Category Archives: EPA Fascism
Obama Wants to Push Energy Prices So High That You Cannot Afford Electricity
Obama’s Energy Secretary Nominee Called For Doubling Or Tripling Energy Costs With Carbon Tax To Push U.S. Towards Green Energy…
And as you can see above, Ernest Moniz rocks a bitchin’ combover.
Via Beltway Confidential:
President Obama’s Energy secretary nominee regards a carbon tax as one of the simplest ways to move the energy industry towards clean technologies, though he notes that government would have to come up with a plan to mitigate the burden this tax places on poor people, who would pay the most.
“Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store it than to release it and pay a price,” MIT professor and Energy nominee Ernest Moniztold the Switch Energy Project in an interview last year. “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades, well, that could double; it could eventually triple. I think inevitably if we squeeze down on carbon, we squeeze up on the cost, it brings along with it a push toward efficiency; it brings along with it a push towards clean technologies in a conventional pollution sense; it brings along with it a push towards security. Because after all, the security issues revolve around carbon bearing fuels.”
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
O’Sucka and Communist Democrats Don’t Want This Country to Be Energy Independent. Are You Crazy?
Keystone Pipeline Has Been Under Review For More Than Twice As Long As It Would Take To Build It
Gerard And McGarvey: Now Is the Time For The Keystone XL Pipeline – Roll Call
The State Department is expected to release a draft environmental impact statement of the Keystone XL pipeline soon. All signs indicate this new report will echo the findings of previous federal reviews and conclude the project is environmentally sound.
………
With the governor of Nebraska having approved a new route for the pipeline through his state, this report removes what should be the final barrier to the president’s approval of this critical project. No single policy decision would be more effective at delivering what the American public says it wants most from Washington: new jobs and economic growth.
And support for the project continues to grow. A poll released Feb. 13 by Harris Interactive shows that 69 percent of registered voters support building the pipeline. What’s more, a bipartisan group of 53 senators – led by John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Max Baucus, D-Mont. – sent a letter to the president last month urging him to immediately authorize the project in light of the governor’s decision. That letter was followed by a similar bipartisan letter signed by 146 members of the House.
Approval of the full Keystone XL pipeline would connect Canadian crude oil and new production from America’s upper plains states to state-of-the-art refineries on the American Gulf Coast. At full capacity, it would transport 830,000 barrels per day.
The application for approval has been under review by the U.S. government for more than four years, far longer than any other cross-border pipeline project and more than twice as long as it would take to build the pipeline.
Economic benefits of Keystone XL are clear. The project will generate thousands of new jobs, both in the actual construction of the pipeline and in supporting industries such as manufacturing, logistics, lodging and dining. While the national unemployment rate hovers around 8 percent, unemployment in the construction industry is a staggering 16.1 percent. Keystone XL will immediately allow thousands of the safest, most highly trained workers to begin building this state-of-the-art pipeline.
The State Department’s analysis acknowledges that Keystone XL will have “a degree of safety greater than” similar projects. In addition, Transcanada has agreed to 57 special conditions above and beyond those required by law, demonstrating a commitment to safely and responsibly constructing and operating this important energy infrastructure project.
National security will also be enhanced as the Keystone XL and other pipeline projects strengthen our energy partnership with Canada. Together with significant increases in U.S. production, North America will not only be more energy secure itself but will also be in a position to positively influence global energy demands.
Jobs, economic growth, energy security, national security. It’s no wonder so many newspaper editorials, members of Congress and other influential voices are calling on the president to approve this vital project. And no wonder that the leadership of America’s building trades unions and the oil and natural gas industry have joined to call for the same.
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Environmentalism and Communism. What Difference Does it Make?
Found at 90 miles: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/
Commie, Liberal, Bitch Barbara Boxer has Another Brilliant Fascist Idea…
“Comprehensive” Global Warming Bill, Would Tax Carbon Emissions…
Admitted Socialist Bernie Sanders and in-the-closet Socialist Barbara Boxer, how’s that for a dream team?
Via Daily Caller:
Liberal senators are helping President Barack Obama make good on his plan to address climate change during his second term, and are set to announce comprehensive legislation on the topic later this week.
Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer will hold a news conference on Thursday to announce new legislation that would put a fee on carbon dioxide emissions to help fund green-energy projects such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass.
The legislation would also compensate consumers for higher energy bills.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Obama threatened to use his executive authority if Congress failed to act on climate change.
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
Fascist EPA Slapped Down Again by Court
Court Rules EPA Can’t Mandate Use Of Nonexistent Biofuels
It seems logical that you can’t order businesses to use what doesn’t exist, but this is Obama’s EPA, whose leader, Lisa Jackson, invented a nonexistent person in order to evade the law.
A federal court delivered a serious blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s renewable fuel agenda, ruling that the agency exceeded its authority by mandating refiners use cellulosic biofuels, which isn’t commercially available.
The court sided with the country’s chief oil and gas lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, in striking down the 2012 EPA mandate that would have forced refineries to purchase more than $8 million in credits for 8.65 million of gallons of the cellulosic biofuel. However, none of the biofuel is commercially available.
“[W]e agree with API that EPA’s 2012 projection of cellulosic biofuel production was in excess of the agency’s statutory authority,” reads the court decision.
API said refiners were forced to purchase biofuel credits for nonexistent gallons of cellulosic biofuel to meet the EPA’s mandate, reports the Hill.
“We are glad the court has put a stop to EPA’s pattern of setting impossible mandates for a biofuel that does not even exist,” API Group Downstream Director Bob Greco said in a statement. “This absurd mandate acts as a stealth tax on gasoline with no environmental benefit that could have ultimately burdened consumers
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
Obama and The EPA Policies Will Soon Make Electricity Un-Affordable in the Near Future
Ah wilderness! It’s Spreading… Freezing Germans Join Greeks – Steal Wood to Keep Homes Heated This Winter
With energy costs escalating, more Germans are turning to wood burning stoves for heat. That, though, has also led to a rise in tree theft in the country’s forests. Woodsmen have become more watchful.
From American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Thanks to Obummer…Your Power Bill is About to Go Way Up…and That is What He Wants
Thanks Barack… Georgia Power Company Closes 15 Plants Thanks To Latest EPA Regulations
The Milledgeville area plant closing will cost more than 200 jobs. (The Telegraph)
A Georgia utilities company is closing 15 coal, oil and gas plants thanks to the latest Obama EPA regulations.
Reuters reported, via The Examiner:
Georgia Power said on Monday it plans to seek approval from Georgia regulators to retire 15 coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants in the state totaling 2,061 megawatts (MW) due primarily to the high cost of meeting stricter federal environmental regulations.
Over the past few years, U.S. generating companies have announced plans to shut about 40,000 MW of older coal-fired power plants as low natural gas prices have made it uneconomic for the generators to spend millions to upgrade the plants’ emissions systems to meet the latest federal and state environmental rules.
In a press release, Georgia Power, the biggest unit of U.S. power company Southern Co, said it wanted to shut units 3 and 4 at Plant Branch in Putnam County; units 1-5 at Plant Yates in Coweta County; units 1 and 2 at Plant McManus in Glynn County; units 1-4 at Plant Kraft in Chatham County; and units 2 and 3 at Boulevard in Chatham County.
The company said it plans to file its updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) with Georgia’s utility regulators on Jan. 31.
Units 3-4 at Branch, units 1-5 at Yates and units 1-3 at Kraft are coal-fired units. Kraft Unit 4 and Boulevard 2 and 3 are fired by natural gas and oil. McManus units 1-2 are oil-fired.
The company said it expects to ask to retire the units, other than Kraft 1-4, by the April 16, 2015, effective date of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Mercury and Air Toxics (MATS) rule.
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Miserable Economic Conditions Will Lead to Dependency, Envy, Strife, and Death – The Liberal Formula Being Carried Out in America
Democrat Death Spiral
The objective of liberal politics is to induce the Democrat Death Spiral, a vicious cycle by which miserable economic conditions lead to government dependency and class envy, leading to Democrat electoral victories, leading to higher taxes and crippling regulations, leading to still more miserable economic conditions. Once the Democrat Death Spiral has been initiated, the more damage left-wing bureaucrats inflict on the economy, the more certain they are of reelection.
Detroit entered the Democrat Death Spiral decades ago. As a result of the city’s utter wretchedness, the Democrats who inflicted it receive upwards of 90% of the vote. There is no possibility of Democrats losing control, or of the city ever regaining its lost greatness.
California officially entered the Democrat Death Spiral when it brought back Jerry Brown despite a desperate economic situation that urgently required the state to turn away from Governor Moonbeam’s brand of profligate liberalism. In effect, the state committed suicide out of sheer moonbattery. Its prospects are no better than Detroit’s.
The United States of America officially entered the Democrat Death Spiral on November 6, 2012. Obama was not reelected despite the awful state of the economy under his rule but because of it. The more of a mess Obama makes, the more his Marxist rhetoric will resonate, the tighter the grip Democrats will have on America’s throat. This is why Obama will not lift a finger to improve the economic situation, but rather will deliberately worsen it by using taxation to drive up unemployment.
It is no coincidence that Obama received 98% of the vote in Detroit, America’s worst and most liberal city, the model for our future.
From here forward, the worse it gets, the worse it will get. Unless a way is found to reverse the cycle by removing liberals from power, each day will be the best day of the rest of America’s existence.
Be sure to thank the next liberal you see.
By Dave Blount from Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
Obama’s EPA Trying to Crush The Coal Industry
Obama’s EPA Planning To Crush Coal Industry With Avalanche Of New Regulations After Election…
“If somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can – it’s just that it will bankrupt them” – Barack Obama
Via Washington Examiner:
President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA.
More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA’s greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.
The rush is a major sign of panic by environmentalists inside the Obama administration. If Obama wins, the EPA would have another four full years to implement their anti-fossil fuel agenda. But if Romney wins, regulators will have a very narrow window to enact a select few costly regulations that would then be very hard for a President Romney to undo.
From Weasel Zippers:
America Ain’t Kansas – It’s Sodom and Sinking Lower
LIBERAL AMERICA—THE SODOM THAT PRETENDS IT’S KANSAS
“In America,” Jim Kalb recently remarked, “everything is normal”—meaning that no matter how radical, extreme, and perverted things become in our society, they are and must be seen as ordinary, traditional, and unthreatening.
The result is the peculiar phenomenon that I have described as the “radical mainstream.” On one hand, liberals and their mainstream-conservative enablers boast of America’s transformational progress since the mid-twentieth century; on the other hand, they claim that we haven’t changed at all. The fact that all kinds of moral and constitutional norms have been shattered, and that nihilism, gross sexual libertinism, and statism are the new norm, is never allowed into public consciousness. The liberals suppress the ugly truth of what America has become, in order to maintain the legitimacy of liberal society; and the conservatives join in the suppression, because their goal is to keep their place at the liberal table; they know that anyone who speaks the truth about the radical transformation of America will no longer be welcome…. — AmNation
From American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Obama Regime Stopping Half of Petroleum Reserve Oil Production in Oil Rich Alaska
Obama Interior Department Closing Off Nearly Half Of Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve From Drilling
Obama’s Great Alaska Shutout – Wall Street Journal
President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he’s had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it. The latest example is the Interior Department’s little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly half of the 23.5 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
The area is called the National Petroleum Reserve because in 1976 Congress designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the “energy needs of the nation.” Alaska favors exploration in nearly the entire reserve. The feds had been reviewing four potential development plans, and the state of Alaska had strongly objected to the most restrictive of the four. Sure enough, that was the plan Interior chose.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says his plan “will help the industry bring energy safely to market from this remote location, while also protecting wildlife and subsistence rights of Alaska Natives.” He added that the proposal will expand “safe and responsible oil and gas development, and builds on our efforts to help companies develop the infrastructure that’s needed to bring supplies online.”
The problem is almost no one in the energy industry and few in Alaska agree with him. In an August 22 letter to Mr. Salazar, the entire Alaska delegation in Congress – Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young – call it “the largest wholesale land withdrawal and blocking of access to an energy resource by the federal government in decades.” This decision, they add, “will cause serious harm to the economy and energy security of the United States, as well as to the state of Alaska.” Mr. Begich is a Democrat.
The letter also says the ruling “will significantly limit options for a pipeline” through the reserve. This pipeline has long been sought to transport oil and gas from the Chukchi Sea, the North Slope and future Arctic drilling. Mr. Salazar insists that a pipeline could still be built, but given the Obama Administration’s decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline, Alaskans are right to be skeptical.
Alaskans also worry that the National Petroleum Reserve will become the same political football as the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, or ANWR, which Washington has barred from drilling because of dubious environmental objections. The greens now want Congress to rename the energy reserve the “Western Arctic Reserve” to give the false impression that it is a fragile wildlife area. Some parts of the area are environmentally sensitive, but those 1.5 million acres (around Teshekpuk Lake) had already been set aside. Most of the other 11.5 million acres are almost indistinguishable from acreage owned by the state that is being drilled safely nearby.
The feds and Alaskan officials disagree about how much oil and natural gas is in the petroleum reserve. Some early federal estimates put the range between six and 15 billion barrels of oil, but in its latest survey the Bureau of Land Management projects closer to one billion. State officials and industry experts put the figure much higher based on the earlier surveys and improved drilling techniques.
The truth is no one knows. Prudhoe Bay turned out to be much more productive than originally believed, but surely the best strategy is to allow private drillers to risk their own money to find out. The oil and gas industry isn’t in the business of drilling dry holes on purpose.
The Interior power play couldn’t come at a worse time for Alaska, whose economy and government are heavily reliant on oil jobs and revenues. As recently as the 1980s, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline carried some 2.2 million barrels of oil a day from the North Slope to the port of Valdez. Yet as the once-rich fields of Prudhoe Bay and the Kuparuk River have declined, oil flow has dropped to one-third of that volume. North Dakota recently passed Alaska as the second highest oil-producing state behind Texas.
The problem isn’t that Alaska is running out of oil but that federal rules are preventing the state from developing those resources. No matter what Mr. Obama says now, in a second term his great Alaska energy shutout will continue.
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Watch The EPA and Obama as They Ignore The Constitution – Again and Again
Environmentalists Advocate Ignoring The Constitution “To Get Things Done”…
Then again, lefties have never been big fans of the Constitution.
Via Beltway Confidential:
Environmentalists want to ban hydraulic fracturing in Las Vegas, N.M., and the surrounding county and they don’t plan to let the United States Constitution stop them.
“What people don’t understand is sometimes we have to step outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done,” Paula Hern, a board member with Community for Clean Water Air and Earth, told the ABQ Journal. “Laws are made to protect corporations and we need laws that protect Mother Earth – earth, air and water.”
Hern was defending a “community rights ordinance” banning fracking that the Las Vegas (N.M.) City Council passed but the mayor refused to sign. “The way it reads, it will supersede everything – our city charter, state and federal laws,” said Mayor
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
California…Voting for High Taxes, High Gas Prices, and O’Sucka
From American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Say Hell No To Wind Turbines – If You Want to Be Healthy
Wind Turbine Syndrome
It’s not just that wind farms are nearly useless extravagantly expensive boondoggles that hideously mar the landscape. They also pose a serious threat to our health. The constant low-frequency noise they emit causes wind turbine syndrome, symptoms of which include:
…dizziness; balance problems; memory loss; inability to concentrate; insomnia; tachycardia; increased blood pressure; raised cortisol levels; headaches; nausea; mood swings; anxiety; tinnitus; palpitations; depression…
In December 2011, in a peer-reviewed report in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Dr Carl Phillips — one of the U.S.’s most distinguished epidemiologists — concluded that there is ‘overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a nontrivial rate’.
The combination of low-frequency noise and amplitude modulation also stimulates an alert response, putting restful sleep out of the question.
Low-frequency sound has so much potential to cause harm, the military has studied its use as a weapon:
A 1997 report by the U.S. Air Force Institute For National Security Studies notes: ‘Acoustic infrasound: very low frequency sound which can travel long distances and easily penetrate most buildings and vehicles.
‘Transmission of long wavelength sound creates biophysical effects, nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, potential organ damage or death may occur.’
The malefic effects of wind turbines are not limited to the dangerous even when subaudible noise they produce:
From economists such as Edinburgh University’s Dr Gordon Hughes we are told that wind energy is unreliable and intermittent, with no real market value because it requires near 100 per cent back-up by conventional fossil-fuel power.
From research institute Verso Economics we are told that that for every ‘green job’ created by taxpayer subsidy, 3.7 jobs are killed in the real economy.
It is said that thanks to the artificial rise in energy prices caused by renewable subsidies, expected to reach £13 billion per annum by 2020, at least 50,000 people a year in Britain are driven into fuel poverty.
And newly released Spanish government research claims that each turbine kills an average 300 birds a year (often rare ones such as eagles and bustards) and at least as many bats.
Those bats eat mosquitoes by the millions; mosquitoes are mankind’s worst enemy (unless you count progressives).
So why do whole fields of these evil towers keep sprouting?
As Matt Ridley noted recently in The Spectator, there are ‘too many people with snouts in the trough.’ …
In Britain, onshore wind farms are subsidised by a levy on consumer bills at 100 per cent; offshore wind is subsidised at 200 per cent: no matter how little energy the turbines actually produce, in other words, healthy returns are guaranteed.
At least until such a time as wasteful public spending on this kind of lunacy begins to bring down whole countries, as has been happening in Spain.
In a free market economy, no one would build wind turbines because they make no sense economically. But under moonbat economics, making sense would be inappropriate.
On a tip from Byron.
Obama and The Democrats Are Making Sure That Poor People Will Not Be Able To Pay Their Power Bill
More proof that Liberals are the enemy of working Americans and the poor
I have long thought that one of the biggest lies Democrats tell, repeatedly, is that they care about the poor, and are the party of working Americans. They may use such rhetoric to get votes, but, in fact, the Democrats tax hikes and regulations hurt the poor because any cost to businesses are naturally passed down to the line to those least able to pay higher prices for food, gas, clothes. Doug Ross has a story today that illustrates how the Left’s green energy policies are hitting the poor hardest
Try and contain your shock.
Last week, Examiner columnist and Manhattan Institute fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth, author of the new book “Regulating to Disaster: How Green Jobs Policies Are Damaging America’s Economy,” explained that:
Most people think green is good but pay little attention to associated increases in costs. In 2015, it will cost between $49 and $79 to generate one megawatt hour of electricity from natural gas. A megawatt hour from onshore wind will cost between $75 and $138, and from solar photovoltaic will cost between $242 and $455.
As her book demonstrates in this chart, rising costs of energy hit lower-income Americans the hardest, because they spend a higher proportion of their incomes on energy.
The fact is that the policies of the Left destroy wealth, and ambition, and productivity, and most chances for climbing out of poverty. These policies only serve to entrench the poor where they are on the socioeconomic ladder. Like every bastard ideology born out of Marxism, Liberalism promises equality, but delivers only an equality of misery. Instead of being a way up, Liberal policies are a massive roadblock to anyone seeking to better their plight.
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Obama and EPA Won’t Stop Until They Kill Coal
AGAIN, Obama’s EPA kills 1,200 more jobs
Anyone who still supports Obama is a walking brain donor. Sorry to be blunt but I do not know how else to put it, Gateway Pundit has the latest case of Obama’s war on the middle class
Alpha Natural Resources announced today that it plans on closing eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The company will lay off 1,200 employees.
The New York Times reported:Alpha Natural Resources, one of the nation’s largest coal producers, announced on Tuesday that it planned to idle eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, reducing its annual production by 16 million tons. The move will include laying off 1,200 of 13,000 employees. The company said that it was trying to meet the “evolving demands of a changing global coal market” and that it would continue selling coal in the United States while focusing new efforts on overseas markets.
The company blamed Obama’s EPA for the layoffs.
The Wall Street Journal reported:The coal industry has been hit by competition from cheap natural gas, but Alpha made clear in its announcement that an equal problem is a Washington “regulatory environment that’s aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal.” That’s a direct reference to the deluge of Obama Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to force the closure of coal-fired power plants.
And yet Obama has the nerve to say he represents the middle class.
Unbelievable, simply unbelievable his actions belie his hollow words
If you think this is just incompetence consider what Obama said in 2008, in an interview the media covered up
Obama’s Facist EPA Honors Special Marxist Brother Che Guevara
Obama EPA Honors Hispanic Heritage Month By Promoting Marxist Killer
Obama EPA Honors Hispanic Heritage Month By Promoting Marxist Killer – Gateway Pundit
Is anyone really surprised by this? …Really?
The EPA honored Hispanic Heritage Month by promoting a Marxist mass murderer.
Because they’re more than just a business killing agency.
Buzzfeed reported, via All American Blogger:
The Environmental Protection Agency commemorated the start of Hispanic Heritage Month with a picture of Che Guevara and a bit of plagiarism.
An internal email obtained by BuzzFeed and distributed to agency employees marking the start of the celebration of Hispanic culture this Saturday, featured the above image of a horse and buggy passing a billboard of the Marxist revolutionary, in addition to a listing of facts about Hispanic culture.
“Hispanic people are vibrant, socializing and fun loving people,” one entry reads. “Among various facts associated to this culture is that they have a deep sense of involvement in their family traditions and cultures.”
But that text and the photo appear to be lifted word-for-word and without attribution from the website Buzzle.com.
from The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Criminal Tyrant O’Sucka Breaks The Law Again – Going Around Congress to Do What He Wants
Obama Issued Green Energy Executive Order When You Weren’t Looking
Obama Issued Green Energy Executive Order When You Weren’t Looking – Lonely Conservative
As the Republican National Convention came to a close last week President Obama was busy working on a major “green energy” executive order that he’d probably prefer you didn’t know about. He couldn’t get his cap and trade garbage through Congress, even when his party controlled everything, so he’s ruling by fiat.
The Blaze has the details:
The order, which aims to increase the number of cogeneration plants in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2020 and slash carbon emissions by 150 million tons per year, is the administration’s latest effort to “deploy cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and ‘green’ energy legislation on Capitol Hill,” Reuters reports.
“The Federal Government has limited but important authorities to overcome… barriers, and our efforts to support investment in industrial energy efficiency and CHP [Combined heat and power] should involve coordinated engagement with a broad set of stakeholders,” the order says.
Translation: If duly elected representatives of the people get in the way of “climate change” (formerly known as “global warming,“ formerly known as ”global cooling”) legislation, work around them.
“The man is legislating by presidential fiat!” conservative author and radio show host Mark Levin said Friday. “This is unconstitutional.”
The order dictates that the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency coordinate their actions to provide “policy and technical assistance” to states in order to ensure energy efficiency targets are being met.
What could possibly go wrong?
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
One Court At Least Slows Down the Fascist Thugs at The EPA
Federal Court: Obama’s EPA Recognizes No Legal Limits
Federal Court: Obama’s EPA Recognizes No Legal Limits – Washington Examiner
The Obama administration suffered a major legal defeat today when a federal court threw out the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict new power plant emission regulations.
In a 2-to-1 decision posted Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the EPA’s new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, targeting the 28 states that generate the majority of the electricity in the United States, exceeded the agency’s legal authority. The EPA had previously estimated that the regulations would inflict $2.7 billion in economic costs on the private sector.
Under the Clean Air Act’s “good neighbor” provision, the EPA is authorized to regulate sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions that cross state lines. But the Obama EPA ignored legal precedent and the plain text of the statute by enacting limits that far exceeded the scope of the law. The court’s ruling reads:
EPA seems reluctant to acknowledge any textual limits on its authority under the good neighbor provision. At oral argument, EPA suggested that “reasonableness” is the only limit on its authority to use cost-effectiveness to force down States’ emissions. EPA would not rule out the possibility that under the good neighbor provision, it could require a State to reduce more than the State’s total emissions that go out of State. But such a claim of authority does not square with the statutory text – “amounts” of pollution obviously cannot “contribute” to a downwind State’s pollution problem if they don’t even reach the downwind State.
Obama’s Cross State EPA rule is just one of many costly regulations currently in the pipeline. The DC Court of Appeals is also hearing an appeal to the EPA’s major stationary source maximum achievable control technology (Utility MACT) rule. That regulation, which limits mercury emissions from power plants, is expected to inflict more than $10 billion of harm on the U.S. economy.
“The D.C. Circuit Court has vacated EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) but that doesn’t tell the whole story of this Administration’s record in the courts,” Sam Batkins, American Action Forum’s Director of Regulatory Policy, said. “Based on our calculations, judges across the ideological spectrum, including the President’s appointees, have struck down 15 major regulations, with a total cost of $4.6 billion.”
From The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Let’s Stop Obama From Destroying the Coal Industry That Helps Deliver Affordable Electricity
Coal Miners Turn Out for Mitt
If those of us who use electricity understand what’s at stake this November as well as those who provide it do, Romney will win in a landslide. Check out this turnout to hear him speak:
From the Toledo Blade:
Mitt Romney [Tuesday] stood in front of eastern Ohioans seemingly straight out of the mine — hard hats, smudged faces, and blue and gray uniforms — as he accused President Obama of “waging war” on coal.
“He’s for all the sources of energy that come from above the ground, none of the sources below the ground, like oil and coal and gas,” the presumptive Republican nominee told a crowd outside American Energy Corp’s Century Mine near Beallsville, Belmont County. …
“We’ve 250 years left of coal,” he said. ‘’Why in the world wouldn’t we use it?”
Southeast Ohio is also the focus of a burgeoning shale natural gas and oil industry built around hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the practice of using chemically treated fluids at high pressure to fracture shale to release the gas and oil within.
If it’s up to Obama, these precious resources will remain beneath the ground, throwing thousands out of work, particularly in key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile the Moonbat Messiah and his flying monkeys in the EPA continue their war on coal, shutting down power plants left and right just as Obama promised.
You don’t have to be a coal miner to want Obama out of there before he can do any more damage. You just have to like the way the lights come on when you flip the switch.
On tips from Oiao, AC, and Just TheTip. Hat tips: I’m 41, Gateway Pundit.
Cars Were Getting Better Mileage Way Back in 1975
From It Ain’t Holy Water: http://itaintholywater.blogspot.com/
Carbon Credit Craziness…
Paying Third World Countries to Create More Global Warming Gases
Not all of the deleterious consequences of liberal authoritarianism are deliberately malevolent. Many are simply unintended. Assuming that progressives really do believe in anthropogenic global warming, this serves as a classic example:
When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed [to moonbats] a sensible system.
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer.
Our supranational moonbat rulers couldn’t care less about pouring vast amounts of our money down the drain, especially if the drains are located in non-Western countries. But how can they live with themselves, knowing that they contributed to the oppression of polar bears by creating more gases alleged to make it be hot out? Simple: from their point of view, good intentions trump anything that happens in the real world.
On a tip from Byron.
From Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
Obama Hates The Coal Industry and Cheap Electricity. When Obama Gets Finished – You Won’t Be Able to Afford Electricity.
Obama Wreaks Havoc in Coal Industry
You can’t say Comrade Obama never keeps his promises. He said he would destroy the coal industry that provides half of our electricity. He’s delivering:
Last month, the Patriot Coal Company filed for bankruptcy, a move prompted in part by the impact that regulations instituted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had on the company. […For the same reason,] Alpha Natural Resources, Inc., has indicated its intent to cease mining at various sites in Kentucky, and lay off about 150 workers.
In Pennsylvania last month, layoffs were also announced by two coal companies, which blamed Obama’s War on Coal for the job losses.
“[T]he escalating costs and uncertainty generated by recently advanced EOA regulations and interpretations have created a challenging business climate for the entire coal industry,” said the President and CEO of PBS Coals, Inc., D. Lynn Shanks, in a statement to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Meanwhile, July also saw the announcement by the Ohio Valley Coal Co. that it would be laying off workers. Ohio Valley Coal’s General Manager Ronald Koontz accused the Obama administration of engaging in a “war on coal seeking to destroy the coal industry and the jobs of our own employees and the livelihoods of their families.”
At the end of the month, Ohio American Energy, Inc., a subsidiary of Murray Energy, announced that it would be closing down mining operations that employed over 200 workers. The founder of Ohio American attributed the layoffs to Obama policies affecting the coal industry, and predicted that more job losses would occur as a result of them.
“There will be additional layoffs, not only at Murray Energy, but also throughout the United States coal industry due to Mr. Obama’s ‘War on Coal’ and the destruction that it has caused to so many jobs and families in the Ohio Valley area and elsewhere,” said Robert Murray.
Imagine if someone officially acknowledged as an enemy of the USA — a Hitler or Osama bin Laden — were able to wreak this much havoc on our economy and our energy supply. We would fight to the last man to stop him. Yet there are people so insulated from reality by moonbattery that they will vote to reelect the worst enemy America has ever had.
On tips from Shawn and G. Fox.
