States Attack EPA Carbon Scam

States Fighting Obama EPA’s Global Warming Decrees Posted on July 7, 2014 Written by Alex Newman, The New American July 5, 2014

When the Obama admin­is­tra­tion failed in its bid five years ago to have the Democrat-controlled Con­gress cre­ate an uncon­sti­tu­tional cap-and-trade regime tar­get­ing car­bon diox­ide to fight “global warm­ing,” it waited a few years, then imposed the rad­i­cal scheme by exec­u­tive decree. Rather than foist­ing it directly on busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als, Obama’s new pres­i­den­tial edicts pur­port to com­man­deer state gov­ern­ments for the pur­pose. The “reg­u­la­tions” even “gra­ciously” offer states what the anti-CO₂ zealots in the admin­is­tra­tion and its EPA describe as a “menu” of “pol­icy options” they can “choose” from to com­ply with the decrees. The bat­tle to stop the abuse, though, is now underway. The “cli­mate” reg­u­la­tory regime unveiled by the EPA last month calls for mas­sive reduc­tions in emis­sions from power plants. Under the scheme, described as “Oba­maCare for the atmos­phere,” emis­sions of what sci­en­tists refer to as the “gas of life” — exhaled by humans and required for plants — must be slashed by 30 per­cent from 2005 lev­els by 2030. Obama explained the eco­nomic effects of his plot in a 2008 inter­view: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade sys­tem, elec­tric­ity rates would nec­es­sar­ily sky­rocket.” At least in that instance, he was telling the truth. The U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce esti­mated that the scheme could cost $50 bil­lion per year in lost GDP and over 200,000 jobs annu­ally, in addi­tion to a plunge in house­hold dis­pos­able income of over half a tril­lion dol­lars a year.

If states refuse to sub­mit to the administration’s widely ridiculed edicts, the EPA claims it has the power to step in and cre­ate its own “plan.” More than a few state gov­ern­ments, how­ever, are already fight­ing back — or at least pre­tend­ing to in an effort to appease the groundswell of oppo­si­tion — against what elected offi­cials say is brazen anti-constitutional fed­eral and exec­u­tive over­reach. Mul­ti­ple avenues to stop the plot are being pur­sued, rang­ing from con­gres­sional action and fed­eral law­suits to state nul­li­fi­ca­tion efforts. Some ana­lysts also sug­gested forc­ing the agency to pre­pare a legally required “impact state­ment” out­lin­ing and jus­ti­fy­ing the human dev­as­ta­tion set to be wrought on Amer­ica under the scheme. With the GOP-controlled House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­plicit in the administration’s schem­ing — the House has the con­sti­tu­tional power to cut off all fund­ing for Obama’s “cli­mate” antics, yet has refused to do so for rea­sons that remain unclear — atten­tion is increas­ingly shift­ing to state capi­tols. Shortly after the lat­est EPA plot was unveiled, Indi­ana Gov. Mike Pence, cit­ing higher energy costs, lost jobs, and lost busi­ness, promised to “oppose these reg­u­la­tions using every means pos­si­ble.” Penn­syl­va­nia Gov­er­nor Tom Cor­bett vowed to “fight these reg­u­la­tions every step of the way.” Other gov­er­nors and state law­mak­ers offered sim­i­lar rhetoric, but many of those same states are already work­ing on their own plots to need­lessly reduce emis­sions of the essential-to-life gas.

Under grow­ing pub­lic pres­sure, though, law­mak­ers and some gov­er­nors, espe­cially from coal states, are actu­ally turn­ing up the heat. On July 1, for exam­ple, The Hill reported that nine state gov­ern­ments joined a law­suit against the EPA cli­mate regime by Mur­ray Energy that seeks to over­turn the “ille­gal, irra­tional, and destruc­tive cap-and-tax” plot. The states include West Vir­ginia, Alabama, Alaska, Ken­tucky, Nebraska, Ohio, Okla­homa, South Car­olina, and Wyoming. The suit, filed on June 18 in the U.S. Dis­trict Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, aims to have the courts restrain Obama’s EPA and stop it from issu­ing and enforc­ing unlaw­ful decrees.

“EPA’s asser­tion of author­ity denied it by Con­gress imposes real harms on the States now: States have to under­take huge amounts of bur­den­some work now to develop plans to meet the antic­i­pated rule and can­not wait for the final rule and still have any chance of meet­ing the indi­cated dead­lines,” explains a brief filed by the nine state gov­ern­ments, blast­ing as “extra­or­di­nary” the EPA’s claims of author­ity. “The ‘spe­cific pro­hi­bi­tion’ against the EPA’s pro­posed rule is in the very statu­tory pro­vi­sion the agency cites as its authority.”

Accord­ing to the states’ court fil­ing, Sec­tion 111(d) of the Clean Air Act — the same statute the EPA cites as its sup­posed author­ity for issu­ing the decrees — actu­ally pro­hibits the admin­is­tra­tion from reg­u­lat­ing “any air pol­lu­tant emit­ted from a source cat­e­gory that EPA already reg­u­lates” under a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the statute. In other words, as The Hill explained, that means the EPA can­not reg­u­late those power plants under Sec­tion 111(d) if they are already reg­u­lated under another sec­tion of the Clean Air Act. Of course, Con­gress itself never had the con­sti­tu­tional author­ity to pass a “Clean Air Act” to begin with — much less del­e­gate such anti-constitutional pow­ers to an uncon­sti­tu­tional agency cre­ated by an exec­u­tive order.

Still, in a bizarre rul­ing handed down last month that makes a mock­ery of sci­ence and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, the Supreme Court gave back­ing to much of the EPA’s rad­i­cal anti-CO₂ schem­ing. As such, efforts to hold the fed­eral gov­ern­ment account­able to the Con­sti­tu­tion via fed­eral courts are widely viewed as unlikely to suc­ceed. The rul­ing did say, how­ever, that fed­eral agen­cies have “no power to ‘tai­lor’ leg­is­la­tion to bureau­cratic pol­icy goals.” That could bol­ster the posi­tion of some state offi­cials who were demand­ing that the admin­is­tra­tion with­draw its uncon­sti­tu­tional and unlaw­ful plot before being forced to squan­der even more tax­payer funds defend­ing it in court.

“As the chief legal offi­cer for the State of West Vir­ginia, I respect­fully request that you with­draw the Pro­posed Rule imme­di­ately because EPA lacks the legal author­ity to adopt that Rule,” West Vir­ginia Attor­ney Gen­eral Patrick Mor­risey wrote in a let­ter to EPA boss Admin­is­tra­tor Gina McCarthy, say­ing the plot should be nixed to “avoid need­less lit­i­ga­tion.” The EPA is not allowed to “bla­tantly vio­late the law in order to achieve its pol­icy goals,” Mor­risey added in a state­ment. The let­ter also cited the argu­ments made by the nine states in their recent court filing.

In Con­gress, law­mak­ers are also con­sid­er­ing their options. One plan, pro­posed by Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would invoke the Con­gres­sional Review Act. Once the EPA reg­u­la­tions are final­ized, Con­gress could use the law to sim­ply over­turn the CO₂ reg­u­la­tory regime. Sen. McConnell, an estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can up for re-election widely viewed by con­ser­v­a­tives as an enabler of the out-of-control exec­u­tive branch, called Obama’s car­bon plot “a dag­ger in the heart of the Amer­i­can mid­dle class” and vowed to fight it. Indeed, among Repub­li­cans of all vari­eties, pub­lic sup­port for the scheme is vir­tu­ally non-existent. It remains to be seen, though, how ded­i­cated the GOP truly is to using the tools it has to stop Obama’s EPA.

Even some Democ­rats, includ­ing McConnell’s oppo­nent, have pub­licly turned against the administration’s attack on Amer­i­cans and their econ­omy. “Last week, the EPA unleashed its lat­est assault on the jobs and liveli­hoods of our coal min­ers,” Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) said after the lat­est EPA decrees were unveiled. “The EPA needs to get their head out of the clouds and come back down to Earth where the rest of us must live and work. We don’t need more reg­u­la­tion to solve our energy chal­lenges — we need more innovation.” How­ever, Rep. Rahall and the dozens of co-sponsors for his leg­is­la­tion to block the new decrees, dubbed the “Pro­tec­tion and Account­abil­ity Reg­u­la­tory Act of 2014,” know full well that even if the Sen­ate were to pass the bill as well, Obama would veto it. The only real option for Con­gress, aside from using the Con­gres­sional Review Act to kill the edicts, is to defund the EPA, or at least its abil­ity to impose the uncon­sti­tu­tional and unlaw­ful car­bon decrees on America.

At the state level, nul­li­fi­ca­tion of uncon­sti­tu­tional fed­eral statutes and edicts has been spread­ing like wild­fire. Under heavy pres­sure from strug­gling con­stituents, law­mak­ers in both Ari­zona and Idaho have been work­ing hard this year to nul­lify all EPA decrees in their states. Nul­li­fi­ca­tion was a favorite solu­tion touted by some of America’s most promi­nent Found­ing Fathers such as Thomas Jef­fer­son and James Madi­son. Still today, lib­eral– and conservative-leaning states are nul­li­fy­ing uncon­sti­tu­tional fed­eral acts rang­ing from attacks on gun rights to mar­i­juana pro­hi­bi­tion. Even dis­graced Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder has been forced to acknowl­edge the via­bil­ity of the tactic.

A solid major­ity of Amer­i­cans reject the man-made global-warming the­o­ries cited by the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and the United Nations to jus­tify their rad­i­cal plans. Accord­ing to a recent Pew sur­vey, 53 per­cent of respon­dents rejected the the­ory, while 40 per­cent believe human activ­i­ties are respon­si­ble for “warm­ing” — despite the fact that there has been no global warm­ing in almost two decades and count­ing. Obama and his fel­low alarmists sim­ply dou­bled down, with the pres­i­dent out­landishly using a com­mence­ment speech to ridicule the major­ity of Amer­i­cans who refuse to believe his dis­cred­ited the­ory. The EPA has also been law­lessly hid­ing the “sci­ence” pur­port­edly jus­ti­fy­ing its power grabs.

It has become clear that what more than a few U.S. law­mak­ers have referred to as “the impe­r­ial pres­i­dency” will not stop abus­ing reg­u­la­tory agen­cies such as the EPA until forced to do so. As such, the best strat­egy would be for House Repub­li­cans to cut off all fund­ing to the EPA and other uncon­sti­tu­tional agen­cies enforc­ing uncon­sti­tu­tional exec­u­tive decrees. In addi­tion, state gov­ern­ments ought to use nul­li­fi­ca­tion to pro­tect cit­i­zens from fed­eral abuse and tyranny. The cli­mate, which has always changed and always will, should be the least of Amer­i­cans’ wor­ries. With­out seri­ous action, the administration’s accel­er­at­ing wars on coal, guns, the Con­sti­tu­tion, state sov­er­eignty, the econ­omy, jobs, and more will con­tinue to wreak real havoc on Amer­i­cans and the world.

Source:http://agenda21news.com/2014/07/states-fighting-obama-epas-global-warming-decrees/Filed Under: Climate Change

Comments: Note Georgia is missing from the list of States fighting this treason.  Why ?

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader