REFLECTIONS

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue:
1. EPA 2. Permits 3. Tax Trap
4. Yucca Mountain 5. Walker 6. ACOG Memo

1. EPA. The EPA pulled clean air permits from 122 facilities in Texas last Thursday. Effectively, this will shut down around 30% of the refinery capacity of the nation. The rest of the permits cover oil and natural gas loading and unloading facilities, which will shut down imports and exports of oil and natural gas. The permits are flexible clean air permits that cover emissions facility-wide rather than individual units within the site. This is the culmination of a food fight between the State of Texas and the EPA that has stretched back years. It is also a vehicle intended to harm the reelection chances of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Texas has successfully implemented a flexible clean air permitting program. The program allows a refinery as a whole to meet the clean air standards. The EPA clean air permits are based on a discrete engine by engine, smokestack by smokestack, emissions standard. The Texas holistic approach has allowed operators and owners to achieve better clean air numbers than the EPA approach, and the EPA doesn’t like it, so they have shut down the entire business. Should the EPA prevail, we will see a spike in the cost of refined products nationwide as the refineries and shipping facilities are retrofitted with the new required equipment to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Should Texas prevail, we end up with the same (or better) improvement in clean air without any additional money being spent or any disruption in service. This action by the EPA also gives Perry the opportunity to toss the EPA out of Texas entirely, and take the responsibility for enforcing Clean Air Act standards at the state level, where they have been doing very well. Houston Chronicle, Thurs.

2. Permits. The Obama administration has stopped approving all new production and workover permits for oil and natural gas nationwide. This is a less obvious but more effective avenue for them to travel in strangling the oil and natural gas industry nationwide. It has the added benefit of not being immediately contemptuous of the federal court ruling in New Orleans last week overturning the deep water drilling ban in the Gulf. The problem is that time is money and drilling rigs cost money every day they exist, so like aircraft, they must be in use as often as possible. Investor’s Business Daily on June 23 ran an article pointing out that Salazar’s drilling ban was a bonanza for George Soros. Soros has almost a billion dollars invested in the Petrobras deep water oil drilling operation off Brazil. He needs deep water drilling rigs. If they aren’t drilling in the Gulf, they will be deployed to Brazil to bring his investment into production and it will take years to bring them back to the Gulf. Soros has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in democrat, green and related political activities over the last decade or so. Nice to see the Obama administration giving him good returns on that investment – all to the detriment of those us here in the US that use and produce oil and natural gas.

3. Tax Trap. The One made the first of what promises to be many threats to the expected new congress last week. He warned that he would be presenting tough choices regarding the budget should Republicans take over one or both houses of congress. Limbaugh midweek talked about the tax trap that Obama and the democrats are laying for the Republicans. This trap is set up by the outrageous appending by the last four years of democrat control of congress and the Republican promise to return to balanced budgets and fiscal sanity. Obama and the WH brain trust hope to leverage this combination to force the new congress to approve a raft of crushing tax increases on an already floundering economy. As long as the Republicans adopt a mechanistic green eyeshade view of the world and do not adopt a low tax, low spending growth oriented view of the world, Obama and the state-controlled media will win the argument. The only way our is for Republicans and conservatives to adopt a pro-growth, pro jobs agenda. They must show a positive agenda, one that will lift everyone by getting Fedzilla out of our way, our of our wallets, and out of our lives. Taxes must be cut across the board. Regulations must be rolled back, and should the administration refuse to roll them back (which they will) those agencies – starting with the EPA – must be summarily defunded. Obama can refuse to sign anything out of the new congress which will eventually lead to a government shutdown like Clinton and the federal employee unions orchestrated in 1995. This time around, conservatives must not lose their nerve. Entire agencies must be defunded. All authorization and implementing language for ObamaCare must be defunded and the entire mess repealed in 2011 or 2013. The new congress must also defund parts of the government that have been completely politicized in the Chicago style. Holder’s (In)Justice Department Civil Rights Division is one such example. NASA’s taxpayer funded climatologists busily cooking up data in support of manmade global warming via must all be defunded. Congress ought to also defund parts of the government that have failed in the oil spill cleanup and transfer those responsibilities to the many states. Minerals Management Service (or whatever it is called today), the EPA, Fish & Wildlife Service, Coast Guard, all need to be defunded for their oil spill cleanup efforts, as we obviously aren’t getting our money’s worth out of these clowns. It will be up to us to install and operate the backbones should conservatives retake control of congress.

4. Yucca Mountain. Three NRC Administrative Judges ruled Friday that the Department of Energy’s attempt to shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility is illegal, and that the project must proceed as detailed in federal law. Yucca Mountain is the single repository for nuclear waste here in the US. It has been authorized by federal law, signed by the President, and funded by payments from all nuclear facilities nationwide since 1982. It is also a target for greens nationwide and particularly in Nevada, where Harry Reid and other democrats have profited immensely by opposing it. The Obama administration’s DOE budget this year proposed zero-funding the project from this year forward, essentially killing it. Secretary Chu went to the NRC to get the construction and operation permit for the project pulled. The NRC refused to pull the permit. Even this administration occasionally has to follow the law. We will see if the NRC can make their decision stick.

5. Walker. Republican (and RINO) candidate for Alaska Governor Bill Walker picked up the endorsement of the AFL-CIO and other local unions in his run for governor last week. Walker has been running a loud and vigorous campaign. This endorsement will guarantee him with the most money for his campaign of any of the candidates for governor. Normally, the unions don’t make their move until after the primary when it will be too late for Republicans to select another candidate. This must mean they are worried that the democrat has no chance at all of winning in November.

6. ACOG Memo. SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan evaded, prevaricated and stonewalled her way through confirmation hearings last week. She sounded, like Sotomayor before her, as yet another John Roberts clone. She isn’t. She is being put on the SCOTUS to vote yes on everything Obama and the democrats want to do. She may very well end up being the first SCOTUS Justice impeached and removed for bad behavior – doing things on the court that she promised not to do. It turns out that she also committed a fraud on the court. In the mid 1990s during a fight over partial birth abortion with the new Republican majority in congress, Kagan participated in writing an opinion as a WH staffer that was used by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) as their official position in testimony in court on the subject. Kagan’s memo was produced during the hearings last week. She couldn’t remember writing it. She did not acknowledge writing it. Yet the memo, produced after ACOG decided they did not support partial birth abortion as a medically necessary procedure, became their official position in testimony to the court. In short, her political opinion was represented as a medical opinion and now serves to support federal funding and opposition to all limits on partial birth abortions. Kagan is a liar who will represent Obama and the democrats well on the SCOTUS. For the rest of us and the constitution that she will take an oath to support and defend, she will be a disaster.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the previous Town Hall Conservative group.