On Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed the STOCK Act into law. The law forbids members of Congress, the president, and thousands of other federal workers from conducting what is essentially insider trading. On December 15 of last year, executives at the company ECOtality, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging stations, received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission as it launched an investigation into allegations of insider trading at the company.

If you thought the $535 million that the American taxpayer shelled out for the utter failure that was Solyndra was expensive, you may want to sit down for this one.

Crossing the wires this hour is news that the General Motors corporation will be halting production of the Chevrolet Volt electric car and laying off 1,300 employees.

The Environmental Protection Agency, a favorite tool of Obama’s job crushing agenda, continuously promulgates unilateral rules and regulations that ultimately threaten entire industries in the United States and push consumer prices constantly higher. Most notably, the EPA’s recent regulatory onslaught is targeting energy by way of new restrictions on fossil fuels, which will increase prices, reduce the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid, and destroy jobs.

No-fault/Personal Injury Protection (PIP) laws are a prime example of the danger posed by the substitution of free market mechanisms for government mandates. In states with PIP laws on the books, the costs of insurance premiums are skyrocketing and rampant fraud and abuse of the system is to blame. PIP laws were put in place to protect the consumer but in states like Florida, consumers are faced with ever increased premiums to account for the impact of fraud on the system.

Mercury Rising? Not Really.

Amid its recent regulatory blitz on domestic energy production, the Environmental Protection Agency has launched an aggressive campaign targeting coal fire power plants through the regulation of mercury emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) on July 6th of this year, and is scrambling to implement the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Rule, scheduled to be finalized this November; forcing compliance for both rules by New Year’s Day 2012 and 2015 respectively. Both CSAPR and MACT are part of the EPA’s recent regulatory push that has become known as the EPA Train Wreck.

A Darker Shade of Green

Wind energy has become an environmentalist’s catchall. Americans have been led to believe that the big white wind turbines springing up all across the country are a sort of great white hope for the environment and energy security.

Over the last few decades, the cost of higher education in the United States has grown at a rate outpacing inflation. According to Department of Education statistics, the average cost of an education at a four year university has gone up by 34 percent over the last decade.  Taxpayers are also footing the growing bill for higher education. Every year federal and state governments spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on direct grants and payments to individual colleges and universities.

Adding insult to the injury it plans to deal on American energy security, the Environmental Protection Agency has been caught in a lie that confirms their agenda of unilaterally imposing regulations without the consent of the American people.

The Bureaucrazies Part 3: the Dihydrogen Oxide Effect and the EPA's Onslaught on Affordable Power