EPA Starts Flexing Their Muscles

Lisa Jackson over at the EPA has begun to flex her muscles, probably in response to the reality that any sort of movement on the Cap and Trade legislation passed by the Queen Nancy-led House is now dead in the water after the debacle that the Health Care legislation has become.

She has issued an edict that places further restrictions on the level of smog permitted. Under President Bush the level was lowered from 84 parts per million to 75 parts per million. Ms Jackson wants to lower it to between 60 and 70 parts per million. This move should only cost businesses between $19 to $90 billion per year by the year 2020.

Why such a big spread? I don't know, ask the folks like that womanizer and breeder of illegitimate children and Obama economic adviser Peter Orszag.

All that I do know for sure is that this latest pronouncement by the EPA is more fluff then it is real substance right now. It is designed to appease the enviro-radicals on the far left more then it has any immediate effect.

Counties and states will have up to 20 years to meet the new limits, depending on how severely they are out of compliance. They will have to submit plans for meeting the new limits by end of 2013 or early 2014.

Why is it that everything coming out of this administration seems to be timed to happen after the 2012 elections?

Besides, haven't they heard the world is going to end on Dec 21, 2012 anyway?

This comes on the heels of an announcement earlier today by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that they are going to tighten up the rules regarding drilling for oil and natural gas.

"We don't believe we ought to be drilling anywhere and everywhere," Salazar said at a news conference. "We believe we need a balanced approach and a thoughtful approach" that allows development of oil and gas leases on public lands while also protecting national parks, endangered species and municipal watersheds.

Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, criticized the Bush administration for what he called a "headlong rush" to lease public lands. Early last year, Salazar suspended 60 of 77 leases in Utah approved in that administration's waning days.

The changes announced Wednesday are intended to bring greater consistency and public engagement to onshore oil and gas leasing, Salazar said, with a goal of reducing legal challenges that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars and energy companies months or even years of delays.

It appears that Obama's Environmental and Energy team is hitting the ground running in this new year. None of their new restrictions requires congressional approval and simply come about by royal fiat.

There Go The Jobs In The Energy Sector

The EPA led by Lisa Jackson, a big global warming acolyte, is prepared to announce next week that CO2 is a dangerous gas. That's right, everytime you exhale according to our imperial federal government you will be emitting a dangerous gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an "endangerment" decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

I guess this another case of where the science is settled.

In the past activist judges have used previous reports citing CO2 as a dangerous gas as a reason to bar the construction of clean coal plants and to restrict the building of refineries, even though there was no official stamp on that line of reasoning. With the EPA making it official, it will be yet another blow to manufacturing and the energy sectors of our economy.

There won't any recovery anytime soon at the rate this is going. Without jobs and entire sections of our business world being handcuffed with everything from salary caps to ridiculous rulings like this, there simply won't be any where to hire people.

No, I am not putting much stock in those November unemployment numbers. Businesses just weren't up to laying off more people at the end of the year. Keep an eye on the numbers for January, which will of course take all the experts once again by surprise.

Treasury Secretary a Global Warming Acolyte

The one common thread all of the appointees the President In Training Pants have is they are global warming acolytes. From Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, to his EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, and now even the Treasury Secretary.

U.S. oil and natural gas producing companies should not receive federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks because their businesses contribute to global warming, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress on Wednesday.

The absolute refusal of any of the liberals in congress and all of the inner circle of Obama advisers to allow us to pursue and process a natural resource we have at our fingertips to fuel our energy needs until any of these alternative energy sources become viable or sustainable is just plain nuts.

The Treasury Secretary coming out and saying he is against any incentives for oil and gas companies while the EPA chief is vigorously pursuing having CO2 declared a greenhouse gas in her efforts to shut down coal power plants like the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Seblius did while governor of Kansas to Steven Chu who has reservations about nuclear power due to concerns about managing the waste material, his whole inner circle is working very hard to cripple this country.

Jobs and health care won't mean much if you don't have the power to light the workplace or handle all of the high tech medical equipment in hospitals to treat the sick.

This is just unbelievable and if I have said it once I am going to say it for the hundredth time, this administration is going to use its slavish devotion to the cult of global warming to wreck this economy, beyond the stage at which it may be possible to recover.

For all you folks all excited and jumping for joy at that $13 you are getting back in your paychecks, try this on for size.

The Obama administration's budget would levy an excise tax on oil and natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, raising $5.3 billion in revenue from 2011 to 2019.

This new 13 percent tax on all oil and gas production in the Gulf would only affect those companies enjoying a loophole that allows them to avoid paying royalties on the energy supplies they drill. Companies already paying royalties would get a tax credit.

Obama's budget would also place a $4 per acre annual fee on energy leases in the Gulf that are designated as nonproducing. The budget proposal projects the fee would generate $1.2 billion from 2010 to 2019.

Those fees and taxes will be passed right on to the consumer who uses gas in their car or natural gas to heat their home.

The government giveth and the government taketh away. And taketh. And taketh.

For a real eye opener read this speech given by Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change from the State Department.