U.S. appeals court blocks changes to Clean Air Act

A federal appeals court yesterday blocked a Bush administration change to the Clean Air Act from going into effect, in a challenge from state attorneys general and cities that argued the new rule would harm the environment and public health.

The real issue is to allow industries to upgrade equipment. Currently, that is not allowed unless you bring the entire plant up to current EPA standards, so you cannot upgrade to a lower standard. It is all the way or no upgrades.

Take your car. Your catalytic converter fails. You cannot install a new catalytic converter that is a newer model and more efficient unless you bring the car up to this years new car standards across the board. So if anything else, such as mpg/exhaust mix/whatever is not at current standards, you need a new engine, computer, everything to meet standards. So you have a choice- more efficient catalytic converter and fix everything or forget the new cc and continue to pollute at your current level, which is perfectly legal! (And it is with your car too. You do not need to go to the better cc.)

This was a Clinton ruling and made no sense but the greens were overjoyed since it would force plants to build new. Had just the opposite effect since it did not allow incremental increases but set the status quo or worse so led to more pollution.

This is strictly political, but what is new.

They argued that the EPA's maintenance rule violates the Clean Air Act by letting power plants and other industries increase pollution significantly without adopting control measures, and public harm would result.

What a crock! These plants and industries were grandfathered in to keep them from being forced to shut down due to new air quality laws. They are not increasing their pollution, they are simply maintaining the same pollution levels as before.

"this court decision is as big a success as we've had in stopping the Bush administration"

At first I suspected Eliot Spitzer was just ambitious and not terribly partisan. As I stated on the breaking news thread I started yesterday when this broke, I am now seriously suspicious of Spitzer's entire aggressive witch hunt on the Mutual Fund Industry.

Yes, everybody knows there were greedy bastards on Wall Street cutting corners with other people's money and they should be "perp walked" in handcuffs for their crimes.

However, when he settled with Alliance for a 20% reduction in their fees and admitted that's what he REALLY found offensive was how much they charged customers... that is NOT a crime!!!

Now he as much as admits he's out to cripple the Bush Administration and he's convinced me that he's part of the Democrat Party's "full court press" to scandalize, demonize, marginalize and torment the markets, especially in funds to keep a Republican President from achieving success, wherever possible.

I would venture to say that Mr. Spitzer has caused far more loss to the investing public than all the aledged crimes he's been getting notariety for aledging, all because he believes he should be the arbiter of how much an enterprise can charge for services, instead of the buying/investing public!!!

He's just another desperate Democrat trying to build himself up by trying to bring down a truly big presidential figure for the benefit of a desperate and disgusting Democrat party. It wouldn't surprise me to find some Soros contributions in Mr. Spitzer's inbox!!! (spit)

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