Let’s call it the unitary executive:
Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming “solution.” But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama’s energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail — or rather, greenmail — Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda.
[Review & Outlook] APJason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama’s key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency “would initiate those rulemakings” that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that “in the absence of Congressional action” 18 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.
Well, well. For years, Democrats — including Senator Obama — have been howling about the “politicization” of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called “endangerment finding” on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.
The EPA hasn’t made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn’t exactly say it’d collectivize the farms — but pretty close, down to the “grass clippings.” The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of “lawn and garden equipment” as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.
These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It’s like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. […]
[…]
The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn’t believe he’ll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way: “The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus.”
Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It’s another example of “change” you’ll be given no choice but to believe in.
So. Obama’s plan is to cripple the economy by way of executive fiat in the name of junk science — and in so doing, bring the US in line with some vaguely defined “international discussion” that, even our own Democratic Congress knows has more to do with transnational wealth redistribution and the destruction of “hegemony” and hyperpower-ness than it does with actual climate change. Another step in the humbling of American power.
It’s the religion of transnational progressivism / authoritarianism, in all its cynical, new-age glory.
I eagerly await Bill Maher’s film version.
(h/t Geoff B)
YEA jUNKSCIENCE! Nishi must be thrilled.
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Any resulting economic damage will just be blamed on Bush so it will be ok people.
Well, another Democratic depression in the offing.
Would there be some sort of double-penalty for the carbon that is emitted by my 12 ga. when I shoot an EPA guy in the ass for snooping around my Kubota?
You have exceeded you alloted 20 breaths/min. Please report to the nearest O! station for recalibration.
How much will the tax be on nishit’s regurgitation of Memes 1 through 8? Hopefully, cabron dioxide will be excluded from these EPA taxes. Baracky is already going to tax the holy hell out of actual taxpayers, and now we can add people who breathe to the list of people who will be taxed under Baracky. The only certainties in life are death, and taxes … but Baracky is working on making sure that life is taxed as well.
All your carbon are belong to us.
At the end of this logical chain, you’ll find that humanity is pollution.
Ahh, nuance to the whole “If it moves, tax it,” line. My chest is indeed moving up and down.
Nah, humans are a virus (hat tip Wachowski). And O! is the vaccine.
Dear Citizen,
Every breath you take, I’ll be watching you …
Sincerely,
Baracky
O!2
I thought humans were punishment …
My yurt will be in next week. I’ll have to buy some carbon offsets to make up for the shipping though!
Ayers is an avowed Maoist. Maoist China has become one of the largest practitioners of eugenics. It is reasonable to suspect that Obama will attempt to institute policies to get us to a Europe-esque birth rate.
Can’t wait for the Anti-Exhalation Act of 2009!
What kinda nutcase wants the government to be able to mandate how many gallons of gas you use and how much power you can get for your house every month?
Whenever this subject comes up I recommend a look at the Web page of Anthony Watts (“Watts Up With That”). Briefly: the data is crap, the theories don’t hold water, the evidence is contradictory, and we’re all going to be wishing that weren’t so because the Sun has gone out.
Regards,
Ric
Preconditions?!
The word “consensus” is so worn out, it’s not even there anymore. Remember, when you hear it, it’s the state of things after you — or not-you (on your behalf, probably) — concede.
The supplanting of a partly free and accidental one with a more totally regimented and designed one, actually — rather like the bailout.
It’s all tubes.
I feel like going out and burning a few old tires, just to get my licks in while I can.
All of your breaths are belonging to us !!!!!eleventy!!!!one11
I love burning leaves in the fall. Will that be taxable, or due to the public good created from the nice aroma, will I be eligible for some kind of environmental tax credit?
Some trial lawyer somewhere is dreaming of the day he can sue a doctor for giving mouth to mouth. Either for the fact that he is breathing pollution into someones mouth or that he revives the person and that said person then continues to pollute by breathing. What a wonderful world we live in.
Can’t we demand an end to the EPA? Isnt this a govenment by the people – and we send reps to Congress? Congress already gave away its right to issue currency by forming the Fed Reserve – but can’t Congress close or limit an agency it created? What if we demand it? We should not have to listen to the fiats of agencies we did not elect – how can we go about this?
Civilian conservation corps will be all over you if you burn leaves..
They gotta drop that $500 billion somewhere, surveillance donchaknow.
“Humanity is pollution” – that’s the number one theme of moonbat environmentology. We are a virus, a scourge, rapers of Gaia. We must pop our little suicide bags for the sake of the forests, or at least get depopulated and live in little well-balanced-by-carnivorous-predation villages of bamboo or mud huts. We got no right to live, to breathe, to take up space. Oh, and no weapons in space. Space is for innocent rocks.
Humans do a lot of stupid things in pursuit of purity.
I guess it’s a kind of brain malfunction. Planet-orexia.
Hmm does this mean government institutions like the military will have to stop spewing all that carbon in Iraq or fear lawsuits? The people have a right to know.
What about heretics?
Sorta OT, but while visiting my cousin, I was lectured about the growing threat of global warming and how stupid rethuglians are to pretend it doesn’t exist. Irony alert – this cousin also “brags” about how her 12 month old baby has already been on over 40 flights. World traveler, you see.
Apparently, merely “being concerned” is enough. You don’t actually have to walk the walk.
Stalin doesn’t look so bad when you think of humanity in those terms.
I wonder if David Evans is going to be exterminated or reeducated.
No Smoking Hot Spot
Carin – Being concerned, or caring is all it requires to be one of Teh Enlightened. Actually doing something about it has no relevance.
Precisely. Bush’s AIDS aid to Africa? Bahh, he’s still the BOOOOOOOOOOSHitler.
SemenStain better watch itself. Given the hot air it has spewed in the comments just today, it will extend its tax liability by literally thousands of dollars.
Well, yeah. That’s the way the Kyoto treaty has worked from day 1.
The Euros solemnly signed it, fully intending to do what they’ve done since, i.e., whatever they damned well please while lying through their collective teeth. There are and were a few damned fools — the Canadians being the prime example — who fully intended to comply, but by and large the French strategy of all rhetoric and no action was what was intended from the beginning.
We can’t do that here. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that places treaties just below the Constitution or other founding documents in legal precedence; if we sign and ratify a treaty it’s the law of the land, binding on everyone. It puts us at a disadvantage in the Narrative Wars.
Regards,
Ric
Fits right into one of my pet themes: elected officials do not control the gubmint. Unelected bureaucrats do.
By what Constitutional authority does the EPA pass any laws whatever? None. But that “limited government of enumerated powers” stuff is soooo 1820’s.
Be not troubled, fellow wingnuts. Just as the Peanut Farmer led to the great Reagan (jellybeans be upon him), so the Race Hustler will lead to Palin/Jindal in 2012. I eagerly await the Op/Eds informing us how inauthetically brown Jindal is.
The crisis Biden warned us about will require Martial Law and Special Powers for Obama. Biden is just getting us used to it.
But the data shows Global Warmalism just went “Poof”.
Bothersome datums.
RACISTS~~!!!
Just throw an American flag on top. Voila! Instant first-amendment-protected political protest!
If I remember correctly, William Kunstler (he of the eyebrows like squirrels) is dead, but mabye you could get Gerry Spence to take the case.
Comment by Ric Locke on 10/20 @ 11:09 am #
Great website, on my daily read list.
You’re a towel!!1!thatone!11!!
Just throw an American flag on top. Voila! Instant first-amendment-protected political protest!
Jim, you’re a fucking genius! Now I can tell my neighbor how to get out from under that upsidedown mortgage w/o being charged for arson.
As a bald statement, so very true, I think. But then I catch myself, as in, oh, wait………..wasn’t purity one of the five moral sentiment components put forward by Jonathan Haidt –I think — and wasn’t it also his contention that the purity slider weighed in more heavily on the conservative scale? So what’s it doing showing up (correctly, I believe) among the drivers of the eco-ideologists, who, I take it, are more likely to be on the left/liberal side of the political continuum??? Puzzling.
It’s important to remember though that this has dick all to do with climate.
Right you are. It is actually all about humans fucking other humans. Every-which-way.
That’s going to take a big damn flag. I’d suggest “electrical malfunction” for that one… I might have some knob-and-tube wiring lying around I could part with (for authenticity and all).
Heh. My house, built in 1908, is full of knob and tube. Which actually isn’t al that unsafe, until you start to play around with it (well, discounting the “shorted squirrel” problem).
What was that stuff called that came after K&T, but before modern Romex? It had cloth insulation and (as I recall) had hot and neut, but no ground.
I remember finding a rat in the attic of an old house that’d bit into one of those. A rather rigid fellow, he was.
Yeah, Sdferr, it’s good thick wire and the installers were paranoid so it’s all soldered and taped and so forth. It’s a pain to connect into, since they used switched neutrals back in the day, and there’s no ground wire. And of course, as you mentioned, any place where it’s been messed with– such as where lights or switches have been connected–can be troublesome because the insulation gets brittle.
Mine’s all out of service now, but I left some of it in the walls because it wasn’t worth the effort or the destruction to pull it all out. (Our house was built in 1899 and originally had gas lighting.)
I can only imagine how fond the greenies would be of gas lighting…
I believe that the impending “National Health Care” plan will make huge in-roads into the overpopulaiton thing.
Speechless. Off to finish building a table in the garage.
Can’t take much more of this – COME ON November!
bring bring
“Good morning Sir! This call will be monitored and may be recorded for educational purposes.
“I notice from our records that you have failed to correctly purchase a CO2 emission licence.
“It is therefore my duty to inform you that your respiration permit has been revoked.
“The persons in the pink scrubs exiting the pretty green helicopter on your front lawn are from the local organ bank.
“The persons in the green body armor entering through the windows and doors are for your safety and security in case of any untoward reaction.
“Have a nice day Sir!”
Let’s hear it for wiped lead joints! And Plumber’s who know how to deal with them when they break and start spewing water all over the basement (hint: involves CO2)!
Heh. Our old pipe is all gone, too, Sdferr. We set a personal record for Home Depot trips in a weekend while cutting out and replacing all the old cast iron drain pipe. Seemed like we were always just one fitting short…
The new copper on the supply side was sort of just phased in as we completed various rooms.
I didn’t do a good job with the description though, Jim. I actually intended a lead water supply pipe (from the street, no less) which broke on the street-side of the shutoff valve, and for which, it so happened (it, being the city of Philadelphia, so only God hisself knows when the thing was put in the ground), there was no shutoff at the street, either! Uh-oh. That’s a problem. (So, just for grins, give the puzzle a go. The knowing plumber solved the problem with CO2.)
#38 Ric Locke:
In Re: Treaties.
Treaties have the power of statute until Congress does something to abrogate a provision, i.e., pass another statute. Treaties are binding on all of the US states because, as the courts have held, if a single state can regulate the matter (duck hunting), then all of the states, speaking through the federal government to another national government can regulate the matter (the treaties with Great Britain/Canada to protect migratory waterfowl). However, treaties cannot alter the form of our government, they cannot violate the US Constitution by permitting something the Constitution doesn’t permit, or allowing something to be done that the Constitution forbids. No treaty, for example, can permit Jennifer Granholm or Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for President.
(I dropped a long discussion of this into a thread about six months ago.)
Otherwise – you are correct – treaties can do a lot of things, but only what is in the power of Congress or an individual US state to do.
#51 SBP and #52 Jim in KC:
Had that in an old (1920’s) house I owned. Thankfully the place was one story and a lot of the wiring ran under the floor through the basement. Just touching the insulation would cause it to crumble, so I pulled a lot of that and put in Romex. Everytime I had to do a plug, or open a plug, out came the old stuff and in went Romex. I was helped because the house was in Dearborn* and the fusebox had been replaced with a circuitbreaker box, and the new stuff went out to where it connected with the old, so it was easy to follow the old back to where the new had been spliced in and do the replacement.
*Dearborn has pretty good building codes and if you want to sell the place it has to be up to the code, even to having ‘backwash’ valves** on the outside faucet and the laundry tub.
**Backwash valves keep the contents of a garden hose from being sucked into the watermains if the pressure should drop – wouldn’t a sprayer full of ‘Weed-B-Gone’ getting sucked into the mains if there is a failure.
I would hope that even the ultra-vocal, hyper-partisan left, the ones that have been decrying the way that eeeeeeeeeevil Chimpy BusHitlerBurton have been transforming the executive into the imperial Presidency, would see past their own hypocrisy and be absolutely chilled by O!s intent to tax by fiat, using the EPA as a medium…
And isn’t the timing of this all fascinating, considering that an ever increasing number of scientists are coming to the conclusion that man has had little effect on the changing climate…
Oh well, it wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last-unfortunately, that the left has threatened our economy and society based on a specious premise…
#57 Jim in KC:
That house I had already had the new copper plumbing, and most of the drain pipe was some sort of PVC. The last big piece where all the drains came together was the old cast iron, and wasn’t a problem – not if the way the water scooted out of the sinks/toilet/tub was anything to go by.
#61 Bob Reed:
I am waiting for the reaction when people are not permitted to cut their lawns. Should be very, very interesting. Talk about un-American!
Whadda ya mean not allowed? You’ll just have to be green about it. But no heavy breathing.
MikeyNTH–we have that same setup. There was some awfully crusty cast iron higher up in the house, though. So full of crap (yeah, literally) that it wouldn’t have drained, period.
Sdferr–I’m assuming he froze a plug at the end so they could install some sort of stop?
*wink* you get an A, Jim, well done.
I figured it was either that or he carbonated your water for you…
#64 Pablo:
Oh, your dad was like my dad? Didn’t get a power mower until the boys grew up and moved out?
Let me tell you about his idea of having sons and a ‘snowblower’. And if you think kids + shovels = snowblower, you got that equation right.
Still, this is the right way to tick off the middle-aged and older demographic – you know, the demographic that votes. And we had a small yard. Let me tell you how edging was accomplished, or trimming around trees, and if you think anything other than a boy was the power source you got another think coming!
And pruning? We didn’t have a power clipper until grandpa and grandma went into a nursing home in the mid-1980’s, when I was already out of high school.
Oh yeah, best to have the drive shoveled before dad got home if you wanted to use the car at all.
Dad and mom are great, but real sticklers about duty. No, scratch that – I’m glad they were real sticklers about duty. They’re just great.