Comments on the Senate EPA Carbon Reg Vote
Various manifestations of the Dead Tree Press and the Blogoverse are weighing in on the Senate vote yesterday to abandon legislative control over the EPA. Here is a sampling:
Senate surrenders to the EPA
Washington Examiner Editorial, June 11, 2010 [here]
Fifty three of the Senate’s 59 Democrats gave unelected, overpaid bureaucrats at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a green light yesterday to do pretty much whatever they choose in their quixotic crusade against global warming. All 41 Republicans and six brave Democrats voted for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution nullifying the EPA’s recent usurpation of authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the U.S. economy to combat greenhouse gases. Thankfully, this craven surrender of congressional authority isn’t the last word on the issue, assuming that the November elections produce a Senate with enough backbone to reassert the legislature’s rightful power.
In the meantime, it’s vital to understand how bureaucracies function. Whatever else they may do, leading bureaucrats always do two things, regardless of which party controls the White House or Congress: They limit choices available to the rest of us by imposing regulations that increase government power and thus justify expanding their budgets and staffs; and they protect themselves and their turf by suppressing internal dissent, often at any costs. …
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., predicts that a suffocating new round of EPA regulations will soon descend upon the “one-fifth of our restaurants, one-fourth of our schools, two-thirds of our hospitals and doctor’s offices, 10 percent of our churches, thousands of farms and millions of small businesses” that emit greenhouse gases. Considering how the EPA grandees mistreat their underlings, we wonder how the agency will respond to the soon-to-be-swelling ranks of critics on the outside. … [more]
America: A Land Now Governed By Non Elected Officials
Tom Remington, Black Bear Blog, June 11, 2010 [here]
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a gathering of people declared their independence from a repressive and tyrannical government. After a bloody war of revolution, a new nation was born, as it was written, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” James Madison, said to be the author of the U.S. Constitution, worked with others to ensure a separation of powers and thus was born the three branches of the United States Government – Executive, Legislative and Judicial.
In brief, the Executive Branch, i.e. the President and his Administration, execute the laws of the land. The Legislative Branch, i.e. the Senate and House of Representatives, make the laws. The Judicial Branch interprets those laws and many scholars believe that the United States Supreme Court is commissioned only to hear cases that directly affect the United States Constitution.
The Constitution was written so as to form a Representative Republic, a government of and by the people. As such the citizenry through the power of the ballot, could select those they felt best to represent them. In other words, those who make the laws and those that execute them are elected by the people through their Constitutional right to vote.
So, why is it that we now have non elected officials, creating laws that wield power over the people rendering their governing authority at the voting booth, virtually useless? Clearly an infringement of rights.
It began in 1955 with something called the Air Pollution Control Act, followed by; Clean Air Act of 1962; Air Quality Act of 1967; Clean Air Act Extension in 1970, with amendments in 1977 and 1990. Like most of these kinds of laws, the intent was to clean up the air we breathe and like other similar pieces of legislation has seen its share of abuse and misuse.
In 2007 a group of nut jobs petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency demanding they begin regulating “greenhouse” gases, having been brainwashed and indoctrinated to believe such things as carbon dioxide produced by man was causing the globe to warm. This petitioning action resulted in the Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in this case that the Clean Air Act gave the authority of the EPA to regulate pollution and obviously at least 5 justices had drank the Algore Kool-Aid. Defying even the best science, SCOTUS declared carbon dioxide a “pollutant”.
Aside from the fact the SCOTUS went against the U.S. Constitution in its flawed interpretation of what a pollutant is, basing its founding on ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims of anthropogenic warming from carbon dioxide, it granted the EPA legislative powers – a clear fusion of powers most feared by the founders of this great nation. The inane question now becomes, are we to violate one part of our Constitution in order to “interpret” an existing law through unsubstantiated scientific claims?
Even more troubling is the fact that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced a bill that would strip the EPA of the power to regulate carbon dioxide. What sane person wouldn’t want this when considering all the proposed legislation that has been bandied around about carbon trading, cap and trade, etc.? But more importantly, what lover of freedom would want the radicals in the EPA, whether right or left, making laws that will directly affect all of our lives? This is clearly a breach of the United States Constitution.
But this wasn’t the case. In a vote of 53-47, the Senate rejected Murkowski’s bill to stop the legislative powers of the EPA. The vote came on party lines with 6 democrats siding with the Republicans.
Aside from the obvious fact that Obama and all his cronies are the most radical bunch to occupy the White House and fill positions within the Administration, no government agency, like the EPA, should be given power to legislate over the people. These administrators are hand picked by the President, not elected by the people. This is a complete contravention of the Constitution. … [more]
Senate Vote on EPA Carbon Rules Splits Democrats
By Simon Lomax, Bloomberg Businessweek, June 10, 2010 [here]
A failed Republican move to block a U.S. agency from regulating greenhouse gases under existing law may have drawn enough votes to damage Democratic hopes of a passing a bigger pollution-reduction plan this year.
Six Senate Democrats joined the Republican effort to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned regulations for carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate-change. The motion to disapprove the EPA’s carbon regulations from Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, was defeated 47-53 in a procedural vote.
EPA carbon rules are the Obama administration’s backup plan for limiting greenhouse gases if its preferred approach, cap- and-trade legislation that charges polluters a price for the carbon dioxide they released into the atmosphere, doesn’t pass Congress this year.
“We need to pass a cap-and-trade bill,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said after the vote on Murkowski’s measure. “I think it can certainly get passed next year; it can’t this year.” …
It usually takes 60 out of 100 votes to pass major legislation through the Senate. Democrats hold 59 seats in the chamber, meaning the support of at least one Republican is needed for most bills to pass. Today, all 41 Republicans voted against the EPA’s proposed carbon regulations.
The six Democrats to side with them today were Evan Bayh of Indiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.
They joined Republicans in arguing that the EPA regulations, which would take effect next year, are impractical and damaging to the economy. The regulations are a “back-door national energy tax” that would deal “a devastating blow to an economy that’s already in rough shape,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. … [more]
Lindsey Graham Said What About Climate Change?
By Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, Jun. 9, 2010 [here]
On Tuesday, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham told reporters that he would vote against the climate bill he helped author. Now he’s going one step further. Graham, one of the few Republicans who claimed to care about climate change, now says global warming is no big deal.
Graham appeared on Wednesday at a press conference with Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), who was rolling out his own energy bill, a measure that relies heavily on expanding nuclear power and raising fuel economy standards without putting a cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Yesterday, Graham said he didn’t think any energy bill could get 60 votes this year because oil drilling has become too controversial. Today he decided, at the last minute, to back Lugar’s bill.
Reporters asked Graham several times about why he was supporting Lugar’s bill, when just a few months ago he had argued that the Senate shouldn’t pass a “half-assed” bill that lacked hard restrictions on carbon emissions. Graham replied that he now doesn’t think pricing carbon is that important. “The science about global warming has changed,” he noted, offhandedly. “I think they’ve oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they’ve been alarmist and the science is in question,” Graham told reporters. “The whole movement has taken a giant step backward.” … [more]
EPA Takes a Giant Leap Into Tyranny
by Cassandra Anderson, Morph City, June 2010 [here]
Yesterday, the EPA won a victory over the American people and took a giant leap toward tyranny, in a Senate vote 47- 53 against blocking action by the corrupt EPA. When the federal ‘Cap and Trade” bill (one version already passed in the House) stalled in the Senate after the CO2 lies unravelled due to Climategate and numerous other scandals, the EPA created the ‘Endangerment Finding’ in December 2009, in an end run around Congress, as there will be no vote; the EPA is made up of unelected bureaucrats.
The ‘Endangerment Finding’ states that 6 greenhouse gases, with harmless CO2 at the top of the list, threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. Truthfully, it is tyranny that is the biggest threat, as the EPA compiled an 18,000 page document with new regulations on transportation, that includes airplanes, cars, tractors, farm equipment, trains, buses, etc. It’s obvious that there is a desire to control every aspect of our lives.
By the way, ‘Cap and Trade’ schemes will cost taxpayers $300 to $400 BILLION dollars a year! … [more]
