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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe vowed to block a catch-all Senate package of waterways, public lands and wildlife bills that Democrats want to push through in the final days of this Congress.
"I stand in firm opposition to this package, the contents of which are still uncertain," said Inhofe, the Environment and Public Works Committee's ranking member. Inhofe cited concerns over costs and the potential expansion of U.S. EPA authority in the most controversial of the waterways bills, aimed at cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
President Obama famously declared in 2009 that under his Administration the "days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over." Except, apparently, when the Administration wanted to justify its Gulf of Mexico drilling ban this summer.
The White House dropped its deep water drilling ban last month, ending months of government-imposed pain on a Gulf region hit by the BP oil spill. But only last week did the Department of Interior's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, issue her findings on the moratorium's controversial beginnings. Lackluster though her investigation was, the report confirms that the moratorium never had any basis in science or safety. It was pure politics.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Climategate, Commitment to Oklahoma, National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
In an era of change, Sen. James Inhofe is unapologetic about standing his ground.
"He's not seen as a rebel around here by any means ... but he's an independent thinker," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Oklahoma Republican.
Inhofe, 76, is comfortable being a contrarian. In an interview last week, he recalled a time when one of his grandchildren "came up to me and said, ‘Pop-I, Why do you always do things that nobody else does?' ... and I said, ‘because nobody else does.'"
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Friday, November 19, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence
IT'S confirmed. Four Nuclear Regulatory Commission members cast their votes months ago on the question of whether the Obama administration can unilaterally cancel the nation's deep geological nuclear-waste repository. But the votes have been kept secret apparently for political reasons.
Attribute the holdup to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who seems to have done everything he can to game the process and keep the question about Yucca Mountain from a more credible proceeding in federal court.
Congress designated the site 100 miles from Las Vegas as the destination for the nation's commercial nuclear waste and high-level defense waste, such as that now at Hanford in Southeastern Washington.
The NRC's own licensing board in June ruled that, no indeed, the Obama administration cannot flout the will of Congress. The question before the NRC is whether to affirm or overturn that ruling - a decision needed before the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals will take up related litigation.
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence
U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on Oct. 4 that asks for more information about the agency's handling of a permit for Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County.
The EPA issued the permit in 2007 for the Arch Coal operation after a 10-year review, and Inhofe told Jackson he does not believe federal law allows the EPA to revoke an existing permit. Coal companies, he said, deserve some level of certainty in their dealings with regulators.
Coal industry observers believe the EPA's handling of the Spruce permit has interfered with the mining operation's ability to earn a return on its substantial investment, thus justifying a lawsuit to recover damages from the federal government.
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Monday, October 4, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $700,000 grant to the Civilians, a New York theater company, to finance the production of a show about climate change. "The Great Immensity," with a book by Steven Cosson ("This Beautiful City") and music and lyrics by Michael Friedman ("Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson"), tells the story of Polly, a photojournalist who disappears while working in the rain forests of Panama. The grant is a rare gift to an arts organization from the foundation, a federal agency that pays for science, engineering and mathematics research and education. The company says it plans to spend the money on the development and evaluation of the show, as well as on a tour and educational programs, including post-show panel discussions with experts in related scientific fields. No performance dates have been announced.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
With the November midterm election nearing, Republicans in Congress are focusing their fire on U.S. EPA, describing the agency's regulations on greenhouse gases and air pollution as the product of a "job-killing" Obama administration.
Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has put together a laundry list of grievances about the agency's regulatory agenda. His report, which will be released this afternoon, is the latest in a series of screeds from Inhofe, who previously investigated the "Climategate" controversy and issued a report accusing the Obama administration of bungling its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
"Unfortunately, the Obama EPA favors bureaucracy and heavy-handed intervention more than jobs and growth," says a draft of the new report that was reviewed by Greenwire. "In many cases, outmoded provisions of the [Clean Air Act] are no longer tools to achieve clean air, but blunt instruments for EPA to enact anti-industrial policies."
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Actually, it's not just the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's minority contingent that fears the loss of nearly a million jobs from new EPA rules on greenhouse gases and other emissions issues. It's also groups like the United Steel Workers, Unions for Jobs and the Environment, and experts like King's College Professor Ragnar Lofstedt. Hot Air got an exclusive look at a report that the EPW minority staff will release later this morning detailing the economic damage that an activist EPA will do to the American economy, and which will come at perhaps the worst possible time, both economically and politically.
The executive summary spells out the stakes involved in the effort to rein in the EPA:
New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;
The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.
New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;
The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and
In fact, the new regulations threaten to put entire industries out of business. The new standard for boilers, titled "National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Major Sources: Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters" and called the Boiler MACT, creates a standard that literally no producer in the US meets at the moment. The industry group Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) represents end-user firms that employ 750,000 in various industries, and they concur:
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Thursday, September 23, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Commitment to Oklahoma, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis
On Labor Day in Milwaukee, President Obama vowed to "keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American Dream." Stirring rhetoric, no doubt; but to the employees at Thilmany Papers, a company that employs 850 people in two specialty paper mills in Wisconsin, it means little.
That's because the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is threatening their livelihoods. The threat comes from EPA's proposal to regulate industrial boilers, the Boiler MACT rule. As with most EPA rules, the Boiler MACT (maximum achievable control technology standards) sounds arcane, and seems to be the remote province of federal technocrats. This is certainly true, but its impact will be pervasive and damaging. Here's what Thilmany had to say about it: "Our business, like many others, encounters many challenges. However, none threaten the continued existence of our business like this [proposed rule]."
The United Steelworkers (USW) union emphatically opposes the Boiler MACT proposal. As the USW sees it, the proposal "will be sufficient to imperil the operating status of many industrial plants." The USW represents hundreds of thousands of workers, "in the most heavily impacted industries, among them pulp & paper, steel, and rubber." In the union's view, "Tens of thousands of these jobs will be imperiled. In addition, many more tens of thousands of jobs in the supply chains and in the communities where these plants are located also will be at risk."
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Associated issues: Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science, Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy, Global Warming, Cap-and-Tax Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed, Commitment to Oklahoma, National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments, Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis, National Security and Energy Independence, Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices
The Senate's top global warming skeptic is confident he'll reclaim the gavel of the Environment and Public Works Committee next year, and he's got big plans in store.
"I'll be chairman," Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe said in an interview yesterday.
Inhofe was chairman of the panel from 2003 to 2007 and has served as ranking member since Democrats seized control of the chamber and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) took the gavel.
With an outside chance that Republicans will win back the Senate this fall, Inhofe is already making plans to overhaul the powerful panel.
His top priority, he says, is to stop "wasting time" on global warming hearings and get down to business on issues he says have been neglected, like overseeing U.S. EPA and passing major transportation and water infrastructure bills.
"We haven't really been doing anything because they've been wasting all of our time on all that silly stuff, all the hearings on global warming and all that," Inhofe said.
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