H.R. 3409 - Virginia (and America) Needs This Legislation

House to Vote on Measure to Halt Overregulation of Coal

 

By: Ross Eisenberg under Energy on September 18, 2012 @ 4:36 pm

[One week ago]Alpha Natural Resources, one of the world’s leading producers of coal, announced plans to idle eight mines and lay off 1,200 workers in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania....  It’s another unfortunate chapter in what has been a very difficult few years for the American coal industry.

It is against this grim backdrop that the House of Representatives will take up H.R. 3409, the “Stop the War on Coal Act.” The bill was scheduled for Rules Committee debate [last] Wednesday and the House floor shortly thereafter. H.R. 3409 takes aim at several federal regulations that, if allowed to go forward, would effectively kick the coal industry while it’s down. Regulations like EPA’s recently-proposed greenhouse gas New Source Performance Standards, which effectively ban the construction of new conventional coal-fired power plants. Or the “Utility MACT” regulation, a $10 billion annual hit to the economy that costs 40 percent more than all of EPA’s power plant-sector air regulations combined.

Coal is one of the nation’s most abundant energy resources and a vital part of our efforts to meet our energy and transportation needs. Coal generates a significant percentage of our nation’s electricity, and maintaining coal in a diverse national energy portfolio is in the national economic interest. The NAM strongly supports H.R. 3409, which would protect a reliable, affordable and available part of our nation’s energy mix from overregulation.

Virginia AG Puts His Foot Down

EDITORIAL: Cuccinelli fights the EPA
Virginia attorney general questions global warming red tape

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health.

The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.

"Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions," the AG's office explains. "The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards."

Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC's reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that "The academic at the centre of the 'Climategate' affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. ... And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming."

Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.

Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens - including Virginians - would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations.

As the AG put it, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground." Of course, he's spot on.

ACCE Response to SOTU

ACCCE President and CEO Steve Miller Statement on 2010 State of the Union Remarks
Click here to read the statement on behalf of Stephen L. Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), in response to the 2010 State of the Union remarks.

FACES of Coal

The Virginia Senate is considering SB 564, a law called the “Stream Saver Bill” to fool voters about the bill’s real intent. This proposed legislation would ban mountaintop mining and effectively shut down coal mining operations in our state.

Virginia coal supports more than 30,000 jobs in mining and many other sectors. By ending coal mining in Virginia, we are jeopardizing the well-being of communities that are already battered by a recession. Moreover, coal generates almost half the electricity Virginians need to go about their daily lives.

Click the link below and to write your state legislators today. Urge them to stand up for affordable, domestic energy and good jobs. Tell them to say “No” to SB 564.

Thank you for your support.

Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security
(FACES of Coal)

Click the link below to log in and send your message: http://www.votervoice.net/link/target/faces39996085.aspx

How Cap and Trade Works

From www.congress.org:

As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss global warming, the U.S. Senate is considering a bill to create a cap and trade system.

The measure under debate would put a cap -- or limit -- on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in a given year.

It would also allow polluters to trade their permits for emissions.

But how would it work exactly?

Watch a brief video explaining cap and trade on Congress.org.

Cap and Tax-NewsMax

Nobel Prize-Winner: Cap-and-Trade Could Ruin U.S. Economy

With climate change legislation under consideration by Congress, an environmental expert with a Nobel Prize-winning organization warns that the cap-and-trade bill supported by Democrats could destroy the American economy.

Dr. Steve Running, Director of the University of Montana’s Climate Change Studies program, is on the board of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with global warming crusader Algore.

During a Wednesday interview with a radio talk show host in Montana, Dr. Running said efforts to deal with climate change will fail unless they involve all nations.

"If the U.S. passed cap-and-trade and other countries did not, it wouldn’t work," he declared.

"It would ruin the U.S. economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either. So this is a global issue, the global climate statistics are global in nature, global carbon emissions are global in nature, and we really have to have an international consensus of what to do. That is going to stretch our international diplomacy to its limit, there’s no doubt about that."

Running called on the U.S. to show leadership on the climate change issue, saying other countries will follow suit. But China and India, two nations that produce large amounts of greenhouse gases, are not expected to adopt cap-and-trade measures like those being debated in the U.S. Congress.

Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has voiced sentiments similar to Dr. Running's. He told Newsmax in a recent interview that cap-and-trade won't work because "it doesn't matter what we do in America — if we drive our manufacturing base off to places like China, India, and Mexico, places where they don't have any emissions standards or restrictions, then it's going to have the effect of increasing and not deceasing CO2."

He also said cap-and-trade would amount to the "largest tax increase in the history of America."

Family Foundation of Virginia Gala Last Night

This blog supports every item reiterated by Mrs Victoria Cobb last night in her opening remarks:

• We expect that the first budget introduced by the next Governor of Virginia will ban taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.
• We expect that the first budget introduced by the next Governor of Virginia will fund roads, not the destruction of innocent human life.
• We expect that the next Governor of Virginia will restore right of state police chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus.
• We expect that the next Governor of Virginia will not stop at Charter Schools, but will open the locked doors of a quality education for all children in Virginia by providing real school choice.
• We expect the next Governor of Virginia to reduce, not increase, the tax burden on Virginia’s businesses and families.
• We expect the next Governor of Virginia to care more about the culture of Virginia than the road to the White House.

This blog also expects the administration to demand a full accounting of the Literary Fund, a re-affirmation of the sovereignty of the Commomwealth by encouraging the passage of HR-61, and a immediate action to expand the use of all the energy resources within the borders of the Commonwealth, with special emphasis placed on offshore drilling, new refining capability, and up-fit of existing refining facilities.

All crude extracted and refined within the Commomwealth will remain inside the Commonwealth and all surplus petroleum will be sold on the spot market at market rates.

If we pump it here, we burn it here.

Another RINO That Needs To GO ASAP

The Seduction Of Lindsey Graham
Nancy Morgan
RightBias.com
October 17, 2009

This article was first published by American Thinker on October 16, 2009

According to most conservatives in South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has officially gone over to the dark side. Under the guise of 'bipartisanship,' Graham has signed on to one of the left's most ambitious plans to impose a socialist agenda in America - government control of the formerly free market through implementation of cap-and trade, the 1,400 plus page Waxman-Markey bill approved earlier this year by the House.

The main (scientifically unproven) premise of cap and trade is that the earth is melting and government must step in to save the world. Of course, it will be expensive, but hey, this is Mother Earth we're talking about. And its urgent and essential that the government immediately establish a $700 billion "market" for business to buy and sell "steadily declining number of permits for creating carbon emissions."

In a New York Times Op-Ed Graham co-authored with Sen. John Kerry (did you know he served in Viet Nam?) cutely entitled 'Yes We Can' (get it?) Sen Graham states "..we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security."
Huh?

Reasons 5 and 6 of "10 Reasons To Oppose Cap and Tax"

5. It is in effect a hidden regressive tax:

We’ve talked about how cap and trade causes energy prices to goup. That doesn’t just hit American industry, but American consumers as well. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) correctly notes that as these prices go up in the form of higher gasoline, heating oil, and electricity, the poor are hit hardest with what is in effect a hidden regressive tax.

President Obama promises to return revenues to vulnerable communities, families and businesses, but that leaves taxpayers at the whim of government to redistribute income rather than letting taxpayer keep their hard earned dollars.

6. It sets a dangerous precedent:

While extremist environmentalists and their liberal allies have been whining about climate change for years, most stop short of declaring cap and trade the silver-bullet solution.

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council are generally supportive of the concept of cap and trade.

However, as The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, these groups have found fault with actual proposals such as America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, criticizing them for not going far enough and willing only to endorse them as “a good first step.”

As much damage as a cap and trade scheme would cause in its own right, this posture by extreme environmental groups foreshadows even more draconian regulations in our future.

Cap and Trade-A Federal Leviathan

and we have an update, courtesey of the DC Examiner:

Wall Street Journal -- Senators to Unveil Draft Climate Bill

The global warming bill from senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry is either a real effort to rekindle climate legislation in the Senate or just a vanity project. Based on the sponsors, you certainly can’t rule out the latter.

Writers Ian Talley and Stephen Power outline the ideas behind the Boxer-Kerry plan to be introduced in happy generalities today. But the lack of specifics and hugely optimistic estimates make it unlikely that any action will be taken soon.

“Unlike the House bill, the Senate's draft bill would preserve the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Because that law generally gives the EPA limited flexibility to consider costs when setting regulations, some business groups and many lawmakers fear the agency's regulation of greenhouse gases could lead to onerous, new rules on business.

In a bid to gain support from moderates within the Democratic Party and potential Republican votes, the Boxer-Kerry draft also includes provisions to fund training of workers in the nuclear industry and development of technology that could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.”

Not Everyone Won the Cap and Trade Lobbying Battle

This bill is so bad, I've decided to rename it the Wacky-Marxist Energy Bill.

The cap and trade bill introduced by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) and passed in the House is 1,427 pages and includes much more than a cap and trade system to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve been detailing these economically harmful provisions in our cap and trade calamities, but Kathleen Hartnett White at the Texas Public Policy Foundation provides a tremendous synopsis of the entire bill and asks many tough questions in her policy paper, A Federal Leviathan: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

One particularly revealing part of the paper is the graph on the bottom of page three. Approximately 2,340 energy lobbyists worked on the cap-and-trade bill to do what President Obama said we shouldn’t – hand out allowances costs to utilities and other industries direct revenue to them. Opposition to this huge energy tax bill wheeling, dealing and arm-twisting to eke out the narrowest of majorities. They promised generous handouts for various industries and special interests but not everyone came out winners. The blue indicates the emissions by industry and the red indicates the allowances allocated by the government.

As shown by the graph, the refining and petroleum products industry, responsible for much of the carbon emissions from energy, receive the very little allowance allocations. White writes,

“Under the aggressive carbon caps, many U.S. industries could not compete with foreign products manufactured in countries without binding carbon limits. And increased import of goods manufactured elsewhere without carbon limits would
increase global carbon emissions. To address this “carbon leakage,” the bill provides for “carbon emission allowance rebates” to industries which meet specified levels of “trade intensity” or “energy intensity.” Petroleum refining, oddly, is excluded from those eligible.”

The other loser is, of course, me and you. The disguised energy tax will cost a family of four an additional $3,000 per year. When all the tax impacts have been added up, we find that the average per-family-of-four costs rise by almost $3,000 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the tax impact is $4,600. And if you add up the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035, the years in which we modeled the bill, it’s about $71,500.

Giving away allowances are not an exception to the “no free lunches” adage. Giving away allowances does not lower the costs of cap and trade; it merely shifts the costs around.

Waxman-Markey is Robin Hood in reverse: it takes a lot of money from regular Americans and funnels it to Washington bureaucrats and the corporations with the best lobbyists.

HR 2454 UPDATE

UPDATE: HR2454 is a scam. The bill that was voted out of committee has been changed in backroom deals and 300 PAGES have been added. And that's not the end of it. More changes are expected WITHOUT public discussion. The Sunlight Foundation has the information.

Tell Congress to vote NO!
Tell Congress to read their damn bills!

Congress is scheduled to vote Friday on HR 2454, the 2 trillion dollar cap and trade legislation that will effectively reduce the standard of living for every citizen of the United States.

Call your Congressperson and tell them to VOTE NO!!!!!!

Cap and Trade CO2 Emissions

The thermometer watching tree hugging enviro-nazis are salivating at the prospect of this bill being passed. It will decimate the American economy, destroy jobs and do what the marxist idiots want:

Put America on the same level as Cuba or worse.

CO2 bill will cost jobs, raise energy costs

The spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation says the Waxman-Markey bill will have enormous negative impacts if passed.

The Waxman-Markey bill -- described by some as an energy tax in disguise -- recently made it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill seeks to tackle the issue of alleged "manmade climate change" by limiting the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by businesses and power plants. Sometimes referred to as "cap-and-trade" legislation, the bill seeks to reduce CO2 emission by 17 percent by the year 2020.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu praises the legislation. "[It] is our best shot of anything I've seen in recent legislative pasts where Congress might get something [passed], and it's got a lot of support in the industry now," he told Reuters. But Dr. E Calvin Beisner with the Cornwall Alliance disagrees. "It will increase energy costs across the board," he notes. "It will probably lead to the loss of, in an average year between now and 2035, of about 1.1 million jobs."

Beisner also contends that energy costs will increase by about $125 per month per household. And he says the overall cost will be about $9.6 trillion between now and 2035. According to Beisner, for the past several years there has been no global warming -- and temperatures have been falling faster than they have been predicted to rise in the next 100 years. He also concludes that if the Waxman-Markey bill passes, it will have no significant effect on global temperatures in the next 50 to 100 years.

Beisner is not alone in his concerns about the Waxman-Markey bill. Ben Lieberman, senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, offered his comments at the International Conference on Climate Change this spring. "This is an energy tax in disguise," he stated. "Energy prices go up -- but it's done in such a roundabout and convoluted way that the hope is the public doesn't recognize it as a tax, at least not until it's too late."

The bill must pass through several more committees before it goes before the full House for a final vote.

So all you tree-hugging thermometer watchers just hold your breath for 5 minutes beginning now. That will reduce CO2 levels dramatically.

...promote the general welfare...

Maybe I'm missing something; or perhaps I misread the Preamble. It does mention "promoting the general welfare" right? So how is it that Congress, all of the members of which must take an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution", decide that confiscatory taxation on "evil" corporations is "promoting the general welfare"?

In this addled old brain, it would seem to me that the best method of "promoting the general welfare" would be to make the things we use daily, the things we MUST have to function as a free society, as cheap as possible for the citizens and charge everyone else double.

Lets see; we need electricity. Hell, even Congress needs electricity. Yet they impose regulations on the power companies that drive up the cost of producing and distributing electricity, which drives up the cost to the citizen. Not to good for the general welfare.

Gasoline; yeah yeah, I know, we need to pay for roads. OK. BUT!!!! why not make it easy for the oil companies to extract the crude and refine gasoline and diesel fuel, thereby making it cheaper for the citizen. Keep the road tax in place. I don't mind paying for my half of the road, (and that really is the simplest method of collecting funds for road construction and maintainence,) but jeeez louise, if we stop buying oil from other countries and start using our own, it seems to me the price could be reduced considerably. Wouldn't that be good for the general welfare? Cheaper delivery costs, keeps the independent truckers rolling, and everyone is happy.

(Am I over-analyzing this thing?)

If you're gonna tax something, don't tax the stuff we need, tax the crap we want. You want a big screen TV, fine. Its gonna cost ya another $300.00 in taxes. Now that little 25 inch TV, you can have that for the normal price, plus the usual sales tax. You want a big fast boat? Sure Bro, but we're gonna have to get another $2500.00 in taxes from ya. Now that little 16 foot john boat over there, that one doesn't have any extra taxes on it, because we know you and your kids are going to be spending the day on a lake fishing somewhere and that is definitely "promoting the general welfare".

Someone grab my clue bat and meet me in the lobby of the Canon Building, I have a plan.

Reality UPDATE

Here's an idea for all you tree-hugging wackjobs who think we have too much CO2 in the air.
If you're really serious about reducing CO2 emissions, I have a plan that will reduce CO2 levels by 50% in no time at all. It won't cost anyone any money, it is fool-proof, and it will go a long way towards showing all of us that you're serious about the state of the environment....

STOP BREATHING FOR 5 MINUTES!!!
The resulting brain damage would be negligible, since you're already brain-dead.


Last night on TV, I saw a commercial that really pissed me off. The premise of the commercial is that clean coal technology is not real. A guy is wandering around a desolate landscape, yelling into the microphone, telling us all about clean coal.

I help build clean coal facilities. I've helped build one, and we're working on another one. The technology is real and it works.

This commercial is blatantly false and very offensive to me, and I am seriously considering a lawsuit against the perpetrators.

I shoulda figured. Alliance for Climate Change. AlBore and his minions. They would prefer we live in caves and cook over campfires; then they'd bitch about the wood smoke.

Marines Doing Good Work

The hoopla and huge sighs of relief brought on by Senator John SIDNEY McCain's pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate shouldn't keep us from remembering that we still have Marines in Iraq doing good things.

The 1st Marine RCT-1 is in Fallujah and turning on the power. See pics and read more here.

FALLUJAH, Iraq – Nearly 10,000 Fallujah homes were restored with electricity access thanks to Marines working closely with the Fallujah City Council to deliver 35 new generators throughout the city.

Civil Affairs Team 2, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, in direct support of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, along with Sheik Hamid Ahmad Hashim al-Alwani, chairman of the FCC, announced the delivery of the 32nd generator during an Iraqi press briefing Aug. 27 at a site in the city where one of the generators has been producing power for the last three months.

“From the time we arrived in January, there was a local demand for generators throughout the city,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Byron Yoshida, team leader, Civil Affairs Team 2. “Initially, the project was sub-divided by precincts and eventually it became a city-wide project of providing the 35 generators.”

In early March, an informal Iraqi committee was formed and locations for the generators were proposed to Marines with Team 2. Since then, Team 2 has worked closely with contractors to deliver the units.

Each generator will provide anywhere from 100 to 300 homes with electricity within a 300 meter radius. Yoshida said he anticipates having all of the generators delivered in time for the end of Ramadan celebrations, which occur Oct. 1.
While some neighborhoods receive power from privately-owned generators, the new units are available to all residents for minimal fees and are managed by trained Iraqi operators.

“We trained and certified operators who are responsible for keeping residents connected and keeping the generator operating using preventive maintenance,” Yoshida said. “The operators are obligated to ensuring the generators provide a minimum of seven hours of power on a daily basis to offset the shortage of national power.”

Sheik Hamid said he is grateful the generators arrived in time for the hotter portion of the summer and for Ramadan, but noted they are a short-term fix for a larger problem. The city had previously used hydroelectric power produced by the Haditha Dam, which has not been in full operation for several years due to neglect by the Saddam regime