Arizona sues EPA over “absurd” coal emission rules

To paraphrase Herman’s Hermits: Second term, same as the first? The latest front in the war on coal has shifted far from the mines which produce the raw materials for energy production, and to a state known for its contentious relationship with the Obama administration. Arizona has filed suit against the EPA over new rules that it calls “absurd,” and which will drive up energy costs for little practical purpose (via The Right Scoop):

Arizona challenged in federal court U.S. environmental regulators efforts to force Arizona power companies to spend up to $1 billion to install pollution control equipment at three coal plants to reduce haze in the region’s national parks.

Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne said in a statement last week the emission control measures proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would not affect health or be reduce emissions visible to the human eye.

Nachum, please don’t take the following rant personally.

If Constitution-ignorant patriots would take the time to read the Constitution then they would know how to stop the EPA, and other federal regulatory agencies, dead in their tracks.

To begin with, the states have never delegated to Congress via the Constitution the specific power to regulate environmental issues. So the feds have no constitutional authority to regulate the environment anyway.

Next, even if the states had delegated to Congress the specific power to regulate the environment, the Founding States wrote the first numbered clauses of the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, to clarify that all legislative powers of the federal government are vested in the elected members of Congress.

So not only has Congress violated Sections 1-3 of Article I, wrongly protecting federal legislative powers from the wrath of the voters, by establishing constitutionally undefined regulatory agencies like the EPA, but again, corrupt Congress never had the power to regulate the environment even if it could delegate regulatory powers.

The bottom line is that federal regulatory agencies like the EPA are a smoke-and-mirrors way for corrupt Congress to bypass its Article V requirement to petition the states to ratify amendments to the Constitution which would grant Congress specific new powers.

Again, it doesn’t help the situation when patriots don’t know the Constitution.

“The States” haven’t had a voice in Gummint since the 17th amendment.

The states stupidly gave up their voice in Congress by ratifying the ill-conceived 17A. 17A is evidence, imo, that citizens basically forgot about the Constitution after the Civil War, particularly the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers.

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