Bureaucrats want to tell moms whether to feed babies formula or breast milk, what to put in lunch boxes, how far children are allowed to walk alone, and at what ages. They want to regulate what products are sold, not just to children, but to adults, in case children ingest dangerous substances or choke on a dangling cord.

Day-care costs are an especially hot topic for the presidential campaign because they have risen 70% since the 1980s. In 31 states and Washington D.C., day care is more expensive than public college tuition, according to Schachter.

The presidential candidates are taking different approaches to tackle the problem of high child-care costs. Clinton plans to cap child-care expenses at 10% of family income. She wants to accomplish this “by significantly increasing the federal government’s investment in child-care subsidies and providing tax relief for the cost of child care to working families.”

Clinton also wants to create a new program to grant $1,500 scholarships to “as many as one million” students’ parents to help them cover child-care expenses. That won’t necessarily help much with day care, because the average cost is $1,000 per child per month.

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Schachter provides shocking examples of these regulations. Arizona has 114 pages of regulations, and Michigan has 329 pages. Those range from the required spacing between the coat hooks and mattresses to the type of food that can be served.

In several states babies are not allowed to be swaddled when they sleep, to prevent sudden infant death syndrome — even though there is no evidence that swaddling is connected with SIDS. This makes babies fussier, requiring additional day-care staffers.

Bureaucrats seem particularly preoccupied with what children eat at day-care centers. That’s not surprising to anyone who has observed the change in government nutrition guidelines over the years. For instance, meat and eggs were in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s, out in the 1970s through the 2000s, and now back in again. Butter and whole milk were taboo, but now they’re part of “good cholesterol.”

So it doesn’t seem as though anyone should believe the bureaucrats any more. But that doesn’t stop them from issuing countless food regulations. Day-care centers run by Head Start have to follow rules issued by the Department of Agriculture, including requirements to provide foods such as cow’s milk, even if parents prefer that children not drink cow’s milk.

Day-care providers in Pennsylvania, Schachter’s home state, are required to throw out uneaten food and wash out containers in case the child might consume hazardous material later on.

Just as Obamacare drove up the price of health care, government regulation is driving up the price of day care and school lunches.

The nanny state follows children all the way through school. On the one hand, school systems weigh children and send home letters if they think they are overweight. Yet on the other hand, they limit recess and activities such as dodgeball and tag because those games might cause accidents. Reasonable people might think that the school systems might see a link between banning physical activity and the increase in obesity. But bureaucrats don’t seem to have made the connection.

Schachter’s rigorous analysis of the way government is elbowing aside parental decision-making and raising costs is chilling — and deserves to be read by parents and non-parents alike.

FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey deciding not to suggest that the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information.

“This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling,” an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. “We talk about it in the office and don’t know how Comey can keep going.”

The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton’s house during the investigation.

And since the passing of the ACA, healthcare costs have gone up substantially. And we've forced a consumer in the market, who doesn't need the service/product, in order to pay for those who use it. That's typically called robbery/extortion.

A nonpartisan group finds 19 out of every 20 campaign dollars donated by the media industry are being given to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The analysis was conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, and it found that 96 percent of campaign donations by roughly 480 media donors went to Clinton. Roughly 430 media people donated $382,000 to Clinton, while roughly 40 media people donated $14,000 to Donald Trump’s campaign.

The center named many reporters, editors, and anchors who donated to Clinton and Trump, but did not provide a complete list of the 400-some members of the press it investigated. The center’s study is titled “Buying of the President 2016: Journalists shower Hillary Clinton with campaign cash.”

The established media has been sharply critical of Trump and his supporters.

Wikileaks has also revealed the ongoing collusion between a growing number of journalists and the Clinton campaign. Emails hacked from campaign chairman John Podesta show media personalities aiding Clinton and her campaign by secretly passing her debate questions, “teeing up” problematic stories for them, volunteering as informal advisors, and more.

Gallup reports trust levels in the media have hit their lowest since the polling company began tracking them in 1997. Only 32 percent of respondents say they have a “great deal” or “fair” amount of trust in the media.

The email thread starts with Jesse Ferguson, the campaign’s Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesman, describing the venues and target audience of each gathering:

The “broader universe of New York reporters” includes several top news anchors for network and cable channels, many of whom are listed as a “yes” for the appearance:

From ABC: Cecilia Vega, David Muir, Diane Sawyer (who could only stay for 30 minutes), and George Stephanopoulos.

From CBS News: Norah O’Donnell.

From CNN: Brianna Keilar, Gloria Borger, John Berman, and Kate Bolduan.

From MSNBC: Alex Wagner and Rachel Maddow (“TRYING”).

From NBC: Savannah Guthrie.

This is an off-the-record cocktails with the key national reporters, especially (though not exclusively) those that are based in New York. Much of the group includes influential reporters, anchors and editors.

The goals of the dinner include:
(1) Give reporters their first thoughts from team HRC in advance of the announcement
(2) Setting expectations for the announcement and launch period
(3) Framing the HRC message and framing the race
(4) Enjoy a Frida night drink before working more

TIME/DATE: As a reminder, this is called for 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 10th .

There are several attendees – including Diane Sawyer – who will be there promptly at 6:30 p.m. but have to leave by 7 p.m.

…

FOOD: This will include cocktails and passed hours devours.

REPORTER RSVPs

YES
1. ABC – Cecilia Vega
2. ABC – David Muir
3. ABC – Diane Sawyer
4. ABC – George Stephanoplous [sic]
5. ABC – Jon Karl
6. Bloomberg – John Heillman [sic]
7. Bloomberg – Mark Halperin
8. CBS – Norah O’Donnell
9. CBS – Vicki Gordon
10. CNN – Brianna Keilar
11. CNN – David Chalian
12. CNN – Gloria Borger
13. CNN – Jeff Zeleny
14. CNN – John Berman
15. CNN – Kate Bouldan [sic]
16. CNN – Mark Preston
17. CNN – Sam Feist
18. Daily Beast – Jackie Kucinich
19. GPG – Mike Feldman
20. Huffington Post – Whitney Snyder
21. MORE – Betsy Fisher Martin
22. MSNBC – Alex Wagner
23. MSNBC – Beth Fouhy
24. MSNBC – Phil Griffin
25. MSNBC – Rachel Maddow (TBD)
26. MSNBC – Rachel Racusen
27. NBC – Savannah Gutherie [sic]
28. New Yorker – Ryan Liza [sic]
29. NYT – Amy Chozik [sic]
30. NYT – Gail Collins
31. NYT – Jonathan Martin
32. NYT – Maggie Haberman
33. NYT – Pat Healey [sic]
34. PEOPLE – Sandra Sobieraj Westfall
35. POLITICO – Glenn Thrush
36. POLITICO – Mike Allen
37. VICE – Alyssa Mastramonoco [sic]
38. VOX – Jon Allen

UNKNOWN
1. Bloomberg/MSNBC – Jonathan Alter
2. Buzzfeed – Ben Smith
3. CBS – Gayle King
4. CBS – John Dickerson
5. MSNBC – Ed Schultz
6. MSNBC – Joe Scarborough
7. New Yorker – David Remnick
8. Tina Brown
9. UNIVISION – Maria-Elena Salinas
10. YAHOO – Matt Bai

DECLINED
1. CNN – Jake Taper [sic]
2. CNN – Jeff Zucker
3. Huffington Post – Arianna Huffington
4. Huffington Post – Sam Stein
5. NBC – Chuck Todd
6. NYT – Carolyn Ryan
7. CNN – Erin Burnett
8. NPR – Mike Oreskes
9. MSNBC – Mika Brzezinski
10. MSNBC – Thomas Roberts
11. MSNBC – Andrea Mitchell
12. NY Post – Geofe Earl [sic]

HRC TEAM RSVP (14)
1. John Podesta
2. Robby Mook
3. Huma Abedin
4. Marlon Marshall
5. Amanda Renteria
6. Jennifer Palmieri
7. Kristina Schake
8. Jesse Ferguson
9. Nick Merrill
10. Karen Finney
11. Jim Margolis
12. Joel Benenson
13. John Anzalone
14. Mandy Grunwald

When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the ***** controlled less than three percent of Germany’s 4,700 papers.

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By 1944, a shortage of newspaper and ink forced the **** government to limit all newspapers first to eight, then four, and finally, two pages. Of the 4,700 newspapers published in Germany when the ***** took power in 1933, no more that 1,100 remained. Approximately half were still in the hands of private or institutional owners, but these newspapers operated in strict compliance with government press laws and published material only in accordance with directives issued by the Ministry of Propaganda. While the circulation of these newspapers was approximately 4.4 million, the circulation of the 325 newspapers and their multiple regional editions owned by the **** Party was 21 million. Many of these newspapers continued to publish until the end of the war.

In the postwar US occupation zone of Germany, the military administration believed that the reestablishment of a free press was vital to the denazification and reeducation of Germans, and essential to the creation of democracy in Germany. Therefore, the first German newspaper approved for publication by the US military high command appeared on January 24, 1945, in Aachen, three months after the US forces captured the city.

...Let me ask Vox a question: when was the last time that America’s chair industry hiked the price of chairs 400% and suddenly nobody in the country could afford to sit down? When was the last time that the mug industry decided to charge $300 per cup, and everyone had to drink coffee straight from the pot or face bankruptcy? When was the last time greedy shoe executives forced most Americans to go barefoot? And why do you think that is?

The problem with the pharmaceutical industry isn’t that they’re unregulated just like chairs and mugs. The problem with the pharmaceutical industry is that they’re part of a highly-regulated cronyist system that works completely differently from chairs and mugs.

If a chair company decided to charge $300 for their chairs, somebody else would set up a woodshop, sell their chairs for $250, and make a killing – and so on until chairs cost normal-chair-prices again. When Mylan decided to sell EpiPens for $300, in any normal system somebody would have made their own EpiPens and sold them for less. It wouldn’t have been hard. Its active ingredient, epinephrine, is off-patent, was being synthesized as early as 1906, and costs about ten cents per EpiPen-load.

Why don’t they? They keep trying, and the FDA keeps refusing to approve them for human use. For example, in 2009, a group called Teva Pharmaceuticals announced a plan to sell their own EpiPens in the US. The makers of the original EpiPen sued them, saying that they had patented the idea epinephrine-injecting devices. Teva successfully fended off the challenge and brought its product to the FDA, which rejected it because of “certain major deficiencies”. As far as I know, nobody has ever publicly said what the problem was – we can only hope they at least told Teva.

In 2010, another group, Sandoz, asked for permission to sell a generic EpiPen. Once again, the original manufacturers sued for patent infringement. According to Wikipedia, “as of July 2016 this litigation was ongoing”.

In 2011, Sanoji asked for permission to sell a generic EpiPen called e-cue. This got held up for a while because the FDA didn’t like the name (really!), but eventually was approved under the name Auvi-Q, (which if I were a giant government agency that rejected things for having dumb names, would be going straight into the wastebasket). But after unconfirmed reports of incorrect dosage delivery, they recalled all their products off the market.

This year, a company called Adamis decided that in order to get around the patent on devices that inject epinephrine, they would just sell pre-filled epinephrine syringes and let patients inject themselves. The FDA rejectedit, noting that the company involved had done several studies but demanding that they do some more.

Also, throughout all of this a bunch of companies are merging and getting bought out by other companies and making secret deals with each other to retract their products and it’s all really complicated.

None of this is because EpiPens are just too hard to make correctly. Europe has eight competing versions. But aside from the EpiPen itself, only one competitor has ever made it past the FDA and onto the pharmacy shelf – a system called Adrenaclick.

And of course there’s a catch. With ordinary medications, pharmacists are allowed to interpret prescriptions for a brand name as prescriptions for the generic unless doctors ask them not to. For example, if I write a prescription for “Prozac”, a pharmacist knows that I mean anything containing fluoxetine, the chemical ingredient sold under the Prozac brand. They don’t have to buy it directly from Prozac trademark-holder Eli Lilly. It’s like if someone asks for a Kleenex and you give them a regular tissue, or if you suggest putting something in a Tupperware but actually use a plastic container made by someone other than the Tupperware Corporation.

EpiPens are protected from this substitution. If a doctor writes a prescription for “EpiPen”, the pharmacist must give an EpiPen-brand EpiPen, not an Adrenaclick-brand EpiPen. This is apparently so that children who have learned how to use an EpiPen don’t have to relearn how to use an entirely different device (hint: jam the pointy end into your body).

Imagine that the government creates the Furniture and Desk Association, an agency which declares that only IKEA is allowed to sell chairs. IKEA responds by charging $300 per chair. Other companies try to sell stools or sofas, but get bogged down for years in litigation over whether these technically count as “chairs”. When a few of them win their court cases, the FDA shoots them down anyway for vague reasons it refuses to share, or because they haven’t done studies showing that their chairs will not break, or because the studies that showed their chairs will not break didn’t include a high enough number of morbidly obese people so we can’t be sure they won’t break. Finally, Target spends tens of millions of dollars on lawyers and gets the okay to compete with IKEA, but people can only get Target chairs if they have a note signed by a professional interior designer saying that their room needs a “comfort-producing seating implement” and which absolutely definitely does not mention “chairs” anywhere, because otherwise a child who was used to sitting on IKEA chairs might sit down on a Target chair the wrong way, get confused, fall off, and break her head.

(You’re going to say this is an unfair comparison because drugs are potentially dangerous and chairs aren’t – but 50 people die each year from falling off chairs in Britain alone and as far as I know nobody has ever died from an EpiPen malfunction.)

Imagine that this whole system is going on at the same time that IKEA spends millions of dollars lobbying senators about chair-related issues, and that these same senators vote down a bill preventing IKEA from paying off other companies to stay out of the chair industry. Also, suppose that a bunch of people are dying each year of exhaustion from having to stand up all the time because chairs are too expensive unless you’ve got really good furniture insurance, which is totally a thing and which everybody is legally required to have.

And now imagine that a news site responds with an article saying the government doesn’t regulate chairs enough.

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ObamaCare’s individual mandate penalizes taxpayers who fail to purchase health insurance. But there are so many exemptions that of the 33 million or so people who lacked insurance in 2014, the IRS levied the penalty against only 6.6 million tax filers (which actually represents a larger number, maybe 17 million people).

For example, the Affordable Care Act exempts “individuals who cannot afford coverage” from the penalty. You qualify for this exemption if your “required contribution” exceeds roughly 8.13 percent of your household income. For individuals who don’t have access to a suitable employer plan, the “required contribution” is equal to “the annual premium for the lowest cost bronze plan available in the individual market through the Exchange in the State in the rating area in which the individual resides,” minus “the amount of the credit allowable under section 36B for the taxable year (determined as if the individual was covered by a qualified health plan offered through the Exchange for the entire taxable year).” In other words, if you would have to pay more than 8.13 percent of your income for an ObamaCare plan, even after accounting for premium subsidies, then coverage is unaffordable for you and ObamaCare doesn’t penalize you for not buying coverage.

You would think this exemption would somehow apply to the 10,000 residents of Pinal County, for whom coverage will become dramatically more expensive when the Exchange collapses. If those folks are like Exchange enrollees in the rest of the country, the vast majority of them (85 percent or so) receive premium subsidies. When their Exchange coverage disappears next year, so will those subsidies. If they wish to purchase coverage off the Exchange, they will face, for the first time, the actual cost of ObamaCare coverage. Given that the amount Pinal County residents will have to pay for ObamaCare coverage could rise by several multiples, from a fraction of the premium to the full premium, given that the lowest-income enrollees will see the largest increases, given that the large year-to-year rate increases occurring nationwide will only add to the suffering, you would think the ACA’s unaffordability exemption would somehow cover those 10,000 Pinal County residents. But you would be wrong.

Remember, the ACA penalizes people if they fail to purchase insurance, unless they qualify for an exemption. The unaffordability exemption applies only if “the annual premium for the lowest cost bronze plan available in the individual market through the Exchange” in Pinal County, minus “the amount of the credit allowable under section 36B,” whether the individual enrolls in Exchange coverage or not, exceeds 8.13 percent of the individual’s household income.

You can’t do that calculation in Pinal County. The premium for the lowest-cost bronze plan in Pinal County is not $0.00. It’s not even a number. It’s the empty set. The “credit allowable under section 36B” is likewise the empty set. Section 36B “allow[s] as a credit…an amount equal to the premium assistance credit amount for the taxpayer.” To calculate the premium-assistance credit amount, you need to know either the premium for the health plan the taxpayer “enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under [section] 1311,” or the premium for the “the second lowest cost silver plan” available to the taxpayer “through the same Exchange.” It would be awesome if all those premiums were $0.00. (Free health care!) But it’s not. Instead, no such premiums exist. Since there are no such premiums, there is no “required contribution.” Since there is no “required contribution,” there is no unaffordability exemption in Pinal County. Without an Exchange, there is no unaffordability exemption from the individual mandate.

Following the collapse of the Exchange, the ACA strips 10,000 Pinal County residents of their health coverage, strips them of any subsidies they had been receiving, and penalizes them if they fail to purchase coverage that everybody knows ObamaCare has made unaffordable for them. The ACA also denies the unaffordability exemption to any uninsured residents who had qualified or would have qualified for it. The ACA exempted them from penalties when coverage was somewhat unaffordable, yet penalizes them when coverage becomes very unaffordable.

But let’s suppose we had a government that didn’t care what the law says, and was determined to make the unaffordability exemption work for residents of Pinal County and any other county or state where the Exchange collapses. The government could pretend the lowest-cost-bronze-Exchange-plan premium actually is $0.00. But then the required contribution would be zero or negative, which is less than 8.13 percent of household income. So no exemption. Ooh, I know! The government could pretend the ACA allows them to use non-Exchange-bronze-plan premiums for the first part of the “required contribution” calculation. But then they would have to argue simultaneously that the ACA does not allow them to use non-Exchange-silver-plan premiums for the second part of the calculation. To put it differently, the government would have to argue the ACA allows them to pretend that non-existent Exchange plans exist but does not allow them to pretend that non-existent tax credits exist. I’m guessing that would be awkward.

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