Gas prices will come down, but other troubles lie ahead

April 14, 2026

Gas prices have been very high for the last five years. While such things are frequently blamed on the current administration, and often rightly so, there are quite a few factors involved. Some of those are: availability and the price of crude oil, refining costs and profits, transportation, storage, blending and retail, regulations, and taxes.

Another factor is the company from which you may purchase gas. Some gas stations can purchase gas at better prices than others due to various factors, including the size of their company and how much gas it purchases for all of its subsidiaries. Smaller companies, or single stations do not have the purchasing power of larger companies.

In the Biden/Harris administration, the main factor was regulation. Today, in the Trump administration the military activity in Iran is a big factor. However, one major factor that is not usually addressed in such cases is the effect federal and state taxes have on prices.

Data from taxfoundaton.org tells us that the federal government charges 18.4 cents per gallon. While each administration could perhaps do something about that, they rarely do. And something administrations cannot do anything about is the amount of taxes each state places on fuels. This is generally referred to as a “user fee.”

Additional information from taxfoundation.org is a list of state gas taxes, which range from 8.95 cents per gallon in Alaska to 70.92 cents per gallon in California. The difference between the highest and the lowest state tax rate is nearly 62 cents per gallon.

The five highest gas taxes in the country are: 
California - 70.92 cents per gallon
Illinois - 66.4 cents per gallon
Washington - 59.04 cents per gallon
Pennsylvania - 58.7 cents per gallon
Indiana - 54.5 cents per gallon
Michigan - 48.2 cents per gallon

On the other side of this issue are the five lowest gas taxes:
Alaska - 8.95 cents per gallon
Hawaii - 18.9 cents per gallon
New Mexico - 18.88 cents per gallon
Arizona - 19 cents per gallon
Oklahoma and Texas - 20 cents per gallon

Local readers may be interested to see that Virginia drivers pay 41.6 cents per gallon and West Virginia drivers pay 35.7 cents per gallon in taxes.

So, in the state with the highest tax rate, California drivers will pay 89.32 cents per gallon in taxes, and drivers in Alaska will pay 27.35 per gallon in taxes, when the federal tax is figured in.

Thus, while the actions of a given administration may have a positive or negative effect on gas prices, state and federal taxes definitely have an effect.

Looking at per gallon gas prices over the recent past, provided by the Energy Information Administration, average prices in President Donald Trump’s first term were $2.42 in 2017, $2.72 in 2018, $2.60 in 2019 and $2.17 in 2020.

During President Joe Biden’s tenure, prices were $3.01 in 2021, $3.95 in 2022, $3.52 in 2023, and $3.30 in 2024.

When Trump took office for the second term in 2025, the average price was $3.10. By February of 2026, the average price had dropped to $2.80.

The current rise in prices has a few factors behind it, including the increases in crude oil prices due to the Iran conflict. Also, prices tend to begin rising each spring, as spring break and vacation travel picks up, increasing demand for gasoline.

The general feeling is that when the Iranian conflict slows or ends, and when travel slows in the fall, prices will return closer to the level of Trump’s first term.

As if the high fuel costs were not enough of a problem, an article in the April issue of Newsmax magazine reports on efforts of some states to track how much their citizens drive. “Critics warn they will inevitably lead to user fees based on miles driven, thereby restricting the long-cherished American dream of hitting the open road.”

The article continues, suggesting this “Big Brother” technique will enable states to track your every move, and “also impose a per-mile surcharge to discourage commuting or long-haul driving.” “It could also be used to penalize those who drive during rush hour or other peak driving times.”

One goal of this vehicle tracking is to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions by limiting auto mileage and to compensate for declining gas tax revenues caused by electric vehicles and more efficient gas-powered engines.” Or maybe, if this doesn’t work, they will just raise the gas tax. Drivers in California, Illinois, Washington, et al, will surely like that.

Economist Stephen Moore worries that such fees could cause prices to rise, as the cost of delivering merchandise will rise. He also noted, “The fact that they’re going to have these monitors, it’s almost like having a camera on you everywhere you go.”

Noting that vehicles are “liberating inventions,” you can go where you want, when you want, he says, “That’s why Communist countries didn’t allow people to have automobiles. They love mass transit because they know where you’re going, and they can direct where you are going.”

Given the negatives of vehicle tracking, maybe this temporary rise in gas prices isn’t as bad as we think it is.

The federal government is growing more intrusive under Joe Biden

First, the FBI was instructed to go after parents who are concerned about their children’s education. This followed news of meetings of school boards where parents spoke out about elements of their children’s education that were at odds with traditional educational curricula.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo that called for the FBI and DOJ to “address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.” This move was described by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton as an excuse to target parents who are opposed to Critical Race Theory, also known as CRT, and other left-wing teaching materials. This, he said, was done at the behest of a prominent liberal education group, the National School Boards Association.

Fitton said that the memo “compared these parents to domestic terrorists and suggested using the Patriot Act to target them,” and that the Biden DOJ is “targeting average Americans going to school board meetings and complaining about Marxist propaganda brainwashing going on in our nation’s schools.”

“Just like that, you had AG Garland essentially issue an all hands on deck command to the national security establishment to target parents that were ‘threatening’ school board members,” Fitton continued. This move, he said, is “designed to intimidate parents [who are critical] of critical race theory extremism, transgender agenda extremism and the other threats to the safety, security and privacy of their children.”

In doing this, the federal government is attacking a basic operation of our democracy — freedom of speech — he concluded.

While parents were angry that schools had inserted lessons on topics that they not only disagreed with, but were unaware of — and rightly so — there was little evidence of actual violence or real threats to the safety of any school board members or school personnel.

Perhaps Garland, as the nation’s top law enforcement officer and a former judge, is unaware of the state and local law enforcement agencies that actually have jurisdiction in such matters, were there to be evidence of actual violence or intimidation.

Then the Department of Homeland Security sent agents to California in case some truckers decided to form a protest near the stadium where the Super Bowl was to be played, and "potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities" protesting vaccine mandates and other issues.

As reported by ABC7 in Los Angeles, “The agency said the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend, possibly disrupting traffic around Super Bowl LVI, and reach Washington in March in time for the State of the Union,” citing an Associated Press bulletin.

The report continued, saying, “The White House says the department is ‘surging additional staff’ to the Super Bowl, just in case (emphasis added).”

This action was taken before any actual trouble occurred, and without being asked by local authorities for help. Yet again, the federal government inserts itself into local/regional events, ignoring that there are local law enforcement agencies that could and should address them.

For a protest to make a difference, it must get the attention of those who have implemented the subject of the protest. The Canadian trucker protest has done that, significantly hindering the delivery of needed materials. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has only dug in his heels, refusing to lift the mandates the truckers oppose, despite the problems the protest has caused.

All the while one of the federal government’s legitimate and major areas of concern — the southern border — has been ignored, allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to enter the country with little or no involvement by federal authorities, other than assisting them in getting into the country through its reckless border policy of inaction. And then flying and busing them in the dark of night around the country to unsuspecting American cities and towns.

“We the people” are fed up with lots of things these days. Government overreach, at all levels, has finally put that last straw on the camel’s back. Resistance to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports has caused a mass protest in Canada and a significant protest in France, as well as some other countries.

Here in the U.S. many are fed up with the continued forced wearing of masks, particularly for young school children. This begs the question: Do masks really work? Well, some do and some don’t. 

For the purposes of stemming the spread of Covid, cloth masks — a very common choice — do not work. But any mask excels in harming the health and development of young children. And vaccines also do not work to prevent catching and spreading the virus.

Where the wearing of masks and getting vaccinated are concerned, that is where the defensive statement “my body, my choice” actually is relevant.

Over-the-top denial of people’s freedoms to ostensibly fight the Covid virus has at last passed the threshold, and people are standing up to the authoritarian control policies of federal, local, and state governments. 

A major benefit of the United States is the guarantee of a broad array of personal freedoms. Seeking those freedoms led to the war against Great Britain that allowed the colonies to establish the most free nation in history, and many Americans are unwilling to let that go.

The transformation of the United States of America is ongoing

Today, we are living in crazy and dangerous times. Tens of thousands of people from many countries travel many miles to get to Mexico so that they can enter the United States illegally.

There are different reasons why they want to be here, just as there are different types of people coming here. Some come with criminal intent, such as gang members and drug dealers. Some come because they know they can get a lot of stuff for free.

The most desirable ones, however, realize that America is so much better than where they came from. They can have a good life here. We have freedom, jobs and opportunities, due to the crystal-clear vision of the Founders.

The number of illegal entrants coming into the country is likely above any previous level, with more than 1.4 million people coming in illegally the first nine months of 2021, according to U.S. Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations Encounters.

This high number is due to the failure of the Biden administration to do its job of providing border security, whether that is through ignorance of why borders are important, or is a deliberate effort to attract illegal aliens to our country.

Of course, the Biden administration insists that the borders are not open. Perhaps one of them can tell us how open borders, as they imagine them, would actually look, and be worse than what we see with our own eyes.

Even as those migrants from socialist, communist and otherwise poor countries come here to enjoy living in what is regarded by many as the best country on Earth, people in the government of this country continue to increase the control of the government over its people, gradually moving it toward the kind of places these illegal migrants could not wait to get away from.

The Democrats in Congress and the administration are busy transforming America into a government-controlled “paradise” where many things are free, except, of course, the individuals under the thumb of a government that seeks to control important things like healthcare, jobs and many current freedoms.

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, is a strong opponent of the Democrat’s multi-trillion-dollar efforts to increase dependence on government, calling these proposals that total some 5.5 trillion dollars "fiscal insanity" paid for with "vindictive" tax hikes, that will basically change “our whole society to an entitlement mentality." 

In a shocking display of abysmal ignorance about economics, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about raising taxes on businesses by saying, “In the past, companies have passed on these costs to consumers… We feel that that’s absurd and unfair, and the American people won’t stand for that,” she said.

She apparently perceives economic matters like most “progressives,” which does not include understanding economics, specifically that every cent a business spends — for materials, wages, advertising, loans for new equipment or expansion, taxes, etc. — is paid for with income from consumers that buy its product or service. And when taxes and other costs go up, prices have to go up to pay for them.

Perhaps this is why they see no problem with humongous spending bills that will add trillions more to the already-gigantic national debt of $28.8 trillion.

A New York Post opinion column by Betsy McCaughey had this to say about the spending bill: “The colossal bill Democrats in Washington, DC, are assembling this week is a slap in the face to Americans who work, pay taxes and support their families. It demeans the work ethic and glorifies government handouts, sending the message that work and self-sufficiency are for suckers: better to climb on Uncle Sam’s gravy train, which will now provide cradle-to-grave benefits.”

McCaughey mentions “Biden bucks,” which are monthly payments to almost all parents, based on how many children they have. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t even matter whether the parents work or not. She notes that Democrats also promise “virtually free child care until the children turn 5, free community college and, for seniors, new Medicare and elder-care benefits,” and “12 weeks a year paid leave for anyone who claims a family member — even a distant relative like a spouse’s grandmother — needs care.”

“This bill pours money down a rathole,” McCaughey wrote. “It allocates a whopping $45 billion to make community college free. Students won’t have to spend a single dollar on tuition or fees — or pursue studies that prepare them for work. Only about one in five students now finishes community college within two years. A big reason is lack of academic skills when they enter. Nothing in this program will change that.”

Manchin urges “needs testing” to see who really needs these freebies and financial bonuses. That’s moving in the right direction, but the real question that needs an answer is, “are these measures, which will dramatically increase the peoples’ dependence on government, really a proper role for our government?”

The answer to that is a definite “No!” Our government is supposed to be as small, inexpensive and unobtrusive as possible. That’s how it started; that’s what built the country to which so many want to come;  and that’s how the country works best.

A broad, reality-based COVID-19 perspective is desperately needed

Stipulated: COVID-19 is a serious disease. If you get it, you may be in for a few horrible weeks of fighting it. And, you may lose your life.

This coronavirus sneaked out of China, and caught the world by surprise. Very little was known about it, and dealing with it was difficult.

The warnings from scientists about becoming infected were horrifying. Which explains why such drastic actions by federal, state and local officials were so readily obeyed. At first.

As of Sunday, nearly 90,000 Americans had died from it, and about 1.5 million Americans were known to have been infected with the disease. But there are some problems with these numbers.

We really don’t know how many have actually been infected, because many infected people don’t have symptoms, or have mild symptoms, and are not tested. If they aren’t tested, nobody knows they have the virus. An article in Forbes magazine cited a study by a team at Kyoto University estimating that nearly 18 percent of those with the virus had no symptoms. We have learned the percentage of persons tested that have a positive result is about 13 percent.

If testing shows that 1.5 million Americans have the active virus, applying the Kyoto study’s data to that figure means that approximately 1.8 million actually have been infected. Two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand people were going about their business, never knowing they were infected, and could have been infecting others.

The number of people who actually die from it is also uncertain. That’s because if a person passes away and has been infected, the mandated conclusion often is that they died of COVID-19. There is no distinction between whether someone died “because of” the virus, or merely “with” the virus.

Factcheck.org noted in an analysis that “The CDC guidance says that officials should report deaths in which the patient tested positive for COVID-19 — or, if a test isn’t available, ‘if the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty.’ It further indicates that if a ‘definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as probable or presumed.'”

So, if someone has pneumonia or is run over by a beer truck and dies, and they test positive for the virus, they may be recorded as having died of the virus, whether that was the primary cause of death or not.

In dire situations like this pandemic, a reasoned perspective is needed, but is very difficult to develop. We certainly do not want to make too little of the coronavirus, putting Americans needlessly at risk. But we also must not make too much of it by needlessly continuing the heavy economic and social restrictions, and the damage they produce. It is a narrow line to walk.

On May 17 there were 1,507,829 active cases. Of those, 89,589 had died and 275,560 had recovered. For active cases, death occurred for 6 percent, while 18 percent recovered. No information is provided about the other million-plus who tested positive.

USA Today reported earlier this month, “Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified to Congress in March that the mortality rate may be as low as 1.0 percent when accounting for people who are infected but don’t develop symptoms severe enough to be tested.”

Some perspective on causes of death in 2018, from the CDC:

Heart disease: 647,457; Cancer: 599,108; Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936; Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201; Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383; Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404; Diabetes: 83,564; Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672; Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633; Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173.

Available information indicates that unless you are elderly or have some sort of pre-existing health issue, you have a very good chance of surviving COVID-19.

Fauci, who is President Donald Trump's coronavirus expert, stated at a coronavirus task force meeting, “I've looked at all the models, I've spent a lot of time on the models. They don't tell you anything. You can't really rely upon models," according to The Washington Post.

Yet inaccurate models were utilized in developing the measures that health officials said should be implemented to limit the impact of the virus, and a one-size-fits-all list of restrictions was imposed on the nation.

As time passed, while New York, New Jersey and a few other states were hit hard, several states were barely affected. Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, Wyoming and Vermont had fewer than 1,000 cases and fewer than 100 deaths. Eight other states reported more than 1,000 cases, but also fewer than 100 deaths. The harsh restrictions in these states may have done more harm than good.

As more time has passed, some states have relaxed restrictions, allowing a slow, careful reopening to occur. Georgia and Florida have drawn criticism for their re-opening actions, but have shown declining cases, so far.

Abandoning the one-size-fits-all approach and treating areas according to their actual disease level is a sensible way to start getting the economy re-started. That is a very important step.

Coronavirus developments: radical restrictions, and a new wrinkle

There is a lot of concern about the on-going restrictions on activities to prevent spreading the coronavirus.

National, state and local leaders must walk a fine line between restrictions for safety and not infringing unnecessarily on their citizens’ freedoms. People are beginning to object to some of the restrictions. And a look at the things some state and local governments are doing reveals just how far over the line some have gone.

One episode in Baltimore reportedly appeared to be a drug raid, as police surrounded the building. It was Sunday, and the building was a church, in which fewer than 10 people had gathered, appropriately spaced, as per instructions. In fact, there were more police present than worshipers.

At a drive-in service in Mississippi, attendees were fined $500, even though they did not leave their cars. And in Kentucky on Easter weekend, police were dispatched to churches to record the license numbers of cars in the parking lots. Three Massachusetts men were arrested, and faced the possibility of 90 days in jail, for crossing state lines and … playing golf.

In some states, citizens are urged to snitch on their neighbors who do not obey the strict stay-at-home edicts. Hardened criminals are being released from prison so they won’t catch the virus, while stores that sell guns to people for their protection are closed. However, pot and booze stores remain open.

In Brighton, Colorado, a family was in an empty park, with the father and daughter playing softball, when police showed up. Officers alleged that the father and daughter had violated the social distancing guidelines. But none of the officers obeyed the social distancing rules they were enforcing.

The father, believing he had done nothing wrong, refused to show the police his ID, and was summarily handcuffed right in front of his wife and daughter and put in the back seat of a police car. Later, the father said, “During the contact, none of the officers had masks on, none of them had gloves on, and they’re in my face handcuffing me, they’re touching me.”

He was released from custody after several minutes, and later was issued an apology from the City. Better late than never.

Not all restrictions are so wildly radical, but citizens in at least six states have started protests over what they see as unreasonable restrictions.

Michigan bans “all public and private gatherings,” but still allows in-person lottery sales. Residents and citizens who own homes in the state in addition to their primary residence may not access their second homes.

A Facebook post declared, “Dope stores? Open. Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going broke!” At a large protest rally in the Michigan state capitol, protesters carried signs that read, “tyranny worse than the virus” and “honk if you love liberty.”

People in stores that sell both food and other materials were able to buy food, but were prohibited from buying other products, such as hardware supplies and gardening seeds, which were deemed “non-essential.”

Michigan House speaker, Lee Chatfield, posted on Twitter: “Non-essential in Michigan: Lawn care, construction, fishing if boating with a motor, realtors, buying seeds, home improvement equipment and gardening supplies. Essential in Michigan: Marijuana, lottery and alcohol. Let’s be safe and reasonable. Right now, we’re not!”

In too many cases, efforts at imposing safe behaviors have turned into authoritarian malfeasance.

As the struggles against COVID-19 continue, a professor at Tel Aviv University has discovered a new feature of the virus. Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel has determined from analyzing data from nine countries where the virus infected thousands — U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain —that regardless of how the country reacted to the virus, all countries experienced common infection patterns.

“His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week,” the Townhall.com story reported.

“There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures,” Ben Israel stated in his report.

Addressing Israel’s extremely strict quarantine and closure restrictions, he told the Israeli news agency Mako, “I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic.” 

The US response is less drastic than Israel’s response. But if the professor’s conclusion is correct, the US also has over-reacted, and is still doing so. The frighteningly high predictions of deaths and infections in the models followed by the administration’s virus task force have been greatly lowered. But the restrictions based on those incorrect models remain in place.

Each day those restrictions are in place, our economy incurs further damage, more businesses are on the edge of permanent closure, and people suffer even more of the dangers of isolation, including death.

We need to begin restoring normalcy to the country, and in doing so we must use common sense and practice responsible socializing.

George Orwell’s vision is coming true, but his timing was off

In 1946, author George Orwell, fighting tuberculosis, isolated himself on the Scottish island of Jura to write his last book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel.” The story describes a totalitarian state where the government — “Big Brother” — created the language — “Newspeak” — to control the thoughts of its citizens.

Published 71 years ago, and having gained great fame, Orwell gave us concepts like “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime,” “Newspeak,” “2+2=5,” and “memory hole.” Some of those concepts are relevant today, both in Orwell’s fictional account, and in reality.

Now, 36 years after 1984, Orwell’s dystopian society — a society in which individual freedoms suffer under government edicts and other forms of control — is forming in the United States.

It is becoming easier and easier to find evidence of the creeping impact of Big Brother-like control. Many instances go unreported, and are even unknown beyond the local area where they occur. Some, however, are reported for all to see.

The president of a libertarian think tank in Colorado, Jon Caldara, who also was the most-read opinion columnist of The Denver Post, lost his job with The Post because of a comment in a recent column. What could he have written that would deserve such strong action? “[T]here are only two sexes, identified by an XX or XY chromosome,” he wrote. “That is the very definition of binary.”

This comment is absolutely consistent with biologic science, but is a no-no in much of today’s America. You see, it does not conform to the politically correct “Newspeak” imposed on us by a relatively tiny minority of people, even though it is the scientifically correct position.

In 2018 a French teacher at West Point High School in West Point, Virginia was fired by the local school board after a four-hour hearing, an hour of which was a closed session, in a 5-0 vote. Why was Peter Vlaming fired?

Because he resisted administration orders to refer to a ninth-grade female student with male pronouns. The girl had undergone a gender transition, and insisted she be treated as a male. Vlaming resisted because it put him in conflict with his religious beliefs. He suggested to the student that he would instead use a first or last name, but that wasn’t good enough for the student. Or, apparently, the school board.

So, a teacher’s First Amendment right to freedom of religion takes a back seat to a female ninth-grader’s desire to change genders and be identified by everyone as a male. “Thoughtcrimes” are real and being punished.

This case is thought to be the first in Virginia. It likely will not be the last.

Today, on some college campuses, where the intersection of competing ideas was once a strong and valued concept, conservative speakers are shouted down or prevented from opportunities to speak, and this occurs with the unquestioned support of the school administrations.

Professors are urged, or ordered, to give prior “trigger warnings” when a topic that may upset students is scheduled. Some schools have mandated that some types of speech are restricted to “free speech zones,” so that students will not accidentally stumble on information that is at odds with their beliefs, which may upset them, or make them think. Students now have “safe zones” where they may hide from ideas differing from their own.

A fascist group called “Antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) indulges in violence, and crosses the line of Constitutionally protected peaceful protests in public places. Members attack police, throwing eggs, bottles and other things at them. Yet the police often retreat, rather than arresting and jailing the law-breakers, and doing so forcefully if necessary. This is partly due to the generally false narrative that police frequently indulge in unnecessary violence, so they play it safe, and back off.

And Virginia’s government is now under control of the liberal/progressive elite from the DC-Richmond corridor, and the Democrat-led government has set about turning the state into California-East, despite the strong objections of a substantial portion of state residents.

This dystopian direction America is now traveling is fueled by liberal/progressive thinking, not the national government. Many people, both in and out of government, however, prefer majority rule — a strict democracy — which can be more easily turned against the people than the republican system our Founders developed.

John Adams reminded us: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Thomas Paine said, "A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is."

The brilliant columnist Walter Williams notes that “We would no longer be a government ‘of the people.’ Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.”

But this faction doesn’t understand the reasons our nation was created as it was; a large number of Americans have no idea how much damage their desires will impose on their country.

Clean Water Rule gets its long overdue and well-deserved repeal

President Donald Trump began an effort to relieve the country of an unnecessary and harmful regulation by signing an executive order in February of 2017. The order began the roll-back of the Clean Water Rule put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. The Rule was a regulation published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to clarify water resource management in the United States under a provision of the Clean Water Act of 1972. 

That action to repeal the Rule has now been finalized. It has been termed a major win for the rule of law, property rights, and the environment. It was heavily criticized for making it difficult for people to farm or even build a home on their own property.

What it did was to alter the meaning of the phrase “waters of the United States” — those waters under the control of the federal government — to include waters so small that they couldn’t even be seen by the naked eye.

Here is the way the American Farm Bureau Federation explained things: “…distant regulators using ‘desktop tools’ can conclusively establish the presence of a ‘tributary’ on private lands, even where the human eye can’t see water or any physical channel or evidence of water flow. 

“That’s right — invisible tributaries! 

“The agencies even claim ‘tributaries’ exist where remote sensing and other desktop tools indicate a prior existence of bed, banks, and [ordinary high-water marks], where these features are no longer present on the landscape today.”

That definition of what regulated “waters” were literally made it impossible for property owners to know what on their property is or might be covered by the Rule, but subjected them to heavy civil and/or criminal penalties for breaking the Rule.

It would therefore have been possible for dry land that holds water for a few days after heavy rain to be ruled a “water” under the Rule. That meant a mud puddle could have fallen under federal control.

The result was that some perfectly good lands were judged improper for projects their owners intended to use them for, and in the worst cases, land owners were punished for what were otherwise normal, acceptable land uses.

The vagueness of the rule, and thus the danger it imposed on property owners who want to use their property for their chosen purposes, such as to farm it or to develop it, was substantial enough to have drawn criticism from then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy back in 2016: “[T]he Clean Water Act is unique in both being quite vague in its reach, arguably unconstitutionally vague, and certainly harsh in the civil and criminal sanctions it puts into practice.”

Its reach also encroached on states’ rights, the ability of the individual states to have much to say about properties within their own borders, an important element of the restrictions imposed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.

Such examples of overreaching by the federal government are not difficult to find. They have been growing, as legislators have enacted overreaching laws, and bureaucrats have implemented regulations with the force of law. All of which puts regular citizens at risk of breaking one of the thousands of federal no-nos.

On that topic, Townhall.com said the following in 2016: “There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws, with 10,000-300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. In fact, our entire criminal code has become a leviathan unto itself. In 2003, there were only 4,000 offenses that carried criminal penalties. By 2013, that number had grown by 21 percent to 4,850. The code has become so big, that the Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association simply do not have enough staff to adequately categorize every law we have on the books.”

This information becomes even more important when considering what might happen after November of 2020 when the nation elects its president for the next four years.

This land, built on the principals of personal freedoms and limited government, has already seen exponential growth in the size and reach of the federal government. The more laws, regulations and rules we have on the books, the less freedom the people have. The number of decrees is unfathomably large and therefore the average person, or even those knowledgeable about laws, cannot possibly know everything for which we citizens can be criminally or civilly punished.

While President Trump believes in removing regulations that needlessly or improperly interfere with normal activities — like the Clean Water Rule — and reducing taxes that allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned income, the socialistic promises offered by Democrat hopefuls will do a sharp 180 on both of those things.

With a compliant Congress and like-thinking, over-zealous bureaucrats, if one of the more radical folks running for the Democrat nomination gets elected, they could initiate scores of new mandates and prohibitions, further limiting the freedoms of law-abiding Americans.

Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke gave a hint to the thinking of some of these people: “Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

This is precisely the opposite of the attitude we need in the White House.

Duty, honor, country? Government employee misbehavior on the rise

Over the last couple of years we have seen the Internal Revenue Service target conservative organizations seeking 501(c)(3) status, and heap time delays and over-the-top demands for information on them to delay or deny granting that status. We have seen the Department of Education sneakily change Common Core from guidelines to policy.

These things make one wonder whether those working in the American government understand the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and that they are obligated to obey them and honorably serve the American people.

The answer seems to be, “yes,” as long as it suits their purposes.

The current furor over getting permission for the government to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign appears to be a continuation of these questionable, and possibly illegal, activities.

A CNN host has come forth to defend this activity, citing “very real fears” of “something very suspicious” in the campaign. And he justified the surveillance activities with the question, “don’t you want to know” if something illegal was going on?

Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” told Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy in an interview earlier this month that there was a willingness to collude with the Russians that needed to be investigated. He apparently believes that this perceived willingness justified taking away the Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” from some 100 people who were associated with Donald Trump in some way or another, according to the House Intelligence Committee.

Since taking away one citizen’s privacy is a serious matter, and taking privacy from a hundred is substantially more so, there must be a procedure the government must first go through to protect citizens’ rights. And there is. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires a court ruling to permit such invasions of privacy.

How does this procedure work? Well, here is Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s description, via Politico: “On any given day in Washington, 11 judges — all designated by Chief Justice John Roberts, without congressional advice or consent — convene to hear surveillance applications from the United States government. Behind closed doors and without checks or scrutiny, they balance the threats of espionage and terrorism with Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches and seizures.”

And what is the record of performance by the FISA court in protecting Fourth Amendment rights? Blumenthal notes, “the odds are stacked strongly in favor of the federal government. Last year alone, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court … heard nearly 1,800 such applications from the U.S. government; not a single request was denied. In its entire 33-year history, the FISA court has rejected just 11 of 34,000 requests.”

For the non-mathematicians out there, the approval rate of applications to the FISA court is astounding. Only .00032 percent of the applications are not approved.

But then again, these are one-sided proceedings, with only government accusations and evidence allowed. It’s just like hearings before a grand jury, about which it has been famously said that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It’s like when your favorite sports team wins a game against … no one.

Obviously, it is critically important that the government be allowed to pursue legitimate potential espionage and terrorism threats, but it is equally important to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.

It may be the case that the government has always acted appropriately. Or, maybe it has fudged its case before the court successfully, on occasion. But the accusation of collusion by the Trump campaign and the resulting court ruling clearly raises serious questions about this process.

The FBI’s “evidence” provided to the FISA court in support of permission to spy on 100 associates of Donald Trump contains the now-infamous and fraudulent Trump dossier. It is a document compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and political opposition research group Fusion GPS on behalf of, and partially funded by, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign through a third party.

The FISA warrant application failed to disclose to the court exactly who had financed the dossier – a Trump political opponent – information that should have been included in the application.

Defenders of the action against these 100 individuals claim that the dossier was not a primary piece of evidence in the application. Okay, fine. Then, given its scurrilous and fraudulent background, and the at-best questionable behavior of some of the FBI’s upper management, why was it included in the application at all?

Wouldn’t it be helpful – in recognition of the popular concept of the day: transparency – to have access to the FISA application, so that the American people can see what the FISA court saw?

“Created in the wake of Watergate-era revelations about executive-branch spying on domestic dissidents, the FISA court today operates in the shadows without public oversight,” and “the executive branch almost never loses,” Blumenthal wrote.

He believes this broken system must be repaired, and is working on legislation to fix it. It “deprives the entire system of trust and credibility in the eyes of the American people,” he wrote.

Whether Surveillancegate can be reversed and confidence in the system restored only time will tell. But we must try.

Strong resistance to federal overreach is overdue, but growing

For four years, an organic farmer in Indiana was harassed when he supplied raw milk to the local organic co-ops. What prompted this action was what the Goshen News reported in 2010 as an outbreak of campylobacter bacterial infections “that might be traceable to the Forest Grove Dairy.”

Obviously, if bad milk makes people sick, health departments need to be involved, however, farm owner David Hochstetler told the paper at the time that health departments had not visited the farm to investigate, and he was never found to have sold bad milk.

Despite never having his product tied to the outbreak, Hochstetler’s farm was subjected to frequent inspections and harassment by two federal agencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice, actions believed to be aimed at closing down the dairy farm. And then Elkhart County Sheriff David Rogers responded to Hochstetler’s complaint, realized there was no justification for such harassment, and stepped in and blocked this over-reach from the federal government.

Rogers wrote to the DOJ telling them he would take action, including “removal or arrest” of federal agents, if the inspectors came without a signed warrant specifying probable cause and giving a clear reason justifying their invasive searches.

Rogers explained in the local newspaper, “My research concluded that no one was getting sick from this distribution of this raw milk. It appeared to be harassment by the FDA and the DOJ, and making unconstitutional searches, in my opinion. The farmer told me that he no longer wished to cooperate with the inspections of his property.”

You may be wondering why federal agencies were involved in what clearly was a local/state issue. This is not unusual.

The Daily Caller reported a year ago on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Waters of the United States rule that critics say “would allow the agency to regulate waterways previously not under federal jurisdiction, including puddles, ditches and isolated wetlands.”

The EPA may be the agency that has done the most damage to the U.S. economy and business operations with its over-zealous and intrusive mandates, concerning such things as incandescent light bulbs, toilets that use “too much” water, limiting wood burning and charcoal use, and now extending its tentacles to regulating temporary water collections on private property.

Many states are growing tired of these overreaches. A bill introduced in the Indiana State Legislature reflects that state’s frustration. The bill nullifies all of the EPA’s regulations and places all environmental protection authority with the state’s Department of Environmental Management. And 24 states, including Indiana, have filed a lawsuit in federal court to strike down the new source performance standards affecting new coal burning power plants.

The EPA’s costly excesses and other excessive behaviors by administrative agencies trample all over the plain language the Founders deliberately wrote into the U.S. Constitution through the Tenth Amendment, which states: “The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

However, it is the wont of federal bureaucracies to grow like weeds, often with the tacit approval of our elected representatives in Congress, and not infrequently at their behest. Bureaucrats isolate themselves into protected enclaves extending their reach beyond that which is appropriate. They often do serious harm to their bosses, the American people, usually without accountability for their misdeeds.

Having escaped the heavy hand of King George only a few years before, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to create a document establishing a new government for the United States that could not evolve to be as oppressive as Mother England had been; a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” It was no accident that the phrase “the people” is mentioned five times in the Bill of Rights.

The Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School explains: “The U.S. Constitution grants the federal government with power over issues of national concern, while the state governments, generally, have jurisdiction over issues of domestic concern. While the federal government can enact laws governing the entire country, its powers are enumerated, or limited; it only has the specific powers allotted to it in the Constitution.”

Some constitutional scholars and experts have described the Tenth Amendment as the Bill of Rights’ “catch-all” amendment, a strong reminder to federal lawmakers and officials that the federal government has strict limits, and everything outside those limits is under the control of the states.

The checks and balances of our governmental system give Congress the duty and the authority to oppose excessive behavior by the executive branch. The federal budget is an excellent tool for this purpose. It is shameful that these elected representatives have so often and for so long failed to protect their own Constitutional authority and, more importantly, the best interests of the people they were elected and sworn to represent.

The failure of Congress to oppose over-zealous federal agencies means the states have no other choice but to strongly oppose the unconstitutional federal intrusions, either through legal action, or by actions like that of Sheriff Rogers.

San Bernardino: nothing more than gun control opportunism for the left

Before the sound of gunfire in San Bernardino had faded away, the radical left wing, ever at the ready, had sprung into action. Members of the intolerant LACTOS (Liberals Against Conservative Terrorist’s Offensive Shootings) attempted to blame the GOP and right-wingers for the massacre in tweets: “Well, c'mon, GOP: Tell me how your prayers are with the victims and their families *this* time while you do nothing.‬” And, “No, I'm tired of praying. I want action. I want people to stop saying ‘MAH GUNS’ in response to death.‬”

Meanwhile, at the White House, five minutes after the shooting started, a clerk in the Rush To Judgment Department removed a sheet from a stack of pre-printed president’s statements calling for more gun control, while the folks in the WVNT (Workplace Violence, Not Terrorism) and CCCAP (Climate Change Causes All Problems) offices geared up for the coming propaganda drive.

From the BFIL (Blame First, Investigate Later) and the ITNRAS (It’s The NRA, Stupid) were these, first from Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley: “@MartinOMalley‬ Horrifying news out of #SanBernardino‬. Enough is enough: it's time to stand up to the @NRA‬ and enact meaningful gun safety laws.” And: “Another day, another mass shooting in NRA's America.‬”

Those calling for more and stricter gun laws seem unable to grasp that people who want to commit the crime of killing innocents probably won’t obey gun laws, either.

Terrorism is designed to scare people into irrational actions or surrender, and the terrorists are winning against the American left, which is clearly terrified of guns. Some rationality is desperately needed.

From 2009 to 2013 the United States experienced 38 “rampage shooting incidents” (RSI) that claimed 227 lives, according to the Rampage Shooting Index. That works out to roughly one RSI every five months claiming more than 20 lives in each incident. These numbers rank the U.S. at the top of the list. In a not-so-close second place is Norway, with 77 RSI deaths, but only one RSI. Next is Germany with 25 deaths and three RSIs.

These numbers ought to scare the stuffing out of every American, not just the anti-gunners on the political left. Numbers, however, can be used to create many false images, and this is one example of that. The numbers cited previously do not include the elephant in the room: the population of those nations.

When America’s population of 315 million becomes part of the equation – the largest by far in the study – the U.S. drops all the way down to sixth place, behind Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland. Leading the way with 15 deaths per 1 million population is Norway, while Finland leads in the number of incidents with .37 per 1 million residents. The U.S. numbers are .72 deaths and .12 incidents per 1 million population, ranking sixth – not first – in both categories. Furthermore, the nations with worse numbers per 1 million people than the U.S. have “restrictive” firearm regulations, while the U.S. and Belgium (7th place) do not.

These numbers show that Norwegians are 20 times more likely to die in an RSI than Americans. Adding two years to the span of time cited above, Norway remains in first place, but the U.S. drops to eighth place, when national population is part of the equation.

And so another liberal false narrative falls flat on its face, but where guns are concerned, as with climate change, the left refuses to let inconvenient facts get in the way.

Some on the left are legitimately fearful about the supposed gun violence issue, while others are focused on gaining further control of the American people. This latter group includes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and many, if not most, of the active politicians in the Democrat Party.

Brittany M. Hughes, reporting on the Media Research Center online in September, addressed the number of guns in America, noting that in 2009, it was estimated by the National Institute of Justice that there were approximately 310 million firearms in the country. Today, that number is likely higher.

“The number of firearm-related homicides in 2013 – the CDC’s most recent data – was 11,208,” she wrote, “(so about 309,988,792 guns were just milling about that year, not killing anybody).”

She continued: “That means about 0.000036 homicides were committed per gun in the United States in 2013,” less than four homicides per 100,000 firearms.

Some clear thinking on the use of firearms to discourage crimes came from the Cato Institute: “The rationale for [gun control] legislation is to reduce accidental shootings and the criminal use of guns against people. But if harm reduction is the goal, policymakers should pause to consider how many crimes … are thwarted by ordinary persons who were fortunate enough to have access to a gun.”

Bloomberg Business in 2012 analyzed the vastly contradictory claims about defensive gun use, estimating defensive actions occur tens of thousands of times a year, adding, “100,000 is not a wild gun-nut fantasy,” while suggesting higher numbers are more likely.

Common in mass shootings in the U.S. is that they occur in “gun-free zones” where guns are prohibited. It is the American left that prefers gun-free zones, not the American right.

Going Rogue, Part XI: EPA will break the law to do what is right!

The Environmental Protection Agency, long behaving as a narrowly focused ideological organization instead of as a servant of the people, may finally have messed up sufficiently to bring itself down, or at the very least to have earned a significant degree of restriction to its slash-and-burn approach to fossil fuel energy production.

Causing misery to thousands of honest, hard-working people who have lost jobs and businesses, suffered downturns in their business and/or paid heavy fines because of the agency’s dogmatic focus on imposing unwarranted restrictions on behaviors the agency dislikes, the EPA has been caught in an incestuous relationship with organizations that advocate the same ideology as agency bureaucrats.

The work of the Environment & Energy Legal Institute (EELI) reveals that the EPA has secretly colluded with environmental activists to drive the Obama administration’s manic global warming agenda. The organization’s report reveals “records showing illegal activities by EPA staff, conspiring with certain environmental group lobbyists to draft EPA’s greenhouse gas rules behind the scenes and outside of public view.”

As reported by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Michael Bastasch, who quoted Chris Horner, an EELI senior attorney, “These emails, which EPA forced us to litigate to obtain, prove beyond any doubt that EPA conducted its campaign to impose the global warming agenda unlawfully, making the rules themselves unlawful.” Mr. Horner says the EPA’s rules were made in collusion with environmental groups, including the radical Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), thereby excluding the public from the process, and are therefore unlawful.

EELI says the EPA wrote the Clean Power Plan and other agency rules with an “unalterably closed mind” centered on an anti-fossil fuel agenda. The EPA’s behavior and the NRDC’s perspective perfectly fit the dictionary definition of the ideologue: an impractical idealist, an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.

A 2014 EELI report focused on emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request that showed coordination between EPA employees and environmentalists that discussed the Keystone XL pipeline and clean coal technology. The EELI asserts that the records show “the influence on EPA by pressure groups, the same groups from which EPA obtained numerous senior officials,” and that these activists helped to craft the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) that regulates carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

The New York Times found similar connections last year: “Indisputable, however, is that the Natural Resources Defense Council was far ahead of the E.P.A. in drafting the architecture of the proposed regulation.”

Analyzing the EPA’s strategy, Mr. Horner commented: “The issue is solely whether Congress will stop EPA from unlawfully winning by losing, which is to say, using sham rulemaking to metastasize its desired harms before the typical timeline of litigation allows for intervention. The public needs to consider this illegality and cynical lawlessness when the President stands up with the EPA administrator … to lecture us all about how they’re just doing the right thing.”

Question: If the EPA and the Obama administration are doing the right thing, why did they feel compelled to break the law?

The EPA is expected to finalize the CPP this week, and may already have done so by now. According to comments from the White House, this new version of the plan is even stronger than last year’s proposal, which was objectionable enough to prompt several states to file suit opposing the rule, and to outrage some labor unions.

Even before this stronger version of the plan had been developed, United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts said the CPP would result in tens of thousands of union members losing their jobs. Doing the right thing “will lead to long-term and irreversible job losses for thousands of coal miners, electrical workers, utility workers, boilermakers, railroad workers and others without achieving any significant reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Roberts said in a statement. In addition to the thousands who have already lost their jobs, he estimates that the rule will cause 75,000 job losses in the coal sector by 2020, rising to 152,000 by 2035.

Apparently unconcerned with the thousands of American workers whose lives will be turned upside-down, an EPA spokesperson said, “The Clean Power Plan follows our clear legal authority under the Clean Air Act,” adding that, “The supreme court has decided multiple times that EPA has an obligation to regulate greenhouse gases,” without apparent concern for the repercussions.

The EPA, like all federal agencies, is duty-bound to enthusiastically adhere to only one ideology, and that is the one outlined by the U.S. Constitution.

The EPA, or any federal agency, may properly seek input from any individual or organization, but they may not take information or advice exclusively from one side without providing the opportunity for opposing points of view and data to be provided, and to objectively consider all points of view to arrive at a fair and sensible conclusion.

Out of control actions by agencies of the federal government are much too frequent, and repercussions for this inappropriate, intolerable and sometimes-illegal behavior are nearly non-existent. A number of people should be fired, and a few deserve to be indicted.

Don’t hold your breath!

Scientists demonstrate more fallacies of “manmade global warming”

It seems that every few weeks we hear or see some scientific data that seriously challenges the politically correct notion that the activities of man, burning fossil fuels for energy, are irreversibly and catastrophically damaging the Earth’s atmosphere and causing global temperatures to rise to dangerous levels.

There are two competing ideas about the last two decades of global temperatures: One says temperatures have plateaued for the last 18 years, but the other that says the rising temperature trend has continued through that period.

According to a CNS News story Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama/Huntsville, argues that there has been no global warming for at least the last 18 years, and bases that position on actual raw temperature data he and fellow University of Alabama/Huntsville professor and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer collected from 14 instruments aboard various weather satellites.

However, in a story in The Washington Post, a group of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say that based upon their analysis of new surface temperature data and corrections to old data that NOAA knew were imperfect, there has been no break in global warming.

Some questions arise from these diametrically opposed opinions.
    •    Which of the two methods of measuring global temperature – surface temperatures, used by the NOAA team, or satellite observations, used by Drs. Christy and Spencer – is the most accurate? Or is some combination of the two, or some other method, more accurate?
    •    If trained scientists do not, cannot or will not agree on what the truth is about whether temperatures are rising or not, how can the rest of us understand climate changes?
    •    Since the outcome of its analysis confirmed NOAA’s previously held idea about global temperatures increasing, and in light of previous manipulation of data by some well-known scientists, should we be concerned about NOAA “correcting” data it “knew were imperfect?”

Just last month The Daily Caller reported on a paper stating that the global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years.

What this means is that even if the global temperature has risen as the global warming faction says, it shouldn’t be a cause for concern, since global temperatures have been in the current range before, and long before man started doing the things the global warming gang thinks are responsible for the increase.

The paper was written by Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, who examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8 millennia. Dr. Lloyd is a former lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), the body that is perhaps the most honored authority for climate opinion, and an organization that supports manmade global warming.

The work of Dr. Lloyd, Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer is out of the mainstream of climate opinion, a mainstream that is shrinking, as more of its members question the “settled science” of rising global temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels, and recognize the failure of dozens of flawed climate models that predict warming that many scientists argue hasn’t occurred. More and more, this line of thinking appears more political than scientific.

One danger of politically influenced science is that some ideologically motivated government agency will use it as an excuse to impose draconian measures to achieve political goals, some of which are unachievable, and others that are dangerous to our economic system and well-being. Enter the Environmental Protection Agency, arguably the most harmful of the abundant federal bureaucracies that increasingly control our every word, thought and deed.

In its headlong effort to crush the economies of coal mining states and destroy businesses that rely in whole or in part on coal, the EPA has overdriven its headlights with a scheme that depends upon faking science.

The EPA attempted to impose a rule that mandates the use of so-called carbon capture and storage, where CO2 from burning coal would be injected underground instead of being released into the air. The agency was quite content to put this rule into effect, despite knowing that the method does not work.

“We submitted comments for the record explaining that EPA had made a mockery of the interagency review process, ignoring the government's own experts in order to push an ideological agenda,” the Energy and Environment Legal Institute’s Chris Horner said. Mr. Horner’s organization has forced the EPA to back down on imposing the rule, but a report by Inside EPA says that the White House may force the EPA to go to court and defend a process that it had to admit doesn’t work and is thereby legally indefensible.

Here is a multiple-choice question: Why would a federal agency attempt to impose a process on coal burning facilities that it knows doesn’t work?
   A. It believes it has unlimited power
   B. It cares little about the repercussions of its actions
   C. Its employees serve ideological and political masters instead of the American people
   D. All of the above

The EPA is upside-down.