Posted on 10/11/2010 5:22:26 AM PDT by reaganaut1
If Democrats take a drubbing in November, the Obama Administration is likely to turn to regulation to achieve its "transformational" agenda. Which is all the more reason to cheer on Texas as it pushes back against the EPA's illegal attempt to rewrite the nation's clean air laws.
To wit, the Lone Star State is resisting the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate carbon under the clean air laws of the 1970s. These regulations will be damaging enough on their own. But the EPA and chief Lisa Jackson are also threatening to punish Texas and other green dissenters with a de facto moratorium on any major energy or construction projects. Just what the economy needs.
Under the Clear Air Act, the EPA's national office chooses priorities, but state regulators run the relevant programs and issue the necessary permits. When orders from HQ change, as with carbon over the last year, states get three years to revise their "implementation plans." But in August, Ms. Jackson decided that the law posed too long a climate wait and decreed that if these plans aren't updated by an arbitrary January 2011 deadline, her office will override the states and run the carbon permitting process itself.
Put bluntly, this coercion is illegal. As badly as Ms. Jackson has abused clean air laws to go after CO2, she can't by regulatory fiat usurp the law's statutory language about the federalist balance of power between Washington and the states. Texas filed an unusual lawsuit last week with the D.C. appeals circuit calling it an "ultra vires" act—literally, "beyond the powers"—and requesting an emergency stay of the EPA's regulations because of the imminence of irreparable harm.
No major construction project in America can go forward without EPA air quality and pollution permits
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“But does Texas really have the backbone to stand up?”
If Perry is governor, f*** yeah! If White is elected, not so much.
Something Texans need to think about on Election Day, as imperfect as Perry may be.
well said
That EPA lardass Lisa Jackson...Texas is going to tie her up for years with lawsuits. Jackson will be booted out with Obungo in November 2012.
Texas will prevail over Obongo commissars in DC.
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