Curbing EPA Abuses
What can be done to curb these abuses and usurpations, and rein in this renegade agency?
Financing Climate Crisis, Inc.
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen outlines six stratgegies through which the Obama Administration is using climate change to “fundamentally transform” America. THey are attacking dissenters, trying to censor skeptical speech, and worse.
Solar tax credits are not “conservative” or “free market”
With Louisiana looking to trim a budget deficit (partly caused by Obama energy policies), the state legislature is considering a dramatic cutback in subsidies for rooftop solar installations -- subsidies that in one documented case amounted to $33,000 of the cost of a $40,000 system. The customer was quite happy, noting that after a 5-year amortization for his $7,000 investment, his energy is now free. But who is amortizing the $33,000 that taxpayers paid for? If it took 5 years to amortize $7,000, then it must take nearly 30 years to amortize the true cost of the solar installation -- longer than the lifespan of the solar units.
Deepwater Horizon five years later: lessons learned
Five years after BP's Deepwater Horizon fire and explosion, the Gulf of Mexico is recovering nicely, and so are the people of Louisiana whose livelihoods were impaired as much by President Obama'sm unnecessary drilling moratorium as by the oil that washed ashore following the incident. The industry, too, has tightened its rules governing offshore drilling, making it even safer than before.
The EPA and Obama blame asthma on “global warming”
The EPA and the White House are once again bringing up the dead horse of "global warming" (aka "climate change") to scare the American people into accepting their radical, job-killing, health-destroying bad ideas. The science does not align with their dictates, but until someone stops them they will continue to weaken and sicken America with wrong-headed policies that punish achievement and reward cronies.
The American people aren’t stupid enough to buy the manmade climate crisis narrative
The American people are increasingly not buying into the global warming (er, climate change) scary scenarios, but the Green Left, led by Al Gore, is responding by turning up the heat -- and increasingly seeking to silence opposition they cannot control. That this is a losing technique escapes notice because they believe that nobody cares enough about stopping them to resist and overcome the firings, threats of prison time, and even worse from the shrill sirens of statism.
EPA’s mercury rule statistics smell fishy
Once again, the EPA has overreached in its attempt to regulate entire industries out of business. The new mercury rules, for example, which is facing Supreme Court scrutiny right now, would be the most expensive ever, disrupt U.S. energy supply, and provide miniscule real-world health benefits. The EPA, however, has concocted a scenario that claims huge benefits and low costs -- based on "science" it will not share with Congress, let alone the public. Perhaps the Court will take a hard look at this "science" and decide it is insufficient to justify such draconian measures, perhaps not.
Floodplain executive order: Latest Obama power grab
Executive Order 13690 is a massive overreach of illegal federal authority over what ought to be locally determined floodplain management standards.
California raisin farmers get another day in court
Raisin growers Marvin and Laura Horne have challenged a 66-year-old USDA regulation that allows the government to seize up to half a grower's raisin crop for forced resale overseas at discounted prices. The stated purpose is to keep the domestic price for raisins artificially high, but the Hornes claim that the seizure of their crop amounts to an unconstitutional taking without adequate compensation - and now the case is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Carbon dioxide deserves gratitude, not disdain
Carbon dioxide levels are not at all high -- they have been much higher in the past. Indeed, we are very fortunate to be living at a time of relative warmth, rather than during a little or especially a full-on ice age. Some leading scholars believe we are on the verge of another cold period - one that would be exacerbated by any cuts in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Meanwhile, demonizing this vital natural plant nutrient as pollution is not just absurd, it is anti-humanity.
EPA email shows desperate climate change agenda
CFACT policy analyst Larry Bell reports on secret EPA emails that show the agency was desperate to keep the money train rolling in its effort to seize control over more and more of the U.S. economy. Polar bears were not scaring people enough any more, so then-Administrator Lisa Jackson conspired to create scary scenarios over alleged links of climate change to respiratory diseases. The result are new regulations that will destroy millions more jobs and further cripple the U.S. economy if allowed to be implemented.
New Maryland governor to scuttle predecessor’s anti-farm regs
Farmers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore are breathing a sigh of relief on news that newly sworn-in Gov. Larry Hogan (R) plans to scrap regulations targeting agricultural runoff into the Chesapeake Bay. Hogan’s announcement came as outgoing Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) was scrambling to get the regulations finalized before leaving office Jan. 21. “The first fight [when I take office] will be against these politically motivated midnight-hour phosphorus management tool regulations that the outgoing administration is trying to force upon you in these closing days,” Hogan said in a speech before the Maryland Farm Bureau (Washington Times, Dec. 9) “We won’t allow [...]
Virginia land trust’s transgressions draw legal, legislative scrutiny
The once-respected Piedmont Environmental Council has been shamed by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and Virginia Assistant Attorney General Richard Mahevich for misdeeds surrounding its sale of Liberty Farm to organic farmer Martha Boneta. The PEC had inserted language into an easement agreement with Ms. Boneta and the VOF that benefitted PEC member Phil Thomas, who then took various actions against Ms. Boneta in a blatant attempt to force her to abandon the property she had turned from a dump into a profitable operation. Now the Virginia legislature is considering legislation to curb the power of land trusts.
Vetoing bipartisan energy, job, and economic growth
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen says that the Obama Administration is continuing, even revving up, its campaign against domestic energy production with new EPA regulations on the horizon that would shutter much of the nation's coal industry and do great harm to oil and gas production; he also promised to veto any legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, the Obama progressive mentality is so pervaseive that international lending and donor agencies (the UN, OPIC, etc.) are holding poor, developing countries hostage to wind, solar, and biofuel projects that cannot lift them out of poverty -- and thus these elites are damning the world's poorest people to eternal poverty when true prosperity through fossil fuels is staring them in the face.
Obama Administration kicks the oil-and-gas industry while it is down
Just as the glut of oil on the world market has prompted Saudi Arabia to pump out even more oil at cheap prices (for up to 5 years, the Saudis say -- as long as it takes to crush the U.S. shale industry -- the Obama Administration wants to impose harsh new resrictions on oil and gas companies. A better recipe could not be found for decimating the U.S. economy, killing jobs, and ceding control over world oil prices and demand to the Saudis and their OPEC cronies.