Gov’t imposing new emissions rules on plants, refineries
Fox News Senior Political and Legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano guest hosting on the Glenn Beck Show last Monday had liberal radio host Nancy Skinner debate with Chris Horner, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of “Power Grab: How Obama’s Greenhouse Policies Will Steal your Freedom and Bankrupt America.” http://www.globalwarming.org/2010/04/19/new-book-by-cei-senior-fellow-christopher-horner-power-grab-how-obama%E2%80%99s-green-policies-will-steal-your-freedom-and-bankrupt-america/ The subject was about new government regulations imposing new emissions laws on plants, refineries—needless regulations many energy analysts believe will further kill jobs in the midst of America’s double-dip recession and severe economic decline.
Does more government mean more regulations? It seems so. Napolitano said, “As of yesterday the EPA officially began regulating emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases of course without congressional approval.
Napolitano asked Skinner, “How can unelected bureaucrats regulate something the legislature decided not to regulate?”
Skinner replied, “That ironically this particular law was passed by President George H.W. Bush in the Clean Air Act and it gave them [the EPA] authority to regulate pollutants dangerous to public health. And the Supreme Court ruled [Massachusetts v. EPA (2007)] http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2006/2006_05_1120/ that carbon was one of those pollutants” that the EPA could lawfully regulate without approval by Congress.
Napolitano corrected Skinner’s contention that the EPA could lawfully rule without congressional approval and said, “The Supreme Court didn’t rule that carbon was a pollutant. The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could declare almost anything it wants under this legislation to be a pollutant.”
At this point in the interview Skinner babbled incoherently about $5 dollar a gallon gas, acid rain and global warming even as outside their Fox News studio in New York snow was piled up over 8 feet high, according to Napolitano.
Napolitano then asked Horner if he thought there was a scientific basis behind these decisions of the EPA and did he believe the notion that Congress can specifically decide not to regulate something and then unelected bureaucrats in the Executive Branch can go ahead and regulate it? Horner said, “When cooling suddenly means warming what does warm weather mean? Then the science is somewhat in flux.”
On global warming, Horner repeatedly emphasized that, “Man’s principle contribution in changing the temperature is to be found in man manipulating the temperature data.”
Horner continued, “So Congress refuses to act on this. This was too radical for the Democratic Congress. The argument about SO2 cap and trade being just like this just shows that you have no idea what these cap and trade schemes are.” He reminded us that President Obama “was caught on video saying the carbon dioxide cap and trade was designed very differently and designed to bankrupt our economy and to allow everybody’s electricity prices to necessarily skyrocket. This is why Congress did not act.”
Napolitano again asked Skinner, “Should elected representatives be making these [environmental] decisions or should scientists and bureaucrats be making these decisions?” “[President] Bush used lobbyists and scientists and that over the past 10 years world temperatures have shown more evaporation”, Skinner retorted, “thus more precipitation.”
Horner actually answered Napolitano’s question saying, “Unelected bureaucrats should not wait until they decide they cannot wait for elected lawmakers anymore; unelected bureaucrats have to wait. The Supreme Court said that the EPA could declare oxygen to be a pollutant if they wanted too. This will fail in court.”
Napolitano then gave a brief history of the EPA saying “It came about under a Republican president, Richard Nixon, vastly expanded under a Republican president, George H.W. Bush. The Supreme Court said, yes the EPA does have the authority to declare greenhouse gases to be pollutants. In a famous dissent Justice Scalia said that body odor and Frisbees could be declared under this law to be a pollutant.”
Napolitano then asked Skinner, “What has become of our democracy when scientists and bureaucrats instead of elected officials are making decisions that profoundly affect our everyday lives? Skinner replied that both Republicans and Democrats supported a robust EPA regulation of environmental pollutants. That, “we should be looking at this as an economic opportunity”… less emphasis on the “cap” and more on the “trade” aspects of the law.
Now it has been revealed that “death panels” have been reinserted back into the universal healthcare bill some refer to as Obamacare. In light of his previous question that Skinner refused to answer, Napolitano asks Horner, “What has become of our democracy when scientists and bureaucrats instead of elected officials are making decisions that profoundly affect our everyday lives?”
“We have a democracy run amok. We’ve got bureaucrats running with a law that each time that it was attempted to be amended, it was amended and they tried to regulate CO2 and it was rejected each time. And the court said that you can regulate anything if you write it in the statute. The EPA said, good we want to regulate energy use and it is not to make the price go down and that has been described by the people pushing this as the worst thing that could happen to humanity,” Horner said.
“They want to ration energy sources that work. It’s so economically beneficial that requires a bureaucratic intervention that lawmakers won’t impose. There’s money to be made on Hurricane Katrina, the housing bubble and every other bad idea, but when you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul will clean up. That’s why these companies are pushing this,” Horner furthered.
Napolitano concluded by repeating for a third time to Skinner his question that she refuses to answer: “What will this do to our democracy when bureaucrats rather than Congress write the laws?” Skinner answers with one of her talking points: “I rather have scientists advising members Congress in writing [EPA] laws than lobbyists who broke the laws during the Bush administration.”
Category: Commentary, Uncategorized
