Excerpts from the:
Murkowski tries anew to block EPA regulators
By ERIKA BOLSTAD
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski took her battle with the Environmental Protection Agency to the floor of the Senate today, saying she was left with no choice but to fight a federal agency she believes is “contemplating regulations that will destroy jobs while millions of Americans are doing everything they can just to find one.”
The Alaska Republican announced she would seek to keep the EPA from drawing up rules on greenhouse gas emissions from large emitters, such as power plants, refineries and manufacturers. Murkowski did it by filing a “disapproval resolution,” a rarely used procedural move that prohibits rules written by executive branch agencies from taking effect.
…
“If Congress allows this to happen there will be severe consequences to our economy,” Murkowski said. “Businesses will be forced to cut jobs, if not move outside our borders or close their doors for good perhaps. Domestic energy production will be severely restricted, increasing our dependence on foreign suppliers and threatening our national security. Housing will become less affordable.”
She was immediately countered by Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the committee that has done the most work on climate-change legislation: the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Murkowski’s disapproval resolution would essentially throw out the process by which the EPA found that greenhouse gases endanger public health, Boxer said.
She called Murkowski’s resolution an “unprecedented move to overturn a health finding by health experts and scientific experts in order to stand with the special interests.”
…
Murkowski has as co-sponsors 38 fellow senators, including three Democrats: Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Her move has prompted an aggressive response by environmentalists, who launched a radio and television advertising campaign in Anchorage and Washington, D.C., that focused on the role two industry lobbyists had in writing Murkowski’s original proposal last fall.
…
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also criticized Murkowski’s effort, saying recently during an event in New York sponsored by the Geothermal Energy Association that Murkowski’s proposal was “misguided.”
Video below:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Smart ones too, in this case.
Murkowski has not gone completely Inhofe on AGW yet but she is rapidly moving that direction. Her staff is not there yet either. One of them was on a local Anchorage talk show yesterday afternoon and they believe they can get 51 votes necessary to pass the resolution. For some reason that I missed (perhaps because the resolution does not involve money or any change of law), the filibuster does not apply here.
Conservatives can stop this completely by simply retaking the majority in the House. And they can do it without winning a majority in the Senate. Should they regain a majority in the House, all they have to do is decide not to fund any EPA rule-making or enforcement action that has to do with AGW / carbon dioxide. Only the House can originate spending. The Senate can jump up and down and scream bloody murder, as can the administration, the greens, the media and the EPA; but they cannot originate the spending for this.
Want to strangle this beast? Defund. Disobey. Default.
The fun part of all this ought to be the civil lawsuits against it by the corporate world and by the individual states. As mentioned previously, discovery won’t go well for the AGW grant recipients.
Maybe it’s a multiple taboo to report a religious statistic from Wiki, but:
There are two problems with politicians taking the reins on AGW. First they’re wrong. Second, they don’t really know. They just think they do. Isn’t this a case for a more agnostic senate? We could use a few more.
Re
on the “EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding challenged today in the U.S. Senate” thread there are 2 posts that have very interesting data that might be worth a Thread of their own.
The first is by Mike Ramsey
Mike Ramsey (18:12:07) :
[Sen. Barbara Boxer] called Murkowski’s resolution an “unprecedented move to overturn a health finding by health experts and scientific experts in order to stand with the special interests.”
Unprecedented? Oh no, there is a precedent for overturning a health finding by health experts.
http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/25/cei-releases-global-warming-study-censored-epa
Mike Ramsey
Mike has a very good point, wouldn’t it be great if that report was sent to Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Correction (then I’m done): should read: “We could use a few (agnostics).” There are presently NONE. ZERO.
Pamela Gray (16:44:16) :
On this same note, I am liking the new Mass. Senator Brown very much. What an interesting character. He has tweaked noses on both sides of the isle.
Do you suscribe to Cosmopolitan? It appears he’s tweaked more than noses! :~O
After listening to Senator Murkowski’s address, it seems unlikely that she opposes CO2 mitigation in principle. At 20 minutes in, she reminds the senators that “I co-sponsered a cap & trade bill – and that bill, unfortunately has been languishing on the senate floor for 8 months now, just waiting to be called up, which is a real shame, because it would lead to significant emissions reductions.”
In her closing remarks she states: “We are being presented with a false choice between unacceptable legislation and unacceptable regulations. A number of senators are trying to develop bills that can be signed into law. But even as that work continues the EPA endagerment finding has opened the door to further economic damage.”
I have no information as to the content of these other bills, but the likely outcome seems to be this: the senate will pass Murkowski’s disapproval, and at some point one of the previously alluded to bills will be passed to the senate for approval. Finally, a version of cap & trade will be signed into law.
Ohio geologists go rogue:
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/01/22/ohio-geologists-go-rogue/
Graeme From Melbourne (17:30:43) :
“…Not surprising – when have they ever learned from facts??? When your whole thought process is ideologically driven, facts are no consequence.”
Unfortunately the Democratic party is not ideologically driven, they are a Trojan horse that is money driven by the big corporate cartels. Corporations WANT regulations THEY control through puppets heading the government agencies and that stiffle competition. The upper echelon of the left uses the ideology as a cover to support their drive towards corporatism.
Here is an example:
Clinton, Food and the World Trade Organization: (The repercussions of this are seen in world wide bankrupting of farmers and consolidation of the food supply)
The IPC (International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade) was created in 1987 explicitly to drive home the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at Uruguay talks and to push international food and Ag regs http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
These are the people who worked for Clinton during that time:
Ann Veneman employed by Monsanto (Calgene), lead the GATT trade delegation and is an IPC Member Emeritus. She also worked for Patten Bogg “We were among the first law firms to recognize that all three branches of government could serve as forums in which to achieve client goals, enabling us to emerge as the nation’s leading public policy law firm, and we have developed our extensive business law capabilities into the firm’s largest practice area.” Patton Boggs
Mickey Kantor US trade representative (USTR) for the Uruguay Round of negotiations, became a Monsanto board member.
Robert Shapiro, chairman of Monsanto, was lead advisor for Clinton’s Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations when WTO was ratified in 1995.
Marcia Hale, a former assistant to President Clinton and director for intergovernmental affairs, was director of international government affairs for Monsanto.
Dan Amstutz VP of Cargill wrote the draft “WTO Agreement on Ag.” as a US trade representative. He also wrote the “Freedom to Farm Act of 1996” that did away with US food reserves and removed over production controls on grains. Cargill then exported these tax susidized grains to third world countries. They were sold below production cost, bankrupting local farmers http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/health/food/news.php?q=1212803067
What was IPC pushing??
“Measures to trace animals…to provide assurances on…safety ..have been incorporated into international standards… The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures…Aims to ensure that governments DO NOT USE QUARANTINE AND FOOD SAFETY REQUIREMENTS as Unjustified trade barriers… It provides Member countries with a right to implement traceability {NAIS} as an SPS measure.” http://www.oie.int/eng/publicat/rt/2002/WILSON.PDF
“Development of risk-based systems [HACCP] has been heavily influenced by the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures ” OIE report Oct 2008 http://www.oie.int/eng/normes/mcode/en_chapitre_1.6.1.htm
In 1993, International HACCP guidelines were developed by the Codex Alimentarius, a joint Programme of FAO & WHO. FAO This system replaced US food regs in 1996. (HACCP & open borders account for the increase in tainted food) http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y1579E/y1579e03.htm
September 2008 FDA on International Harmonization:
“Failure to reach a consistent, harmonized set of laws, regulations and standards within the free trade agreements and the World Trade Organization Agreements can result in considerable economic repercussions.” FDA: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/int-laws.html
Want more connections?
January 2005: Guide to Good Farming Practices: From Report of the Meeting of the OIE (Paris, 17-28 January 2005) OIE: http://www.alternet.org/environment/135002/will_new_food_safety_bills_really_outlaw_backyard_gardening_and_end_farmers%27_markets/www.oie.int/boutique/extrait/25berlingueri823836_0.pdf?PHPSESSID=64969a28688594daf57a7263f42fb1ce
Once The Guide to Good Farming Practices was written, we get the bill: Safe and Secure Food Act of 2005: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-1534
Also in 1995, USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service wrote a 600 pg Doc “Farm-To-Table – control of every step in the food chain from production to home preparation.”
Now that the Democrats are back in power in the USA we get over a half dozen bill introduced into Congress to complete the take over of the food supply by the corporations. Then there is the bio-fuel scam that allowed Cargill and Monsanto to reap record profits in 2008 when the price of grains were doubled and tripled. (Also caused food riots in third world countries who no longer had native farmers to grow their own food)
“Ten corporations now control nearly every aspect of the world’s food chain. Four control 90 per cent of the world’s exports of corn, wheat, tobacco, tea, …” http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1997/jun/20/johnvidal
Kissinger put it bluntly “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” And that is what we are seeing today. It is no coincidence that Congressman Waxman sponsored both Cap and Trade and a food control bill designed to bankrupt farmers.
This bit of information is very good for waking up the progressives and socialists to what the upper echelon of the left is actually up to. AGW causes heated debates but the threat to the world wide food supply opens eyes.
ShrNfr (17:19:35),
Argon is a laboratory, a U.S. National Laboratory, located in West suburban Chicago. It’s an old institution. I cut my physics teeth there when I was in High School, and I’ve been around for over 65 years.
Health experts who say CO2 is a danger to our health need to lose their jobs. I bet they’re paid by tax money. Shame on them.
ShrNfr (17:19:35),
Argon is spelled Argonne. That’s what I get for cut & paste!
Check out http://www.anl.gov/ for more information.
@ur momisugly Bill McClure (07:19:15) :
Curiousgeorge (19:29:17) :
More than 150 ag groups sent a letter Wednesday to Murkowski and other senators backing the resolution. The letter stated, “Such regulatory actions will carry severe consequences for the U.S. economy, including America’s farmers and ranchers, through
Curious: The NAtional Corn Growers has announced they are against Cap and Trade. That is truly a sea change . They must smell blood in the water to do this. The day Farmers Union comes out against Cap and trade I’l send you a Prime Angus steak”
I’m gonna hold you to that. 🙂 Hard to get a good steak hereabouts.
Not precisely on topic, but a good editorial anyway. Especially since so called “Industrial Farming” often comes under fire from know-nothing econut city kids raising hell about methane, animal cruelty, etc. .
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=editorsnotebook&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc26532907012655f17b5c0022&showCommentsOverride=false
————————————————–
Quote:
All too often these days farmers are writing in worried about commercial agriculture’s negative public image. Increasingly, they complain, people who know only what they read in the national media believe modern agriculture ravages the environment, abuses animals and produces food that causes obesity and endangers public health. What, the farmers ask, can DTN do to tell the other side of the story?
The problem, I typically respond, is we can’t influence folks who live in cities and have no connection to agriculture. They don’t read DTN and The Progressive Farmer. Our audience is you — people who know the real story of farming, both the good and the bad.
And yet, pondering this dilemma further, I realize that while the farm media can’t influence the general public’s opinion, farmers can. Farmers have a persuasive, underused tool at their disposal — their own farms. If farmers want to win the battle for hearts and minds, they should invite the public to come tour their operations.
Why do I think visiting farms would give city dwellers a more favorable view of agriculture? Because it’s had that effect on me.
I’m a typical city boy; after all, my name is Urban. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich., (population 200,000), and live in Omaha, Neb., (population 400,000). In between I lived and worked in even bigger cities — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Tokyo, Detroit, Brussels, Hong Kong. I read the New Yorker and the Economist, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
If all you knew about me was that, you might expect me to hold a simplistic and wholly unfavorable view of corn, soybean and livestock agriculture. I don’t, and one big reason I don’t is I visit farms.
I’ve witnessed the efforts of corn and bean growers to prevent runoff. I’ve toured large hog and dairy operations that use anaerobic digesters or otherwise manage manure carefully. I have seen, with my own eyes, commercial farms that respect animals and protect the environment.
Let others — lots of others — see what I’ve seen and they’ll be more sympathetic, too.
Mike Beard and his son Dave are examples. The Beards run 33,000 hogs each year on their wean-to-finish operation in Frankfort, Ind. They’ve worked hard to make it a model of environmental good practices — and in the process reduced odor to the point that only when you enter the hog barn do you know you’re on a hog farm. The Beards are proud to give tours to groups of students, politicians and others. It’s a chance, they say, to “tell agriculture’s story.”
Larkin Martin doesn’t give many tours, but she does tell ag’s story to large numbers of people. Martin farms several thousand acres of cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat in Courtland, Ala. She gives talks on the environmental benefits of precision agriculture and other environmentally friendly modern farming methods that are little understood by city dwellers. Her audiences have included the Birmingham, Ala., Rotary Club and several other civic and garden clubs. Too often, she thinks, farmers talk among themselves but not to outsiders. “It’s up to us,” she says, “to tell our story outside of our own group.”
Can efforts like these, which touch a few dozen or hundred people at a time, turn the tide? Well, one small step followed by another and another and another is the way any large task gets done. And at some point, you get the snowball to the top of the hill and it rolls down the other side, getting bigger and gaining speed as it goes. The mainstream media, which has sympathized with agriculture’s critics, will start covering the farm visits, exposing larger audiences to a more balanced message.
For a variety of reasons, from personal shyness to a love of privacy to fear of unintended consequences, some farmers will feel uncomfortable hosting visitors and playing the role of spokesman for agriculture. Fair enough. It only takes a few in each region to make a difference.
Seeing is believing. To feed the world’s rapidly growing population, big commercial agriculture is essential, but it does take a toll on the environment. When people see all the things producers are doing to minimize that toll, when they hear from sincere, informed farmers how dedicated they are to producing nutritious food with minimal harm to the environment, their view will change.
It may take years, but so does any effort to move public opinion. The sooner farmers get started telling their own story, directly to the public, the better.
I wonder if the EPA had issued an edict that banned wind generators from construction in areas of this country because of visual pollution, would those members of congress who now support CO2 as a pollutant remain silent or demand a congressional investigation into the usurping their role ? It seems that congress has been willing to allow activities that should be part of the legislative process to be usurped by the administration by fiat or by activist courts as long as it benefited their own agendas. For example, the Massachusetts legislature rapidly changed the election law so there could be an immediate replacement election for the seat held by Senator Kennedy. They were sure that they would win the election. But, they didn’t think about what would happen if they lost. Now, they have essentially lost their opportunity to ram a health care program though congress and probably have lost the will to pass cap and trade. This decision by the EPA could ultimately back fire on the current administration if the true cost of enforcing the edict begins to impact an already weak economy. Arrogant representatives are not able to anticipate the unintended consequences of their decisions because they only listen to what tickles their ears. What is really needed is a congressional hearing on TV instead of a disapproval resolution. That will provide an opportunity to openly reveal to the people of this country the utter foolishness of naming CO2 as a dangerous pollutant as well as the devastating impact on the US econony !
Anthony: If you think she is taking the right approach, how would you recommend that people indicate their support of her effort? Your website has a substantial following – perhaps you should set out a clear path for people to follow in this matter. It could be as simple as providing some appropriate email contacts/addresses.
This is no movement with leaders.
Take action on your own. Anthony does plenty by providing news and information.
starzmom (06:41:19) :
‘…… the Supreme Court ruling that EPA had the authority and obligation to regulate greenhouse gasses, that prompted the endangerment finding.’
That’s not how I read the decision. From my understanding, the EPA Could regulate any substance coming out of an exhaust pipe as long as they (EPA) show that substance harmful.
Example: Water dripping out of hydrogen car’s tailpipe, causing black ice, causing too many accident, causing too many deaths and dismemberment, causing the cost of health insurance rates to increase.
Saying you are a Christian in your political bio is like kissing babies. You gots to do both if you want votes. I wonder what the real beliefs are and who would dare post them on their political web site. And whether or not ANY politician would stick to them in a voting war.
Just to add to the gloom and doom. I excerpted from a progressive site, not liberal, progressive, that predicted a double dip recession. The excerpt was from the 18th of this month.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/01/cratering.html
The Democrats are panicked and on the verge of breaking. By this summer I expect them to be in full rout mode.
This proposal by Murkowski may have a good chance of passage in the House and might even squeak through the Senate by summer. If not sooner.
Gregg E. (21:24:12) :
Re: Your PPS. If it was the Russians who
stolerecovered the CRU documents, that would be deliciously ironic.