophy: petty tyrants and rats.

In their condescending benevolence, SF’s pencil-pushing overlords deigned to let the fine slide — so long as the Craines never park on their car pad again.

No American should have to live like this.

On a tip from R F.

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