The White House announced Friday that it is shelving a major planned Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would have tightened smog standards, dealing a huge blow to environmentalists that had pushed the Obama administration to resist industry pressure to abandon the regulation.
In a statement, President Obama said that the rule is being shelved because he is wary of imposing regulatory burdens during the economic recovery.
Translation: a bunch of states like Texas looked at what this rule would do to power generation and the costs it would impose- which would include dead bodies in heat and cold waves- and raised three levels of bloody hell. And a bunch of Democrats in those states probably pointed out "You let this go through and you're through."
One of the pieces of bullshit in this was the EPA claiming 'health benefits' would pay for the costs:
While EPA estimated that the strictest standard in the range under consideration — 60 parts per billion — would cost as much as $90 billion annually by 2020, the same analysis said this would bring $100 billion in annual benefits per year by 2020.
Number One: has ANY estimate from these people ever not turned out to be low? Often WAY low?
Number Two: Even if their estimate was correct, you're talking about crippling industry and- in extreme weather- endangering lives in exchange for an estimated $10 billion 'savings'.
Speaking of energy and Obama,
Congress requested documents related to the Solyndra loan from the Office of Management and Budget. After three months and zero documents produced, a hearing was scheduled. An OMB deputy director was asked to attend but didn’t show up, claiming a scheduling conflict. Finally, OMB allowed that congressional staff could view some of the requested documents on site, but when they arrived in mid-July not all the documents were available and some that were made available had been redacted. Specifically, the information on risk ratings had been lined out. Given that this was exactly the information congress had been looking for the entire exercise was becoming a waste of time. At this point the committee held a hearing to consider issuing a subpoena for the documents.
Why would Solyndra get such sweet interest rates for what is obviously now -- and also was obviously then -- a high-risk investment? Well, maybe because one of its "prime financial backers" was an Obama 2008 fundraiser
1 comment:
No estimate of cost or burden made by any government has been even close. I had thought once that the budget could be balanced if some sort of penalty could be arranged for hitting numbers in environmental impact statements too low, but then I recanted because the developers only make those reports at the compulsion of the government.
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