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Raymond C. Ventrone, business manager of the Boilermakers Local 154 union, explained that the coal industry has already invested millions of dollars in clean air technology. Even though coal usage tripled in the last 30 years, sulfur dioxide levels fell by 56 percent thanks to this new technology.
However, according to Ventrone, the EPA disregarded these innovations by the coal industry.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Excerpted from a report in the Guardian:
Obama would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of America’s greenhouse gas emissions – responsible for up to 40% of carbon pollution – and have long been a target of campaigners.
The Obama administration has already taken steps to raising standards on new power plants. But it has balked until now at imposing tougher standards on existing power plants – a measure which would deliver the biggest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
There was intense speculation ahead of Tuesday’s speech about whether Obama would promise to curb emissions of existing facilities.
All of this based on a premise that there is global warming and it is caused by human activity. This is not based on scientific fact and is hotly disputed by thousands of scientists and meteorologists around the world, including 32,000 American scientists. See Oregon Petition.
Perhaps the Presidents announcement was timed to distract attention away from the many scandals surrounding the White House. But for whatever reason, it clearly illustrates America is evolving into a monarchy when the chief executive (King), can make a proclamation that will effectively place a hardship on millions of Americans with huge spikes in energy costs.
Bypassing the checks and balances of our republic by executive order, shows too much power is put in the hands of one person.
The goal of course is to model our policy after Europe where electric energy costs as a result of green energy have forced some to choose between food or paying their electric bill. See German finance minister declaring solar is the path to bankruptcy.
Lots of talk about wind/solar/unicorn dust to take up the slack if coal is removed and other forms of fossil fuel are punished….But in reality, alternative energy at this stage of its technology will only compete as an energy source when all other energy competition is forced to subsidize them. See “EU’s Green Policies In Retreat”.
Additionally the reliance on natural gas if coal is taken out of the picture, refuses to recognize the price of gas has seen wild swings in the past. It will assuredly do it again without competition from a reliable supply of clean coal to keep it in line.
John Fay, an American in Ireland shows what will happen when the left imposes their will on a country’s energy policy with his excellent piece: “Irish people, shivering in their own homes, have only themselves to blame”.
The public needs to know what is in store for them if President Obama and the far left, achieve their goal of choosing energy winners and losers. By first killing coal and then punishing other productive fossil fuels in order to usher in and subsidize “green energy,” our modern society as we know it, can grind to a halt.
It is game changing and damaging to our society to let a small cabal of fossil fuel enemies decide that America’s most prolific source of cheap energy is no longer welcome to be used…..and then regulate it out of existence.
It is game changing and damaging to our society and our country to let this decision rest in the hands of one person.
America’s energy future is far too important to be regulated by an executive order with an agenda. Time to put a halt to energy legislation by regulation and let the rest of our branches of government be involved in these decisions.
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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.
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The allegations were first made by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. It claimed the EPA was not being fair as it weighed whether to charge fees to groups seeking information via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Its research showed liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, while conservative groups are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
“This activity calls into question the objectivity of the FOIA employees at EPA and undermines public confidence in an agency that is charged with protecting our air and water,” a group of nearly three dozen House Republicans wrote in a letter to EPA Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in a separate statement that the findings are “not a coincidence” and track with the kind of targeting conducted by the IRS against conservative groups.
Read more from this story HERE.
It’s not just the IRS. A second federal agency is facing a probe and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups.
“I don’t think it is fair at all. It is not fair to the American taxpayer — the American taxpayer should expect and demand that the EPA treats everyone equally in regard to these requests,” said Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “This cannot be tolerated. As we see more federal agencies with this kind of bias, it is and should be a concern for all of us.”
The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests — allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.
The allegations are under investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is also holding hearings on the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups.
Read more from this story HERE.
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“The EPA’s proposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions threaten the livelihood of our coal miners to the point of killing jobs and crippling our state and national economies, while also weakening our country’s efforts toward energy independence,” said West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.
West Virginia and Montana are joining Kansas in filing an amicus brief to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to rules that give the federal government the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The states want the court to rule that the EPA misinterpreted its authority under the Clean Air Act and has overreached.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Free Enterprise
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) been closely following the EPA’s misuse of private communication to conduct public business, and fees the agency has placed on conservative groups seeking information that they usual waive for media and watchdog groups. After successfully gaining access to former EPA Chief Lisa Jackson’s emails, CEI is now suing to gain access to the text messages of Gina McCarthy, the senior EPA official the President has nominated to now run the agency.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: dantekgeekRepublican lawmakers are launching an investigation into claims that the Environmental Protection Agency, while giving preferential treatment to environmental groups, made it harder for conservative groups to obtain government records.
“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for environmental allies, effectively subsidizing them, while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” wrote Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa and Sens. David Vitter, Chuck Grassley and Jim Inhofe in a letter to the EPA.
Citing a report by The Daily Caller News Foundation, Republicans are asking the EPA to hand over all Freedom of Information Act fee waiver requests, responses to requests, and FOIA officer training materials since the beginning of the Obama administration.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Two powerful congressional Republicans want to know more – a lot more – about why and how Environmental Protection Agency officials have for several years erected multiple obstacles to conservative think tanks, media outlets and non-profit activists filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the agency.
“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for liberal environmental groups – effectively subsidizing them – while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” said Sen. David Vitter and Rep. Darrell Issa in a letter today to EPA’s acting administrator, Bob Perciasepe.
“This is a clear abuse of discretion. Consequently, the committees request that you immediately take necessary steps to ensure that such manipulation of the FOIA process does not occur in the future,” Vitter and Issa wrote.
Reproduction fees covering multiple documents can easily run into the thousands of dollars, which is why Congress included a liberal waiver provision in the original FOIA it approved in 1966 and which remains in the law today.
Issa, a California Republican, is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, while Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
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Photo Credit: APTea party groups’ allegations that the IRS has long been targeting them for their political beliefs were recently confirmed by an apology from the IRS. The scandal gained traction as congressional leaders began efforts to hold the IRS accountable and understand the depths of the federal government’s politically-motivated abuses of power.
Yet given the history of such abuses, the problem may extend further than the IRS, and require a “government-wide” probe across several agencies, as Senate [Minority] Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested.
The issue was initially believed to only involve groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names being singled out for greater scrutiny by the IRS, but recent admissions reveal that a wide range of conservative and constitution-oriented groups were singled out by the federal government. Most media outlets have focused on 2012 as the year the abuses occurred, but one prominent Tea Party-initiated organization, True the Vote, began to run into alleged federal government abuses in 2010–from a variety of agencies.
True the Vote, a Houston-based nonprofit which focuses on election integrity issues, was formed by Catherine Engelbrecht and her King Street Patriots Tea Party group. True the Vote applied to the IRS for their 501(c3) non-profit status in July 2010, and almost immediately their problems began.
Within two years, multiple federal agencies, along with an EPA-affiliated Texas state agency, began auditing True the Vote and its founders, visiting their group, their businesses, and asking questions of people who knew them. The IRS was not the only governmental agency involved.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Getty Images The Environmental Protection Agency’s revised draft assessment of an Alaska mine project cites research from environmental consultants who admitted falsifying a report in an environmental lawsuit.
The EPA’s new review of the potential Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, relied on research from Stratus Consulting and Ann Maest, the company’s managing scientist. Stratus recently admitted to providing false statements in a decades-long $19 billion lawsuit against the oil company Chevron.
Maest and Stratus claimed earlier this month that they had been misled by a plaintiffs’ lawyer when they provided an environmental report detailing the damage done by Chevron subsidiary Texaco to areas of Ecuador. They disavowed the report as “tainted.”
The environmental impact report used against Chevron was supposed to be written by an independent expert, but was instead written by Stratus, which was employed by lawyers representing Ecuadorian villagers.
Read more from this story HERE.