Barack Obama’s avalanche of needless regulations on coal-fueled power plants are going into effect and the net result will be the closing of hundreds of power plants all across the country just when our need for power is increasing. This will absolutely necessitate the cost of our power to skyrocket. But, this is exactly what he wants. He wants to rape us for our power. He said so from the beginning.

Well, now that he’s had the opportunity to put into place just some of the new rules and regulations he wants — and he’s only pushed through a tiny bit of what he really wants, indeed — we are already seeing the results of his attack on us.

Look to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where six coal-fueled power plants are being shut down by FirstEnergy because the retrofitting the power plants will have to undergo to satisfy Obama’s whims is just too expensive to justify.

Company spokesmen say there is no help for it.

“This decision is not in any way a reflection of the fine work done by the employees at the affected plants, but is related to the impact of new environmental rules,” said James H. Lash, president, FirstEnergy Generation and chief nuclear officer. “We recently completed a comprehensive review of our coal-fired generating plants and determined that additional investments to implement MATS and other environmental rules would make these older plants even less likely to be dispatched under market rules. As a result, it was necessary to retire the plants rather than continue operations.”

Obama is forcing these new regs on the whole industry. Many thousands of jobs will be lost — this particular shut down will cause the loss of over 500 jobs initially — and the loss of the generating capacity will force a larger load on other plants necessarily causing costs to go up for all of us.

This isn’t just affecting out-of-date plants owned by FirstEnergy, either.

Douglas Gotham, director of the State Utility Forecasting Group, for instance, says that rates hikes are on the way in Indiana, as well, and all because of Obama’s onerous new EPA regulations.

“Due to the federal regulatory focus on emissions from coal-fired generators, Indiana is expected to experience larger price increases than projected on a regional or national level.”

This is exactly what Obama wanted. Remember in 2007 when he sat down with the San Francisco Chronicle and told us all that he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry and that our rates would “necessarily skyrocket”?

Well, his plans are succeeding. Prices are indeed “skyrocketing.” Worse, jobs are being lost. As Sean Harkbarth of the US Chamber of Commerce notes,

Utility MACT is only part of the assault on coal power plants. Last September, I wrote about how EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution rule cost 500 jobs in Texas. The Chamber’s senior vice president of Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Affairs, Bill Kovacs told Congressmen last summer that the “cumulative impact of regulatory action can be overwhelming” and is causing power plants to be taken offline and putting people out of work.

Hackbarth points to testimony of EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus who admitted last April that jobs are not part of their determinations.

So, Obama’s plans really are well on the way to fruition. But it’s just beginning. He very much wants to do far more damage than he has thus far.

(H/T Thurber’s Thoughts)

(Global Warming Policy Foundation) President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil and gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines. “[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines.

“The Council recognizes the important safety and environmental concerns surrounding these types of projects, but now more than ever, the jobs and economic and energy security benefits of these energy projects require us to tackle the issues head-on and to expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the report says.

Again, I’m not a real big fan of oil, it’s kinda dirty and not particularly good for the environment (I’m not talking about CO2, but real pollutants), but, I live in Reality Land where the world runs on oil at this time, and reducing the amounts will not see a unicorn magically crap out viable renewable methods. Seeing more oil based projects increases employment with good paying jobs, and these good paying jobs lead to, yes, spreading the wealth. I had a post drafted a few months ago which I never posted about the North Dakota oil workers getting so much money that they were snapping up property. In Arizona.

(Washington Times) House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said the presidential jobs council’s recommendations for expanding domestic energy production, cutting government red tape and overhauling business taxes are exactly the policies passed by the House in the past year. Most of those bills have stalled in the Senate.

White House Spokesweasel Jay Carney said that the Jobs Council wasn’t referring to the Keystone XL pipeline specifically, which is kinda true, but, we all can see that it factors in. Canada is not going to be patient forever, as China is knocking on the door, wanting that oil. I suspect that Canada will make no decision till the day after the general election in November to make a decision.

Getting our own oil, as well as getting it from Canada, will increase employment, increase wages, and reduce our dependence on oil from countries around the world which are run by dictators and Islamists. Security.

We all know that Obama will blow off these recommendations, otherwise, his base will revolt and drive to D.C. in fossil fueled vehicles and take unnecessary fossil fueled flights to protest.

The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday.

The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs.

But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but “revisit” the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs.

Steve Gardner, president of Kentucky consulting firm ECSI, claimed that after the project team refused to “soften” the numbers, the firms working on the study were told the contract would not be renewed. ECSI was a subcontractor on the project.

The government “’suggested’ that the … members revisit the production impacts and associated job loss numbers, with different assumptions that obviously would then lead to a lesser impact,” Gardner testified before a House Natural Resources subcommittee. “The … team unanimously refused to use a ‘fabricated’ baseline scenario to soften the production loss numbers.”

Team Obama pushed back on what was being claimed, but, the people who said this happened are refusing to back down. Gardner, ECSI, and others who testified best watch their back, because Team Obama is not known for taking opposition in good spirits.

(The Politico) President Barack Obama had his American Jobs Act. Now, Senate Republicans may have their Real American Jobs Act.

After more than two years in which the GOP political strategy to Obama’s policies has revolved around the word “no,” Republicans, who are growing increasingly confident they will win back the Senate in next year’s elections, want to give voters a sense of how they’d attempt to turn around the struggling economy if they were in power.

And regaining the Senate is just as important, if not more important, than regaining the White House. Without control of the Senate, a the GOP will not be able to enact their agenda even if they control the House and White House. Don’t forget about electing Republican Senators.

So they’re planning to roll out a jobs plan that amounts to a conservative’s dream agenda: targeting labor and environmental regulations, enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, encouraging energy production and expanding free trade, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO.

Sounds a lot better than dumping more money into failed “green” energy companies, short term road projects that see people laid off afterwards, and turtle tunnels.

A draft of the plan refers to it as the “Real American Jobs Act,” a not-so subtle riff on Obama’s $447 billion bill that was defeated by a GOP-led filibuster on Tuesday and would have pumped billions into infrastructure and school construction, cut payroll taxes, give tax incentives to companies hiring laid-off workers and provide aid to ailing states.

Gotta love the name. You also have to love that Obama thinks that most people are blue collar workers involved with the construction industry, and would be financed by the “other” America, those rich people who own all the construction companies. That’s the problem when every thought is about class warfare: Obama forgets that some people have jobs other than paving roads and painting bridges.

Under spending reform, Republicans call for the balanced-budget amendment as well as a bipartisan proposal to give the president line-item-veto authority. On tax reform, the senators call for reducing individual and corporate income tax rates to 25 percent.

On regulatory reform, Republicans will propose repealing the health care and financial reform laws and try to limit medical malpractice lawsuits. Any rule that would cost the economy more than $100 million would have to be approved by a joint resolution of Congress. In a shot at the president, no federal agency could issue regulations until the unemployment rate drops to 7.7 percent, the level in January 2009 when Obama took office.

It would target expensive mandates on states, whack an air-pollution rule that the GOP said would affect “farm dust” and overhaul the National Labor Relations Board. Offshore energy production would be ramped up by prodding the Interior Department to take action and coal mining permitting would be sped up.

Excellent ideas. I hope there are some serious ideas about reducing spending in the plan. We’ll see, perhaps today, when it is unveiled.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.

When it comes to messaging, the right wing media machine has perfected the ability to turn molehills into mountain. Progressives, on the other hand, have perfected the art of turning mountains into molehills.

So Joe’s admitting he’s a hardcore progressive with an agenda?

Nowhere is that clearer than in the cases of clean energy and climate change (and more broadly, clean air and clean water). From the perspective of polling and public opinion, they are all issues that are very popular across the political spectrum (other than Tea Party extremists), including independents. That is, they are among the best wedge issues progressives have (see here and here).

But thanks to the steadfast rhetorical brilliance of the denier industrial complex (DIC) — aka repeating lies and half-truths endlessly — and the general fecklessness of President Obama and other key Democratic politicians, many progressives are actually convinced that climate change is a losing message and are even on the defensive on slam dunk issues like clean energy and clean air/water.

There’s no better way to get people to listen to you than by calling them DICs. And whine and whine and whine.

Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is nothing wrong with clean energy, water, air, keeping the environment as pristine as possible. 99.99% on the Right will agree with me. However, they are good for their own reasons, not because of the climate change hoax. And the Warmists have taken every real environmental and energy issue and folded them under the banner of their pet pseudo-religion. We need solar energy not because it can eventually be cheap and it’s more abundant, and the world needs more power as it expands; no, we need it because trace amounts of a gas necessary for life will cause the Earth to burn to a cinder, at least in Warmist World. People have to be forced to by non-incandescent light bulbs to save the coral from global warming!!!!!!! Dying coral couldn’t possibly have anything to do with actual pollutants in our waters.

The Warmists continually over-reach, and turn issues that most of us can agree on into unhinged and far left issues. It starts out as “well, America needs more energy. Let’s consider doing some research into creating more viable alternatives.” Then the Warmists latch on to the issue and say “if we don’t do away with oil and coal and use green energy RIGHT NOW, we’ll all die!!!! And everyone else needs to give up their car and use CFLs (not me, I have to get to work and CFL light stinks). We must save Gaia from Mankind’s greenhouse gas folly!!!!!” Are you going to listen to the latter, or think the person is mentally deranged? And let’s not forget that many of the climate weenies will then block the actual building/implementation of many “green” energy projects.

BTW, Mother Jones also admits that the “deniers” have won.

Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is completely out of control. Now it wants to implement new regulations that would destroy 183,000 private sector jobs every year. Yes, even after Obama has destroyed the economy and jobs we do have he wants to destroy even more.

The EPA’s new rules, according to PennEnergy, would be disastrous to our already flagging economy.

The analysis, done on behalf of ACCCE by NERA, relies on state-of-the-art modeling tools, as well as government data for almost all of its assumptions. NERA’s analysis projects that EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and proposed Maximum Achievable Control Technology, coal combustion residuals, and cooling water intake requirements for power plants would, over the 2012-2020 period:

• Cost the power industry $21 billion per year;
• Cause an average loss of 183,000 jobs per year;
• Increase electricity costs by double digits in many regions of the U.S.;
• Cost consumers over $50 billion more for natural gas; and
• Reduce the disposable income of the average American family by $270 a year.

PennEnergy and other energy companies were urging Congress to pass the TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401) being introduced by Rep. John Sullivan (R, OK). Sullivan’s legislation would create a committee to analyze 10 EPA regulation changes to see if they need to be altered or eliminated. The House has since passed it.

Spokesmen at the White House has said that Obama will likely veto this bill if it reaches his desk.

While the Administration strongly supports careful analysis of the economic effects of regulation, the approach taken in H.R. 2401 would slow or undermine important public health protections.

Obama’s new EPA regs aren’t just anti-Jobs regs, though. Heck, after all as the Daily Caller notes it creates jobs. Well, if you consider 230,000 new government jobs real jobs! Which no one of any sense would.

The EPA is asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork, at an estimated cost of $21 billion. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” the EPA wrote in the court brief.

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

(Daily Caller) The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules.

The EPA aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act, even though the law doesn’t give the EPA explicit power to do so. The agency’s authority to move forward is being challenged in court by petitioners who argue that such a decision should be left for Congress to make.

The proposed regulations would set greenhouse gas emission thresholds above which businesses must file for an EPA permit and complete extra paperwork in order to continue operating. If the EPA wins its court battle and fully rolls out the greenhouse gas regulations, the number of businesses forced into this regulatory regime would grow tremendously — from approximately 14,000 now to as many as 6.1 million.

Well, those 230,000 new government employees could offset the millions of private jobs that would be lost due to belief in a pseudo-religion that trace amounts of a gas necessary for life on Earth will burn the planet to cinders, despite having higher CO2 atmospheric levels for most of the lifespan of the Earth.

*just to reiterate, yes, the climate has changed to a warmer one from a cooler one, just like it has been doing for the last 7,000 years during this interglacial period. But, it is primarily and mostly natural. And if you anthropogenic global warming chumps really believed, you would change your own behavior. Yet, you don’t. Why?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition

Once again an Obama regulatory agency tries to give itself wild new powers, powers that would crush American energy and natural resource development, powers meant to quash the business sector.

A press release from Resourceful Earth News imparts a warning about the Environmental Protection Agency’s newest powergrab. A left-wing Democrat Senator is asking the EPA to accept the idea of taking upon itself the power to deny mining or development of other natural resources before any scientific studies or any permitting procedures even begin. This Senator wants the EPA to just say no because, well, simply because it feels like it.

This effort is at the behest of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell (Dem.) who is urging the EPA to invoke the Clean Water Act to put a permanent end to the development of Pebble Mine in Alaska. Pebble Mine owners have already spent $120 million over three years to satisfy federal and state government regulations. Expensive and expansive scientific studies and environmental studies have already been conducted but now that the EPA has agreed to launch its scientific analysis of the mine, Cantwell wants the EPA to preempt the environmental review process the EPA itself put in place and simply decide to prevent the operation of the mine out of hand with no science needed to back it up.

If the EPA decides to try this new tact to quash American energy production and mining of natural resources, then it would from this point forward be able to wholly dispense with any need to rely on scientific facts to determine the viability of the culling of our own natural resources, those resources that made this country great. The EPA would have the precedent to shut down the use of any land merely because it deems it should be done.

Talk about the end of private property rights and the destruction of our energy and mining industries!

RE News notes that even if the mine is given permission to actually open it will still have to go through “67 federal, state, and local agencies for approvals and permits.”

Even center left Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is against this new powergrab by the EPA.

As Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski wrote, a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project will expand the powers of the EPA and “could have widespread and unintended consequences for any development project, including airports and other infrastructure.” Cantwell’s actions make a mockery of the federal environmental review process and leave Americans even more dependent on foreign sources to meet our needs for natural resources and energy. More American jobs will be lost and it will be another blow to our already shaky economy.

The press release give a few ways to stop Cantwell and the EPA’s obscene abuse of power.

• Email Senator Cantwell’s office here
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspapers
• Sign the petition and use hash tag #GivePebbleAChance on Twitter
• Use your blog, Facebook and Twitter to let your friends know what is happening under the radar!

  Get more information at here. Sign our twitter petition. Please retweet the article using the hash tag #GivePebbleAChance. Contact information for Sen. Cantwell is here.

  

  ]]> http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/09/16/epa-to-give-itself-powers-to-preemptively-deny-natural-resource-development/feed/ 0 http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/09/14/why-yes-the-white-house-did-push-hard-for-the-solyndra-loan/ http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/09/14/why-yes-the-white-house-did-push-hard-for-the-solyndra-loan/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:32:39 +0000 William Teach http://www.stoptheaclu.com/?p=42126 Some are wondering whether the Solyndra scandal will bring the White House down. I have to say, unless some emails are found that specifically show that Obama knew that there was no possible way that Solyndra would ever be able to compete, and still pushed the loan, the best that will happen will be a scandal which the media is reluctantly dragged along in covering, and, if the GOP is smart, will show up in campaign commercials and talking points

  The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

  The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

  The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

  Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.

  Ye Olde White House states that they were just interested in when the decision would be made, but wasn’t trying to pressure the OMB.

  The e-mail exchanges could intensify questions about whether the administration was playing favorites and made costly errors while choosing the first recipient of a loan guarantee under its stimulus program. Solyndra’s biggest investors were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.

  The White House has previously said that it had no involvement in the Solyndra loan application and that all decisions were made by career officials based on the merits of the company.

  Of course they were playing favorites, this is politics, after all. But, playing favorites with $535 million in taxpayer money when they knew Solyndra was a disaster waiting to happen is quite different from push small projects towards donors.

  House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

  “Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

  The downside to this is that we can use more alternative energy sources and research, as there is nothing wrong with looking for other sources of energy, but, what happened with Solyndra will harm the companies who are doing good work, and have potential, in the alternative energy sector. These companies will have a tough time finding private investors, who will be wary of dumping their money into these ventures.

  

  

  ]]> http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/09/14/why-yes-the-white-house-did-push-hard-for-the-solyndra-loan/feed/ 0 http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/08/20/carbon-fees-are-a-way-to-pay-back-mother-nature/ http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2011/08/20/carbon-fees-are-a-way-to-pay-back-mother-nature/#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:30:18 +0000 William Teach http://www.stoptheaclu.com/?p=41871 Climate alarmists aren’t even pretending that so-called carbon fees will actually do anything anymore. Here’s a letter in the Baltimore Sun

  Mr. Piette’s letter on carbon tax (“Carbon fee is a tax to redistribute wealth,” Aug. 15), demonstrates how far we have to go in environmental education. The carbon fee is not for the government, it is a payback to Mother Nature herself for the rape, burning and slow destruction of our environment that we have been doing for centuries (at no cost) and for which we show no signs of abating.

  For the free market to realize the damage and to be incentivized to move to better renewable energy, the true cost of fossil fuel burning to the environment must be included in the cost to consumers. Since Mother Nature herself cannot charge us for our wanton waste of her limited resources, we institute governments to do it in her behalf. We the people institute our government to protect us from the tyranny, greed and selfishness of others, which, without government, would rape, burn and destroy our environment without limit in the name of short term profit.

  We therefore ask our government to collect the carbon fee in behalf of Mother Nature to protect us from those selfish and greedy exploiters, and to place that investment in renewable energy for our own survival. Mother Nature is already coming to collect for our past greed in the potential upheaval of climate change, but the short term greed and profit of our fossil fuel appetite is not paying the price. Our children will.

  I think it is safe to assume that the writer, Bob Bruninga, thinks it is just fine to assess those fees on Someone Else, but, not him.

  

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