Three years after President Obama’s inaugural promise to “restore science to its rightful place,” independent government agencies have uncovered numerous instances of scientific abuse at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As the EPA grapples with this criticism as well as a recent embarrassing court decision, President Obama must have felt compelled last week to appear at headquarters to give his EPA a “pep talk.”
Flawed endangerment finding
The President’s EPA morale boost came just months after an Office of the Inspector General report found that the EPA cut corners and short-circuited the required peer review process for its December 2009 endangerment finding, which is the foundation for EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA was dealt another blow to its scientific integrity when President Obama forced the agency to withdraw its plan to tighten the ozone standards because the economic and scientific analyses were so blatantly unsound.
More recently, an extraordinary D.C. Circuit Court ruling in December blocked EPA from moving forward with its signature air rule, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, because EPA failed to follow an adequate, open and transparent process.
And just last week, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report confirmed that EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program–which EPA acknowledges is the “scientific foundation for decisions”–is flawed. The report highlights “both long-standing and new challenges” EPA faces in implementing the IRIS program, echoing previous concerns from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that the agency is basing its decisions on shoddy scientific work.
The Florida Cattlemen’s Association (FCA) and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) on April 28, 2011, challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) determination letter and final rule establishing numeric nutrient criteria (NNC) for Florida’s lakes, rivers, streams and springs. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee, resulted in a mixed ruling on Feb. 18, 2012. Judge Robert L. Hinkle invalidated the criteria for streams as well as certain aspects of the downstream protection values for lakes ruling them “arbitrary and capricious.” This action ultimately prevents EPA from implementing its proposed criteria for these water bodies in the state of Florida. While the Court upheld several of EPA’s arguments, FCA and NCBA are encouraged by the outcome.
The EPA is no longer, if they ever were, in the business of protecting the environment. They are now a tool of Obama and other haters of capitalism to destroy our economy.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor today to draw attention to a video of a top EPA official saying the EPA’s “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies - just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.
Inhofe quoted a little-watched video from 2010 of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, admitting that EPA’s “general philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies.
In the video, Administrator Armendariz says:
“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said:
“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.
“Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”
“It’s a deterrent factor,” Armendariz said, explaining that the EPA is following the Romans’ philosophy for subjugating conquered villages.
Soon after Armendariz touted the EPA’s “philosophy,” the EPA began smear campaigns against natural gas producers, Inhofe’s office noted in advance of today’s Senate speech:
“Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
“In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.”
In his Senate speech, Sen. Inhofe said the video provides Americans with “a glimpse of the Obama administration’s true agenda.”
That agenda, Inhofe said, is to “incite fear” in the public with unsubstantiated claims and “intimidate” oil and gas companies with threats of unjustified fines and penalties – then, quietly backtrack once the public’s perception has been firmly jaded against oil and natural gas.
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Insert video: "If I wanted America to fail" here.
[This message has been edited by texasfiero (edited 04-26-2012).]
With the increasingly likelihood that Obama's health care law will be struck down in court or repealed next Congress, the administration has been working hard to cement another dubious legacy: the destruction of the coal industry.
Obama's war on coal is stirring a lot of anger in parts of the country like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that have long relied on coal as an engine of prosperity. But little of that anger has been directed at the biggest funder of the War on Coal: the natural gas industry, which stands to reap big rewards from the destruction of coal-fired power plants — given the regulatory barriers to nuclear power and the lack of any other real, commercially viable alternatives.
The lynchpin of the War on Coal is the so-called Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (UMACT) rule. The rule was a product of Sierra Club litigation and requires expensive control technology retrofits at coal-fired power plants, raising electricity prices nearly 20 percent.
The cost, according to EPA's own low-ball estimate, is $10 billion per year. A more realistic analysis from National Economic Research Associates found compliance costs of $21 billion per year, with 183,000 lost jobs per year.
It's all pain and no gain; except for the natural gas industry, which stands to reap enormous rewards from the forced conversion of coal-fired power plants to natural gas. That's probably why between 2007 and 2010, Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon donated more than $25 million to the Sierra Club for its "Beyond Coal" campaign, which included the lawsuit resulting in the UMACT rule.
A more recent EPA rule following on the heels of UMACT is explicit in forcing power-plant fuel switching from coal to natural gas. It's the Greenhouse Gas New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), the latest installment in the Obama administration's effort to act as if cap-and-trade had passed by transforming the 1970 Clean Air Act into a global warming law. (This is despite the fact that in 1970 Al Gore hadn't even invented the Internet yet, let alone global warming.)
Under the proposed NSPS, coal-fired power plants are instructed that in order to comply with the new emissions standard of 1000 tons of CO2 per megawatt of power generated, they must convert to natural gas. Not nuclear. Not even wind and solar that Obama claims to love. Natural gas.
The rule supposedly applies only to new plants and plants undergoing major modification, but the latter means that it operates as a one-two punch with UMACT to destroy coal-fired electricity: UMACT requires major modifications to control mercury emissions, which triggers carbon dioxide regulations, which forces fuel-switching to natural gas. The costs of mass forced-retirement of coal plants would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars — and electricity rates would "necessarily skyrocket," as Obama promised on the campaign trail four years ago.
The NSPS, like the UMACT, was a product of natural gas-funded Sierra Club litigation. The natural gas industry is also attacking coal through the so-called American Lung Association (ALA), an advocacy outfit also known for accepting millions of dollars from the EPA while promoting EPA regulations.
The manipulative campaign shows a red baby carriage, in front of a coal plant with a coughing sound and a heartfelt plea for Congress "not to water down the Clean Air Act," which is a deceptive way of telling Congress to just look the other way and let the natural gas industry, the green groups, and the EPA destroy coal — without any authorization from the people's elected representatives in Congress.
The Senate will soon have an opportunity to stop Obama's War on Coal when it votes on Senator Jim Inhofe's (R-Okla.) S.J. Res. 37, which would overturn the UMACT rule. If our elected officials are interested in doing their job, they will vote yes on the Inhofe Resolution and reject anti-coal cronyism that will cost the American people dearly.
I think of other countries who don't have EPA's (in favor of their product pricing undercutting the rest of the world) and who's factories pump out huge amounts of poison into the air, land, & sea. Corporations to police themselves won't work when the bottom line is the only bottom line. We have seen it many times before in minning.
so, lets review, does the air above these countries, stay there, or does it move with the jet stream? as see as the air above them that they dirty, does NOT sit above them and never move, they are still dirty'n our air.. the EPA reg's has done NOTHING other than make it impossable to run a company in the good ole US OF A.. only way the EPA would really work is if it was across the board and every country. lived by the same rules.. your reply, is the normal.. out of sight, as long a it's not in my backyard, shortsightedness.. that thinks that moving the pollution out of your eyesight, fixed anything.. news flash, it didn't, YOU CLEAN WATER JUST GOT RAINED ON WITH CHINAS POLLUTION IN THAT CLOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.. what everyone skip 5th grade science class..
Originally posted by E.Furgal: so, lets review, does the air above these countries, stay there, or does it move with the jet stream? as see as the air above them that they dirty, does NOT sit above them and never move, they are still dirty'n our air.. the EPA reg's has done NOTHING other than make it impossable to run a company in the good ole US OF A.. only way the EPA would really work is if it was across the board and every country. lived by the same rules.. your reply, is the normal.. out of sight, as long a it's not in my backyard, shortsightedness.. that thinks that moving the pollution out of your eyesight, fixed anything.. news flash, it didn't, YOU CLEAN WATER JUST GOT RAINED ON WITH CHINAS POLLUTION IN THAT CLOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.. what everyone skip 5th grade science class..
There is some truth in that (above). We (in the U.S.) are exposed to mercury pollution from China's coal-fired power plants, although the Chinese living closer to their own power plants are exposed even more. But I don't see that ridding ourselves (in the U.S.) of environmental regulations (in this case, limits on mercury emissions) would be helpful in any way. We should be lobbying China to reduce their mercury emissions (and the like) and having our own EPA limits on mercury gives us the moral and logical grounds for criticizing China's policies.
we can ***** at china and others till the cows come home, fact is people will still support the dirty countries, because hay, that item is cheaper than one made here.. kill the epa as it stands and hit reset with some limits to their power, and untill we force them ,them as in other countries we trade with, to clean up their acts, by either tarriffs or an outright ban on products from those countries untill they play ball.. it never work, and it hasn't THE EPA HAS THE AWARD OF BEING THE NUMBER ONE JOB KILLER IN THE USA, MORE JOBS LEFT OUT BOARDERS BECAUSE OF RULES THAT OTHERS DON'T LUVE BY.. in a GLOBAL ECONOMY.. that will not work.. and we are seeing that now, only reason china buys our debt, is if we go into a depression, they are totally screwed.. BUY american.. the job you save might be your own.. you'd think this would be clear as mud.. also with the "green" movement you'd think we'd move away from the throw it away , and replace mentality.. and buy long lasting ,repairable units..
Congressmen from Nebraska sent a letter to EPA Director Lisa Jackson seeking an explanation after livestock operations in the state were monitored via aerial surveillance.
Republican Reps. Adrian Smith, Jeff Fortenberry and Lee Terry, as well as Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and GOP Sen. Mike Johanns are concerned with privacy and other issues for the livestock operators and other landowners monitored by the agency.
“Farmers and ranchers in Nebraska pride themselves in the stewardship of our state’s natural resources,” wrote the Nebraska lawmakers in a release on Congressman Adrian Smith’s website. “As you might imagine, this practice has resulted in privacy concerns among our constituents and raises several questions.”
The bipartisan group asks almost two-dozen questions about the flyover and if findings resulted in additional enforcement activities. The letter asks for a response by June 10.
Fox News reports the Environmental Protection Agency calls the aerial surveillance a cost-efficient practice for monitoring areas of Section 7, a region of the Midwest including Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
Smith added property owners affected by the surveillance deserve “legitimate justification given the sensitivity of the information gathered by the flyovers."
The North Carolina man visited by armed EPA agents after sending an email to a controversial agency official says he's not satisfied with the explanations about what he considers an excessive response and that he wants changes to agency policies and procedures.
"This isn't over," Keller said.
He told Fox News.com that Environmental Protection Agency officials have said the agency followed procedures and that the agents acted appropriately during their visit last month. However, Keller is still invited to come to EPA headquarters to discuss the situation.
Keller said he's not willing to come to Washington without knowing what will be discussed.
The incident unfolded after Keller sent an email April 27 to the EPA to try to reach Al Armendariz -- a regional administrator who was under fire for a YouTube video post days earlier in which he said his enforcement strategy was to "crucify" executives from big oil and gas companies.
The letter to an EPA external affairs director read "Do you have Mr. Armendariz's contact information so we can say hello? - Regards- Larry Keller."
Keller said he was just asking as a taxpayer and denies being part of the Tea Party, though he acknowledges supporting the movement's calls to defund the agency in part because it has outreached its intended mission.
"We are a customer of them," he said.
Armendariz, whose region included oil-rich Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, resigned April 29 for the comments, made in 2010.
The agents visited Keller's home in Ashville, N.C. on May 2 to ask him about the email, which after some misunderstanding Keller acknowledged sending. He said after a brief, tense discussion about whether the missive might seem suspicious, the agents, who were escorted by the local police, left despite Keller ask them to stay to his wife could witness their visit.
"The charter of the EPA is to protect the environment and public, not to act as a quasi federal police department," Keller said Saturday.
Keller appears to have some support in Washington. GOP Sen. Richard Burr's office has agreed to look into the matter.
The North Carolina senator could not be reached this weekend, but a staffer told the Carolina Journal.com that Burr's office has initiated an inquiry with the EPA and that the senator "intends to pursue this matter vigorously."
A regional EPA official told Keller the agency was following up on his email, considering its timing and the number of threats against Armendariz.
"I want a change of policy and procedure," Keller said. "They've got big problems."
When I first heard of surreptitious EPA flyovers of feed lots in Nebraska and Iowa, I laughed. “Ranks right up there with the black helicopter stories,” I thought. Only people who wear tinfoil hats and cover their windows with Reynolds Wrap® (Trusted Since 1947) to keep the government from scanning their brains would buy into that nonsense.
May I borrow a roll of aluminum foil from someone? I would drop by my local Hy-Vee to purchase some but I’m afraid the feds might get their hands on the supermarket’s scan data and find out what was included in my afternoon purchase of milk, beer and bread. Men in Black 4 might start with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones knocking on my front door.
“Mr. Jolley?” Smith asks. “We’ve just received some information that you bought a quantity of aluminum foil on June 4, 2012, and during a recent flyover, we were unable to see into your kitchen due to some odd reflective material covering your windows. Would you mind telling us what you did with the foil?” (SFX: Helicopter noise in the not distant enough background). Cut to quick shots of a troop of camouflaged and well armed soldiers moving stealthily through the woods in the back of my house, tight shot of large black sedan parked a few blocks away with man in dark suit talking into a shoulder mic, camera pulls back to reveal “Homeland Security” painted on car door.
A letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, cosigned by most of Nebraska’s congressional delegation, demanding to know what the hell was going on, made me rethink my anti-tinfoil hat position for just a moment. Then, Heather Johnson, NPTelegraph.com, North Platte, Nebraska, wrote, “After recent scrutiny, the Environmental Protection Agency has revealed more details about its aerial surveillance of livestock feeding operations in Nebraska and Iowa.”
Memo for tonight: Spend evening in my workshop making a sign that says, “Welcome, Will, I am unarmed” and wrapping motorcycle helmets in tin foil.
Johnson had learned about the flyovers from Kristen Hassebrook, director of natural resources and environmental affairs for the Nebraska Cattlemen, a beef industry group made up of cattle producers.
Hassebrook said, "It was by happenstance that we found out about them. They never told producers they were doing them, but when the EPA started showing up for inspections and had aerial photos of the producers' operations, people started wondering what was going on."
The EPA’s response to the letter was breathtaking in its disingenuousness. The media office of EPA's Region 7, which serves Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, emailed a note to NPTelegraph.com saying aerial surveillance is nothing new, and shouldn't have been a surprise to feedlot operators.
The EPA response claimed flyovers are a longstanding practice done to verify compliance with environmental laws and impaired watersheds. The sole purpose, according to the EPA, is to help identify water pollution in areas of the utmost concern. A further claim: Congressional offices were briefed before any surveillance took place, as was the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.
Hassebrook insisted Nebraska Cattlemen was unaware of the practice and expressed a serious concern about privacy. "At any time they can request access to a property without notice. It's a frustration to producers who think they're complying with regulations, but yet, the government still doesn't trust them. The focus might be the cattle in the pens, but the question becomes how much personal privacy a livestock producer has to give up before the government is satisfied.”
Defending the practice, EPA officials said the courts “have found similar types of flights to be legal and said they are done to protect people and the environment from violations of the Clean Water Act.”
In other words, “We are here to protect you from yourselves, whether you need our protection or not. And it’s none of your damn business how we do it.”
Of course, satellites can do the same thing. Instead of EPA photos taken from a helicopter hovering at 2000 feet, NASA can show you shots taken from 250 miles up with enough clarity to count the size of any herd in any feed lot in America as well as tell you the make, color and year of the trucks in the parking lot. And that slightly overweight guy showing male pattern baldness getting into that brand new black F-25O with six bags of cypress mulch, a garden hoe and a loose screw driver (Philips head) rattling around in the back? That’s Jack, the feed lot manager, social security number xxx.xx.xxxx -number redacted, home address and cell phone number are in our data banks and available upon FOIA’d request.
Face the sad facts, my friends. Any semblance of privacy from the government’s prying eyes in the sky started to disappear over half a century ago when the first satellites with onboard cameras were launched. It was a slow but steady erosion until Homeland Security (Preserving Our Freedoms) kicked it into overdrive after it was founded by G.W. Bush, November 25, 2002. Don the hats, cover the windows and don’t do ANYTHING outside that you don’t want your neighbors to see.
Originally posted by E.Furgal: your reply, is the normal.. out of sight, as long a it's not in my backyard, shortsightedness.. that thinks that moving the pollution out of your eyesight, fixed anything..
And your reply missed my point and assigned to me a point I never made. Try again.
No corporation's (who's main concern is profits) factories can be trusted to police themselves. They will dump their waste wherever is cheapest, not safest.
And your reply missed my point and assigned to me a point I never made. Try again.
No corporation's (who's main concern is profits) factories can be trusted to police themselves. They will dump their waste wherever is cheapest, not safest.
and yet you'll walk into wally world and buy an item made by some corp. that did just what you said they(big bad corp's) can't be trusted to do themselves... and who allowed them to polute..YOU !!!!!!! because you bought the item they made.. instead of one made here that was forces to follow regs that cost money to live by.. and people wonder why nothings made here anymore.. you'll talk a good game, but vote with your wallet and support corp's that do just what you believe they can't be trusted to not do here.. odd.. no?
you CAN NOT!!!! ask corp's here to follow regs.. and then YOU bypass any good it might have done,by supporting a country and/or corp. that got around that reg. by making the item outside the epa's reach.. all YOU did, requiring the epa to have reg's on everything, because big bad corp's can't be trusted.. is more more jobs outside our boarders.. cause YOU the BUYER/END USER don't support the EPA'S actions.. talk is cheap.. money talks,suckers walk.. you want the corp's to follow rules that you don't support.. cause if ya did, you and everyone else would buy from corp's that followed the epa's regs.. but no. you'll buy the imported good ,who's maker did everything you fear the big bad corp. can't be trusted with not doing.. here.. you the buyer inturn are telling the epa to ,take a long walk off a short pier.. if you want those big bad corps to follow regs put in place, you have to support them when they do, follow those regs.. not put them out of biz. by. buying from a corp that bypassed the epa by outsourcing the manufacturing of that item.. again.. it's the standard, out of sight out of mind, as long as it's not in my back yard,, and as long as I'm doing ok I don't care if it puts people out of work and a company out of biz..
[This message has been edited by E.Furgal (edited 06-11-2012).]
Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways.
These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.
“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
“This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.
The unusual alliance of the powerful House Republicans and Democrat to jointly sponsor legislation to overturn the new guidelines signals a willingness on Capitol Hill to rein in the formidable agency.
“The Obama administration is doing everything in its power to increase costs and regulatory burdens for American businesses, farmers and individual property owners,” Mica said in a statement to Human Events. “This federal jurisdiction grab has been opposed by Congress for years, and now the administration and its agencies are ignoring law and rulemaking procedures in order to tighten their regulatory grip over every water body in the country.”
“But this administration needs to realize it is not above the law,” Mica said.
The House measure carries 64 Republican and Democratic cosponsors and was passed in committee last week. A companion piece of legislation is already gathering steam in the Senate and is cosponsored by 26 Republicans.
“President Obama’s EPA continues to act as if it is above the law. It is using this overreaching guidance to pre-empt state and local governments, farmers and ranchers, small business owners and homeowners from making local land and water use decisions,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in announcing their measure in March. “Our bill will stop this unprecedented Washington power grab and restore Americans’ property rights.”
“It’s time to get EPA lawyers out of Americans’ backyards,” Barrasso said.
Republicans say the proposal is peppered with loopholes. It suggests that roadside and agricultural ditches will be excluded; however, it also notes several exceptions, such as a connection to navigable or interstate waterways, ditches “that have relatively permanent flowing or standing water,” or a “bed, bank and ordinary high water mark.”
The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers drafted the new guidelines to implement Supreme Court decisions in the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County case in 2001 and the Rapanos case in 2006 after the decisions removed some waters from federal protection and caused confusion about what remained protected.
However, the lawmakers say the jurisdictional limits set by the court are being ignored in order to justify the expansion of the agencies’ control.
The new language is intended to protect smaller waters that could potentially feed pollution downstream to larger bodies of water, but because it is not a formal rule, it cannot be enforced in the courts.
“Although guidance does not have the force of law, it is frequently used by federal agencies to explain and clarify their understandings of existing requirements,” the new guidelines say.
again.. it's the standard, out of sight out of mind, as long as it's not in my back yard,, and as long as I'm doing ok I don't care if it puts people out of work and a company out of biz..
That's sadly how it is (we are). However, look at the pix of the environmental damage in the US and Western Europe from 1850 through the 1960's. I'm quite happy that it's gotten better and it wasn't because of companies self-regulating.
I think that the Asians will get fed up with their environmental destruction soon enough and demand controls, as well. A race to the bottom can't be the answer.
Originally posted by E.Furgal: and yet you'll walk into wally world and buy an item made by some corp. that did just what you said they(big bad corp's) can't be trusted to do themselves... and who allowed them to polute..YOU !!!!!!! because you bought the item they made.. instead of one made here that was forces to follow regs that cost money to live by.. and people wonder why nothings made here anymore.. you'll talk a good game, but vote with your wallet and support corp's that do just what you believe they can't be trusted to not do here.. odd.. no?
you CAN NOT!!!! ask corp's here to follow regs.. and then YOU bypass any good it might have done,by supporting a country and/or corp. that got around that reg. by making the item outside the epa's reach.. all YOU did, requiring the epa to have reg's on everything, because big bad corp's can't be trusted.. is more more jobs outside our boarders.. cause YOU the BUYER/END USER don't support the EPA'S actions.. talk is cheap.. money talks,suckers walk.. you want the corp's to follow rules that you don't support.. cause if ya did, you and everyone else would buy from corp's that followed the epa's regs.. but no. you'll buy the imported good ,who's maker did everything you fear the big bad corp. can't be trusted with not doing.. here.. you the buyer inturn are telling the epa to ,take a long walk off a short pier.. if you want those big bad corps to follow regs put in place, you have to support them when they do, follow those regs.. not put them out of biz. by. buying from a corp that bypassed the epa by outsourcing the manufacturing of that item.. again.. it's the standard, out of sight out of mind, as long as it's not in my back yard,, and as long as I'm doing ok I don't care if it puts people out of work and a company out of biz..
Just as I don't know YOU or your buying habits, you don't know me or mine.
And for the record, our own government supports these countries. WE trade with these countries. Business is business. Everyone is ALL about spending the least and making the most.
It's hard to compete with countries who's hands are not tied by "human intrest" things like enviormental damage, living wage, worker & community safety, etc. etc. They don't do those things becouse they don't have to (made to, by law, etc.).
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 06-12-2012).]
Just as I don't know YOU or your buying habits, you don't know me or mine.
And for the record, our own government supports these countries. WE trade with these countries. Business is business. Everyone is ALL about spending the least and making the most.
It's hard to compete with countries who's hands are not tied by "human intrest" things like enviormental damage, living wage, worker & community safety, etc. etc. They don't do those things becouse they don't have to (made to, by law, etc.).
lets see.. buy the product made here, and put people back to work, getting people off the government "tit" or buy the imported on. to save a buck and inturn spend 20 times what you saved buying that item.. in welfare,unemployment,food stamps/etc.. it IS NOT HARD TO COMPETE with them.. it's just people are f'n BLIND.. and can't put one and one together.. whatever you THINK you saved buy'n imported crap.. you added to your tax burden or your kids tax burden.. blind leading the blind, no one see's the seventh sign..
Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist.
"As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical."
And Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research says, "the cellulosic biofuel program is the embodiment of government gone wild."
Refiners are at their wit's end because the government set out requirements to blend cellulosic ethanol back in 2005, assuming that someone would make it. Seven years later, no one has.
"None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place."
And Charles Drevna adds, "forcing us to use a product that doesn't exist, they might as well tell us to use unicorns."
And yet, they still have to pay what amounts to fines:
"Why would they ask them to blend any at all if it doesn't exist?" Pyle said. "Because they know that they can squeeze some extra dollars out of them."
The EPA does have discretion to lower the annual requirement. And one supporter explains, that's what the agency is saying.
"We are going to reduce your blending obligation by 98 percent because we feel that that’s the right thing to do," says Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council of the Renewable Fuels Association. "We are going to maintain your blending obligation on the gallons that we think are going to emerge."
The EPA, which would not speak on camera, is still hoping production of cellulosic ethanol will emerge.
A study by the Congressional Research Service, however, says the government "projects that cellulosic bio fuels are not expected to be commercially available on a large scale until at least 2015."
Drevna of the refiners association says they had no other choice left since EPA insisted they still had to blend some of the nonexistent cellulosic ethanol.
"We've had to go to the courts and litigate this thing is because they just turned a blind eye to us," Drevna said.
So the refiners are now suing the EPA, in part because the mandate gets larger and larger-- 500 million gallons this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion in 2022.
And still, not a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in sight.
“Cellulosic ethanol technology is a reality–today. In 2012, we will break ground on a commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa – which, when fully operational, will supply over 27 million gallons per year to the US transportation fuel market.”
– Steve Mirshak, Business director, DuPont Cellulosic Ethanol ''
the oil CORPrats could have built the plants to make Cellulosic ethanol but they dragged their corpRAT feet and now want to escape the fines they earned
do you ever look past the BS and ask why ? the answer is most times they do not want to spend money
I remember when there were no turkeys or eagles in Michigan, a little lake called Erie up here caught fire, oh ya, the DDT trucks that drove around spraying DDT into the air to eliminate flying pests, but killed all insects instead... Great times before the EPA! Sure hope it get abolished and we go back to the old ways!
which, when fully operational, will supply over 27 million gallons per year to the US transportation fuel market.”
Did you even read what you posted ray? They broke ground does not mean the same as it being available. How long until it is available? Until then there is none, so it does not exist.
At 27 million gallons of production, they will be nowhere near what they are mandated to use. "the refiners are now suing the EPA, in part because the mandate gets larger and larger-- 500 million gallons this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion in 2022.
And still, not a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in sight."
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 06-22-2012).]
It seems George Bush was behind the cellulosic ethanol law and it's stimulus. Now Bush accused in 'green stimulus' madness Obama, Soros also involved in 'ludicrous' wood-chip fuel scheme http://www.wnd.com/2012/06/...en-stimulus-madness/
quote
Scores of companies have received federal loans and grants from President Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” to manufacture an experimental fuel called cellulosic ethanol, which has not been successfully produced in the U.S. and might not even work.
The fuel, which is supposed to come from wood chips, was first pushed and funded by the George W. Bush administration.
Despite the fact that no company has been able to produce the fuel, Congress previously passed a law imposing mandates on oil companies to mix the non-existent cellulosic fuel into gasoline.
Some companies have even been fined by the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to use the non-existent fuel.
A George-Soros financed company attempted to cash in on the government mandate that all oil companies utilize a certain percentage of cellulosic ethanol, which is said to be environmentally friendly.
Qteros, the private Massachusetts company backed by Soros Fund Management, closed earlier this year due to lack of further investment, while other firms are scaling back their production efforts, some backed by “stimulus” money.
Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel that is supposed to be produced from wood, grasses or the inedible parts of plants.
The 2007 Energy Security and Independence Act signed into law by Bush mandated that oil companies use 500 million gallons of biofuel this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion annually by 2022. Of those numbers, a significant percentage must be made from so-called lighter environmental stocks, including cellulosic ethanol.
The Wall Street Journal reported some 70 million gallons, or 70 percent of the cellulosic supply to meet the never-reached 2010 mandate, was to come from Alabama-based Cello Energy. In 2009, a jury in a civil fraud case ruled that Cello had lied about how much cellulosic fuel it could produce.
As the EPA quietly scales back last year’s cellulosic fuel requirement to just 6.6 million, there is much speculation about when the fuel can actually be produced.
A Congressional Research Service study recently conceded that the U.S. government “projects that cellulosic bio fuels are not expected to be commercially available on a large scale until at least 2015.”
However, in a strange turn of events, the EPA has actually been fining oil companies for not utilizing the biofuel.
“As ludicrous as that sounds, it’s fact,” said Charles Drevna, who represents oil refiners in a suit against the EPA.
“If it weren’t so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical,” Drevna told Fox News earlier this week.
Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, also speaking to Fox News, characterized the cellulosic biofuel program as “the embodiment of government gone wild.”
The Soros-backed Qteros company was created for the very purpose of producing cellulosic ethanol in the U.S. The company’s closure due to lack of further investment may be indicative of whether the fuel can be produced.
Another oil firm, Codexis, recently announced its cellulosic ethanol research collaboration between Iogen and Shell will be terminated June 30.
Scores of firms to produce the fuel were funded by Obama’s “stimulus.” Others were funded by President Bush.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced last July his agency was providing a $105 million loan guarantee to support the construction of cellulosic plant by Poet LLC, the largest U.S. ethanol company.
The Energy Department last year also finalized a $132 Million loan guarantee to support the Abengoa Bioenergy Project to support the development of a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant.
Range Fuels, which was supposed to be the nation’s first producer of the biofuel, recently closed its Georgia cellulosic ethanol plant. Range was funded by a $76 million grant from Bush’s Energy Department and another $80 million loan guarantee from the Department of Agriculture also under Bush. The loan was signed on Bush’s final day in office.
I remember when there were no turkeys or eagles in Michigan, a little lake called Erie up here caught fire, oh ya, the DDT trucks that drove around spraying DDT into the air to eliminate flying pests, but killed all insects instead... Great times before the EPA! Sure hope it get abolished and we go back to the old ways!
BTW, DDT wasn't the bad thing they said. After its ban, MILLIONS have died in Africa because of malaria without DDT.
Perhaps if we spray oil on the water to choke the mosquito larva, that would help? That is what we did before and after DDT was banned. Oil! What can't it do? But then, that is Africa. We have had food rot on the docks, and medicine stolen and sold to fund some African potentate and his toy army... There are many things we have tried to do for them, but it seems to go to waste. The easiest thing to do is pay bribes to the corrupt officials but it adds up real fast and makes it impossible to get things done.
Just in case you needed yet another example of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency going above and beyond the call of duty in putting their own nebulous agenda before the concerns of the American people, here ya’ go.
The EPA, working through the auspices of the U.S. Coast Guard, is set to begin enforcing a new rule on August 1st that will require all large marine vessels (like cargo and cruise ships) sailing in southern Alaska waters to use low-sulfur fuel. The EPA is justifying the regulation as an extension of an amendment to a treaty, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), that Hillary Clinton accepted in 2010. The problem is that our Senate has yet to ratify that particular amendment — but when have such minute legal particulars ever bothered the EPA?
Fortunately, Alaska is fighting back — on Friday, the state filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration to try and block the costly new regulation.
The lawsuit faults the EPA, the Department of Homeland Security and others for using a marine treaty amendment as the basis for the new federal regulations without waiting for ratification of that amendment by the U.S. Senate.
The Alaska Department of Law said in a statement that the low-sulfur-fuel requirement would be costly, jacking up prices for products shipped by marine vessel and harming Alaska’s cruise industry. …
“There are reasonable and equally effective alternatives for the Secretary and the EPA to consider which would still protect the environment but dramatically reduce the severe impact these regulations will have on Alaskan jobs and families.”
Totem Ocean Trailer Express, a major shipper operating in Alaska, estimates that the move to low-sulfur fuel will increase its costs by 8 percent, Geraghty said.
Really, Obama administration? You’re already denying a boatload of jobs, wealth, revenue, and economic growth to Alaskans by disallowing them access to a bunch of their own oil and gas, and now you’re butting in with an ill-thought-out, overzealous regulation that will negatively impact the thousands of jobs in the shipping and cruise industries? The Alaskan economy just can’t seem to catch a break from these people!
When you impose costs on businesses, you’re also imposing costs on the consumers of that product and the employees who produce it — prices go up, people stand to lose their jobs, and the economy suffers. It sounds like there are other alternatives the EPA might consider (and you’d think they would, given their penchant for long, drawn-out environmental impact reviews!), and again, the United States hasn’t even agreed to the shipping treaty’s new amendment yet. This is just another example of an out-of-control independent regulatory agency grabbing more power for itself and using fiat to enforce their green worldview, the costs be damned. Bad form, EPA.
Dexter Lutter was expecting an award; instead he got a $20,000 fine.
He made environmental improvements on his land — his farm — by taking steps to clean up the water supply and better preserve the soil, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fined him for his efforts.
“That’s how out of touch I am,” Lutter says. “I feel like we should have won a medal for what we did, but the EPA tells us we were wrong.”
A small manmade open ditch ran through Lutter’s property in Noble County, Ind. It was in need of repair, and Lutter got permission from his county to place tile drains for the collection of the agricultural discharge and cover over the eroding open ditch. This not only saved county taxpayer dollars, but also cleaned up the water supply and prevented further soil erosion.
But that doesn’t matter. According to Noble County and Lutter, they were told they violated the Clean Water Act. This is despite the fact that Lutter said the ditch was manmade and used only for agricultural discharge and did not impede the flow of any main waterways — usual exemptions under the Clean Water Act.
It seems both the EPA and Army Corps are no longer content just monitoring activity in “navigable” waterways—as stated in the Clean Water Act, which has commonly lent itself to waterways where a vessel could in fact, navigate. These agencies seem to think they need to adopt a different interpretation of the law, which gets them another step closer to controlling all water in the U.S.
This means many more cases similar to Lutter’s will begin to surface.
Imagine if the EPA and Army Corps held the power to regulate any and all water they saw fit — water from a roadside ditch to a puddle in your yard? It’s a scary thought and greatly threatens farmers and landowners like Lutter, who now owes the EPA a hefty fine since it was his personal business that paid for much of the cleanup.
For Noble County, this Clean Water Act violation means a $75,000 fine and an additional $100,000 or more in mitigation costs to satisfy EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, says Scott Zeigler, Noble County Surveyor.
If manmade ditches, creeks and drainage system are in line to fall under the jurisdiction of the EPA and/or the Army Corps of Engineers, then any farmer with a backed up drainage system or broken tile drain might need a permit before they can even be fixed. Likewise, any land you may own and would like to build on that had a standing puddle could potentially result in a rejected permit for disrupting a “wetland.”
This is very similar to what happened to Mike and Chantell Sackett.
They bought land in Idaho and decided to build a home. Once they filled the land with dirt and rocks in preparation, the EPA showed up asking for a permit claiming they had illegally filled protected wetlands and would contaminate a somewhat nearby lake. However, between the lake and the Sackett’s home were “several lots containing permanent structures.” Nonetheless, the Sackett’s were ordered to stop all renovations.
The case made its way to the Supreme Court earlier this year, and a unanimous decision stated that the Sackett’s deserved their day in court — and most importantly that EPA actions are accountable to the justice system.
The Sackett’s can now take their case against the EPA to court — a journey not many are willing to take due to the high price of fighting against a large government bureaucracy. Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out during the oral arguments of the case that because of potential fines few people are going to challenge the EPA’s decisions:
“Because of the administrative compliance order, you’re really never going to be put to the test, because most land owners aren’t going to say, ‘I’m going to risk the $37,000 a day.’ All EPA has to do is make whatever finding it wants, and realize that in 99 percent of the cases, it’s never going to be put to the test.”
The Blaze asserts that the EPA issues nearly 3,000 administrative compliance orders a year that call on alleged violators of environmental laws to stop what they‘re doing and repair the harm they’ve caused.
With a hefty fine like $37,000 a day as Chief Justice Roberts used as an example, or even Lutter’s $20,000 fine, it is easy to see why people are scared away from pushing back against the heavy-handed EPA.
As Lutter and his attorney are attempting to negotiate with the EPA in hope of lowering the fine, elected officials in Noble County are also wondering how to pay their fine of $75,000, not to mention the possibly more than $100,000 in mitigation costs to satisfy the Army Corps.
“We filled in a ditch that was about 2 to 3 feet wide and about 10 to 12 inches deep,” says Noble County Surveyor Scott Zeigler. “We did something to save taxpayers money and now we have to pay out almost $200,000 in penalties.”
Is this the penalty for folks who clean up the environment and are good stewards of their land?
The mitigation project for Noble County includes planting many new trees and implementing new practices that will detain water, resulting in water moving slower from farms. So far this hasn’t been a welcomed project.
If the EPA and Army Corps are successful in their bid to reinterpret the Clean Water Act, these agencies will be responsible for every drop of water in the U.S. — even more so than they are now.
“This paints a picture of the insanity of the EPA,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “The people making these decisions are so radical that even attempting to reform the EPA will do no good — the agency needs a complete overhaul. The job of the next administration will be to restructure and re-staff this rogue government agency.”
For now, Lutter is hoping he didn’t just lose his business over successfully cleaning up the water supply and creating a healthier environment for years to come.
Republicans on Friday said a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report proved their claims that a pair of environmental rules would harm the economy and electric reliability.
The GAO report released Thursday touched on two forthcoming Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that have drawn criticism from Republicans. Though the report said complying with those rules would pose “reliability challenges,” it maintained those risks were avoidable.
GOP staff from two committees saw the final report differently. They said the report points to glaring problems their members have long identified as significant risks to electric reliability and costs.
“The report confirms the committee’s repeated assertions that EPA’s power sector regulations will raise electricity prices and present serious localized reliability challenges for many coal-dependent parts of the country,” House Energy and Commerce Committee spokeswoman Charlotte Baker told The Hill on Friday. “We are seeing more and more coal plants retire as a result of EPA’s actions, but the administration has yet to account for how this reduced capacity will affect consumers and our ability to keep the lights on.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who had asked GAO to conduct the report, claimed it as a victory for EPA supporters on Thursday. The study reviewed two forthcoming regulations that Republicans oppose: the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. It also evaluated two EPA proposals.
The GAO report said between 2 and 12 percent of coal-fired electric capacity would come offline as a result of the rules. It said cheap natural gas might push power plant operators to voluntarily shutter expensive coal-fired plants.
Still, the report also echoed Republican and utility industry claims that meeting compliance deadlines would be difficult because the technology needed to clean up power plants is not widely available, a point that Baker emphasized.
“Utilities and local officials have warned the required compliance timelines are unachievable and will severely challenge electric reliability throughout the implementation process,” she said.
The report also said adhering to the rules would be tougher in coal-heavy states, most of which are located in the South. It noted electricity rates could rise as much as 13 percent, though over time fluctuations might be less than historical levels.
The idea of rising electricity rates did not sit well with Republican staff on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The price increase predictions are a testament to that committee’s opposition to the EPA rules, Katie Brown, a Republican spokeswoman with the committee, told The Hill on Friday.
"Like the Obama EPA, the report gives short shrift to the effect these unnecessarily burdensome rules will have on working Americans,” she said. “A 13 percent electricity rate hike is no small matter for those on fixed incomes or those who are struggling to create jobs. And what do the American people get in exchange? ‘Benefits’ that are either entirely fabricated or already being achieved by regulations already on the books.”
In the end we gain nothing from all of these new regulations, lose a bunch of jobs, and have higher electric bills to pay. Sure doesn't sound like win-win to me.
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 08-19-2012).]
Still, the report also echoed Republican and utility industry claims that meeting compliance deadlines would be difficult because the technology needed to clean up power plants is not widely available, a point that Baker emphasized.
I read that as the power pigs and their GOP allies do not want to create jobs or spend money
think of all the jobs the technology could add if the cheap power pigs would invest in it
Today in Alaska, there’s a political battle raging over a proposed copper mine, the Pebble Project. Not many in Washington, D.C. know about it, but it’s time people start paying attention. That’s because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to lock some of America’s poorest communities into a permanent economic depression as a favor to national environmental groups. If the EPA succeeds, what happens in Alaska won’t stay in Alaska – there will be huge economic and employment consequences for the rest of the country.
The Pebble Project is a proposed copper mine about 15 miles from my hometown of Iliamna in southwestern Alaska. The Pebble deposit contains one of the world’s largest discoveries of copper, and if the proposed mine secures more than 60 different regulatory approvals from about a dozen state and federal agencies, the project would create about 2,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent positions. For permitting, the developers will have to prove to regulators the project will not harm the surrounding environment, including Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon population.
The Pebble Partnership has invested $120 million so far on environmental and socioeconomic studies that will be used to develop a formal permit application, which regulators will spend three to five years reviewing. But that’s not good enough for the national environmental groups who oppose the Pebble mine. Instead, they want the EPA to take the unprecedented and probably unlawful step of using Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to preemptively veto the project before any permit applications can be filed. The EPA appears to be following those marching orders, because in May the agency issued a draft report stating that a copper mine in the Bristol Bay Watershed would likely harm salmon populations. If the draft report is finalized, the EPA could then veto all mining activity in the region.
The State of Alaska is deeply troubled by this potential EPA power grab, as the Pebble site is located on state-owned land that’s been set aside for mineral development. The EPA’s draft report is essentially a literature review that contains no new or on-the-ground scientific research conducted as part of the assessment. Without a permit application, the EPA made up its own mine plan, assuming environmentally harmful technologies and practices “from the late 1800 and early 1900s” – historic examples that do not apply directly to a modern mine under current regulations , according to Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources. The draft report presents a “biased picture of only adverse impacts of a hypothetical mine,” and key sections “start with conclusions, and then subsequently follow with facts that support the conclusion,” which is “inappropriate for a scientific document developed by a regulatory agency.” But of all the State of Alaska’s criticisms, this was perhaps the most revealing: “No reference to, or consideration of, winter freezing or permafrost is provided in the risk assessment.” That’s right – the EPA wrote a report about Alaska and forgot the part about winter.
That basically sums up the entire debate. The EPA, environmental groups, commercial fishing interests and tourism operators care only about 2-3 months of the year. When the long winter comes, the seasonal industries leave, and the economy of southwestern Alaska shuts down. The region’s per capita income is $15,000 a year. Worse, our remote location results in sky-high living expenses – gasoline is $8-9 a gallon and milk costs even more – so the poverty rate exceeds 20 percent. The teen suicide rate is devastatingly high, and our villages are slowly dying as more of our young people move away. If the Pebble developers can prove to regulators that a large-scale mine and commercial fishing can co-exist, it could provide year-round jobs our communities desperately need. We have pleaded with EPA officials to back off and let the developers succeed or fail within the regular permitting process, but they won’t listen.
This isn’t just an Alaskan problem. Annually, about 60,000 construction projects nationwide, from mines to roads to shopping malls, depend on Section 404 permits. A preemptive veto in Alaska would cast a huge cloud of regulatory uncertainty over $220 billion of economic activity when the nation is struggling to create jobs. Worse, if the preemptive Section 404 strategy works in Alaska, environmentalists will use it elsewhere. The National Wildlife Federation is already targeting the Great Lakes Watershed, which takes in a huge swath of the industrial Midwest. It’s time for Congress and the White House to stop this madness in Alaska before it spreads to the rest of the country.
Ray, bypassing the word filter is a no no, in case you didn't know. What did Ed Koch do to you anyway that you want people to suck him?
THE NUT-CONNED BROTHERS YOUR RIGHTWING FANATIC'S ARE SUCKING UP THEIR MONEY
THE SAME BIG COAL CORPrat BROTHERS who do not want clean water or air as that costs the billionaire's a little and are the guys behind the curtain with your hate EPA bs
[This message has been edited by ray b (edited 09-01-2012).]
Seven score and nine years ago, President Lincoln resolved to take increased devotion to ensuring that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.
Yet, today, our lives are determined not so much by We the People, as by a distant central government, particularly increasingly powerful, unelected and unaccountable Executive Branch agencies. Foremost among them, by almost any standard, is the Environmental Protection Agency.
Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Gettysburg vision has mutated into government of, by and for the EPA. Indeed, Ms. Jackson seeks not merely to regulate, but to legislate; not merely to protect our health and environment against every conceivable risk, but to control every facet of our economy, livelihoods and lives. Under her direction, EPA increasingly flaunts the naked power of regulators gone wild.
Instead of following laws and policies set by our elected representatives, EPA is now controlled by environmental ideologues, determined to impose their utopian ideas, via a massive and arrogant power grab. President Obama set the tone, with his promises to “bankrupt” coal and utility companies and “radically transform” our economy and society, and serves as the rogue agency’s cheerleader-in-chief. With few exceptions, our courts have refused to intervene, and the Senate has obstructed any meaningful efforts to constrain agency overreach or reexamine the laws under which it claims jurisdiction.
EPA’s power grab picks the pockets of every American business and citizen, making it increasingly expensive to fill gas tanks, heat and cool homes and offices, run hospitals and factories, or buy food and consumer goods. The Employment Prevention Agency’s $100-billion diktats are killing countless jobs, making America more dependent on foreign sources of energy and raw materials that we have in abundance right here at home, and endangering our economic health and national security.
Under Lisa Jackson’s agenda, fossil fuels are to be relegated to the dustbin of history. America is to get its energy from intermittent, unreliable “renewable” sources, whenever they are available. Regulations on carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” mercury, soot and other substances are to make non-hydrocarbon energy appear cheaper by comparison, and pave the way for crony-corporatist “alternatives” like wind, solar, ethanol, wave and tidal action, and even biofuel for the Navy and Air Force.
In a mere six instances, our courts have delayed or blocked some of EPA’s worst excesses. Ruling that the agency had exceeded its authority, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down EPA’s “cross-state” air pollution rule, which would have controlled power plant emissions on the ground that computer models predicted the pollutants might harm neighborhoods hundreds of miles away.
In far too many other cases, however, EPA has been given carte blanche to regulate as it sees fit. A key pretext is the 1970 Clean Air Act, as amended by Congress in 1977 and 1990. The act deals primarily with six common pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulates (soot), ozone, lead and carbon monoxide. It never mentions carbon dioxide, the plant-fertilizing gas that is essential for all life.
As EPA itself acknowledges, between 1970 and 2010, those six “criteria” air pollutants declined by an average of 63% and will continue to do so under existing regulations and technologies. Moreover, those dramatic reductions occurred even as coal-based electricity generation increased 180% … overall US energy consumption rose 40% … miles traveled soared 168% … and the nation’s population increased by 110 million. However, EPA intends to go much further, to advance its radical agenda.
It ruled that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant,” ignoring solar influences and citing claims by alarmists like James Hansen and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that this essential gas (0.0395% of Earth’s atmosphere) “contributes” to “dangerous” global warming. Since hydrocarbons provide 85% of the energy used to power America, this single ruling gives EPA effective control over our transportation, manufacturing, heating, cooling and other activities – virtually our entire economy – while making it all but impossible to operate existing coal-fired power plants or build new ones.
To ensure that coal really is excised from our energy mix, EPA also issued oppressive new rules on other emissions. Its new mercury rule is based on computer-generated risks to hypothetical American women who eat 296 pounds of fish a year that they catch themselves, its determination to prevent a theoretical reduction in IQ test scores by “0.00209 points,” and its refusal to recognize that coal-fired power plants contribute just 3% of the total mercury deposited in American watersheds, and thus in fish tissue.
EPA’s new PM2.5 soot standard is equivalent to having one ounce of super-fine dust spread equally in a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story tall – while other rules demand that water from coal mines be cleaner than Perrier bottled water!
The agency repeatedly denied Shell Oil permits to drill in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, because emissions from drilling rig and icebreaker engines might contribute to global warming. It opposes the Keystone XL Pipeline on the ground that burning Canadian oil sands fuel might likewise “contribute” to catastrophic climate change – whereas that would presumably not be the case if China burned that same fuel.
When Congress failed to act, it imposed new 54.5 mpg automobile standards that will make cars less affordable, but also smaller, more lightweight and less safe, causing thousands of additional injuries, disabilities and deaths every year. The agency bragged about fuel savings, and ignored the human toll.
EPA also added industrial pollution, habitat destruction and fertilizer runoff as more reasons why irrigation water should not be turned on again in California’s San Joaquin Valley, to “protect” the delta smelt at the expense of farm jobs and families, after a judge ordered water to be turned back on.
To further justify its despotic decisions, EPA grossly overstates the economic benefits of its rules – insisting that each “premature death” theoretically avoided creates $9 million in hypothetical societal economic gains, whether the assumed “person” was a newborn or an 85-year-old in hospice care.
If even that isn’t enough, it uses human subjects in laboratory tests, exposing them to what Ms. Jackson has testified are dangerous, even toxic levels of fine soot. The agency also pays activist groups millions of taxpayer dollars a year to promote and applaud its farfetched claims and rogue actions.
Finally, EPA ignores the clearly harmful impacts its regulations have on human health and welfare. The rules cost jobs, thereby increasing the risk of depression, alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, cardiovascular disease and suicide. They just as obviously raise the cost of food, electricity, heating, air conditioning, commuting, healthcare and other necessities, thereby reducing health, welfare, living standards, civil rights progress and environmental justice – especially for poor, elderly and minority families.
EPA is out of control, and thus far unaccountable for its abuses of power, its disinformation and fraud, and the harm it is inflicting – for little or no health or environmental benefit.
Our founding fathers provided for elections, so that the American people could choose leaders who make the major decisions affecting their lives – and not be subjected to involuntary servitude at the hands of unelected, unaccountable kings or bureaucrats.
Rarely in history has one election meant so much, or one agency asserted so much control over our lives, livelihoods and freedoms. The 2012 elections will determine whether America once again enjoys a new birth of freedom, or continues suffering under an EPA that enslaves and impoverishes us, rather than protects us.
[EPA] ruled that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant,” ignoring solar influences and citing claims by alarmists like James Hansen and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that this essential gas (0.0395% of Earth’s atmosphere) “contributes” to “dangerous” global warming. Since hydrocarbons provide 85% of the energy used to power America, this single ruling gives EPA effective control over our transportation, manufacturing, heating, cooling and other activities – virtually our entire economy – while making it all but impossible to operate existing coal-fired power plants or build new ones.
?
The Bipartisan Policy Group has analyzed the problem as far ahead as year 2035, factoring in the quantifiable effects of the latest EPA regulations affecting coal-fired power plants.
Conclusion: The U.S. will continue to generate more of its electrical power from coal than any other source--looking all the way out to 2035.
The electric power sector in the United States is facing a changing market and regulatory environment that continues to influence the relative competitive positions of various forms of electricity generation. The new BPC [Bipartisan Policy Center] staff report, Projected Impact of Changing Conditions on the Power Sector, sheds light on these changes and updates analysis presented in the June 2011 BPC staff paper, Environmental Regulation and Electric System Reliability.
To help understand these dynamics, we continue to analyze the power sector with ICF International’s Integrated Planning Model (IPM),* which simulates economic decisions by electricity generators based on the assumed market and policy conditions. BPC defined two scenarios—a Base Case and a Policy Case—to specifically examine the impacts of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent air regulations for the U.S. power sector, namely the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for power plants and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). . . .
... by 2020, with adjusting fuel prices and electricity demand growth, the amount of electricity generated from coal-fired facilities is projected to increase above current levels and continue to grow well beyond today’s historically low level to reach 2007 – 2008 levels around 2025. Thus, even with the economics recently favoring natural gas generation, coal is projected to remain the largest generation source in both the Base and Policy Cases of this analysis ...
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 09-15-2012).]
BTW, DDT wasn't the bad thing they said. After its ban, MILLIONS have died in Africa because of malaria without DDT.
I though the American Bald Eagle was brought to the brink of extinction because DDT weakend the bird's egg shells. It would have been a real shame if the Bald Eagle, the iconic symbol of the US were to become extinct simply because we, (Americans), were too stupid or to ignorant to not ban the production and use of DDT in the US.
Remember the EPA bureaucrat who got caught receiving $900,000 in pay without working because he claimed he also was employed by the CIA?
According to a report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the man, former climate policy expert John Beale, “retired” when questions arose about his spotty attendance and expense records.
Only he didn’t file his retirement paperwork and continued to draw an active-duty salary for some time after. His boss at the time in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, now-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, knew this for about seven months and did nothing to stop it.
“On March 29, 2012, an OAR official raised concerns about Beale’s retirement when he informed McCarthy that Beale was still on payroll,” the report stated.
“Despite being aware of the fact that one of her subordinates was collecting a paycheck without providing any work product, this arrangement continued for seven more months before McCarthy ever contacted Beale.”
In December 2012, McCarthy met with Beale for the first time in nearly 15 months, and he informed her that he was no longer planning on retiring. Two more months passed before concerns with Beale were officially reported to the inspector general. On April 30, 2013, McCarthy had cause to fire Beale, but instead elected to allow him to voluntarily retire with full benefits.
Liz Purchia, press secretary for McCarthy, told The Daily Signal in an email: “[McCarthy] believed he was retired, and [that] was the reason he was not in the office.”
How Did He Do It?
According to the Senate report, Beale’s career at the EPA was marked by relentless dishonesty on matters large and small and a cadre of supervisors who, like McCarthy apparently in the matter of his retirement pay, enabled his self-dealing behaviors.
He claimed an injury so he could ride first-class on flights for government business, which in one case drove the ticket price from $1,000 to $14,000. He forged expense forms, claimed to be away on CIA business for 2½ years worth of work days and flew to Los Angeles and stayed in posh hotels on the EPA’s tab for family visits that had nothing to do with agency work.
Few even attempted to question Beale’s frequent absences, enormous expense reports, exorbitant salary—he retired as the agency’s highest-paid employee—and lack of accountability. He was personally popular, well-connected and believed to be among the agency’s most effective employees.
But Beale’s greatest deception has nothing to do with first-class flights and fancy hotels.
Beale, who is serving a 32-month sentence in the federal prison in Cumberland, Md., for pleading guilty to felony theft of government property, spent most of his career devising regulations under the Clean Air Act that are justified by science few have seen and no one has peer-reviewed, according to the Senate report.
“We should all question how John Beale became a senior official at the EPA and played a major role in long-lasting policy decisions while pulling off a scam I thought only Hollywood could make up,” Sen. David Vitter, R-La., told The Daily Signal.
“But this egregious case helped us successfully reveal how EPA has wasted taxpayer resources and mismanagement in a manner that is far too common.”
John Beale and the Clean Air Act
Beale’s penchant for bilking the EPA out of money eroded the trust Americans place in their government and EPA employees place in their superiors and coworkers. But it was the role he played beginning in the mid-1990s in creating and implementing regulations pursuant to Clean Air Act that continues to reverberate and linger at the expense of the American people.
Staffers with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee set out last year to probe the relationship between “sue-and-settle” arrangements and evidence they had uncovered that pointed to the manipulation of scientific data.
What they discovered, as detailed in their report, titled “EPA’s Playbook Unveiled: A Story of Fraud, Deceit and Secret Science,” was how agency officials concealed and misled about the science that underpinned its most significant initiatives and silenced and marginalized their own internal watchdog offices, which enabled the agency to greatly overstate the benefits and underestimate the costs of its Clean Air Act rulemaking.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to create National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter and ozone. The American Lung Association sought to jumpstart this process with a so-called “sue-and-settle” suit filed in 1995.
The idea behind “sue-and-settle” is for friendly plaintiffs to sue a government agency, work out agreeable terms—perhaps even beforehand—and emerge with a court order to implement rules or regulations that could not have been achieved through the democratic or even regulatory process.
The American Lung Association suit resulted in a consent decree that called for the EPA to propose final standards for particulate matter by Nov. 29, 1996, and issue the standards by July 19, 1997. The decree set no deadline for ozone standards because they had been reviewed in 1993 and were not up for another review until 1998.
But Beale and Robert Brenner, his best friend and erstwhile boss, made what documents called a “policy call” and seized on the urgency to produce new particulate matter standards to rush through a new ozone standard as well.
This put the agency in the position of advancing two regulatory standards simultaneously, which it had never done. And it put the agency and those charged with reviewing such regulations, including the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, under impossible deadline pressure.
Why Beale Was Emboldened
The EPA admitted in court papers filed pursuant to the American Lung Association lawsuit that any period shorter than Dec. 1, 1998, for promulgation of the particulate matter standard “would require the EPA to reach conclusions on scientific and policy issues with enormous consequences for society before it has had an adequate opportunity to collect and evaluate pertinent scientific data” and that further time was needed to reach a “sound and scientifically supportable decision.”
Beale had no time for that. He needed an ally to move things along and found one in Carol Browner, the Al Gore acolyte and former staffer who served as administrator of the EPA through both terms of the Clinton administration. Beale formed a close relationship with her and met with her multiple times per week to discuss his progress on this.
The urgency, as well as his influence with the boss and an unwillingness of others at EPA to block him, gave Beale “the mechanism he needed to ignore opposition to the standards.”
Beale’s efforts to include ozone in the new regulations proved expensive for Americans.
The EPA estimated the cost at $2.5 billion, but its estimate was based on receiving the full benefits of cutting ozone but achieving only a partial attainment of the standards, which the law did not permit. The Council of Economic Advisers also measured the cost and found it to be $60 billion—24 times the EPA estimate.
Indeed, as was the case with him getting away with not showing up for work and submitting exorbitant expense reports, succeeding in this regulatory sleight of hand only emboldened Beale to go further.
‘Hidden and Unverified’
That first round of standards, which regulated coarse particulate matter, such as pollen and dust, became known as PM10. But Beale wanted more.
In 1997, with the backing of his superiors, he sought to engage the agency in regulating fine particulate matter—particles a fourth the size of those regulated under PM10 and too small to be visible to the human eye.
But to enact these regulations, EPA first had to produce scientific research that established these smaller particles posed a threat to humans.
To accomplish this, Beale pulled data from two controversial studies—the Harvard Six Cities Study and an American Cancer Society study known as ACSII. The data was not trusted. The air advisory committee pointed out it had not been peer-reviewed, and others indicated Beale was exaggerating the findings for his desired result.
Further undermining those studies’ credibility is that even now, 20 years later, EPA still refuses to release the data, despite McCarthy’s promise to do so during her confirmation hearings.
Though Beal is out of the picture and in prison, his rulemaking techniques he employed to advance the 1997 National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone and particulate matter remain firmly entrenched.
“This effort codified EPA’s now customary practice of using fine particulates (PM2.5) to inflate the benefits of nearly all regulations issued under the Clean Air Act,” the Senate report concludes. “Yet the science supporting nearly all of EPA’s alleged benefits remain hidden and unverified.”
When it’s not trying to re-engineer America’s power grid, squelch local economic development, or make specious arguments against the Keystone XL pipeline, EPA is trying to stretch its regulatory arm to Sweden, the land of ABBA, IKEA, and Volvo.
The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins gets into [subscription required] a story about regulatory overreach with as many twists as a Steig Larsson page turner:
Sweden’s Volvo last month appealed to the high court to overturn EPA penalties imposed on Volvo engines not built in America, not sold in America, unlikely ever to end up in America, and not subject in any way to the EPA’s statutory jurisdiction.
…
In 1991, the EPA ignored complaints from several makers of non-road engines that rivals were cheating, in order to save fuel, on emissions rules for oxides of nitrous (NOx). Then environmental groups took up the same complaint, whereupon the agency demanded face-saving consent decrees with numerous engine makers, including two Volvo affiliates.
In essence, the engine makers apologized by agreeing in 1999 to accelerate by a single year compliance with a new emissions standard scheduled to take effect in 2006.
The issue is over 7,626 engines. They were made in Sweden but were never imported into the United States. Another wrinkle is EPA certified these engines under its then-current NOx standard but changed its mind four years later and imposed fines on Volvo.
Jenkins thinks the Supreme Court should take up Volvo's appeal: “If reining in arbitrary bureaucratic power is important, an opportunity is at hand.”
