Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/27/2011 4:07:07 AM PDT by bronxville
A plan to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions is gaining momentum, but Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is playing the spoiler to the growing bi-partisan effort to stop the federal agency’s power grab.
With the exception of Rockefeller, all of the members of the West Virginia congressional delegation — Republican and Democrat — support the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011. It would limit the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Obama ordered the EPA to regulate them, based on a Supreme Court ruling, after his cap-and-trade proposal failed on Capitol Hill.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently voted 34 to 19 in favor of the act, but Rockefeller criticized a similar amendment to small business legislation offered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying, “I won’t support a total dismantling of the EPA, and I am disappointed with Republican efforts to bring up this legislation, which has no chance of ever becoming law.”
Rockefeller is offering an opposing amendment with a similar EPA prohibition, but only for two years — kicking the can past the 2012 elections.
The obvious goal of Rockefeller’s political gamesmanship is to provide political cover for lawmakers feeling the pressure from constituents concerned about the economic consequences of the EPA’s actions.
Liberals caught in the political crossfire can use Rockefeller’s amendment to say they voted to curtail the EPA’s power without completely overriding President Obama’s use of executive authority as a weapon in his war on fossil fuels.
This is important since the fate of the Energy Tax Prevention Act lies in the Senate. Rockefeller is trying to peel away just enough votes to keep the legislation from reaching the president’s desk.
While Rockefeller fiddles with legislative tactics to preserve the EPA’s power, however, the coal industry burns.
Rockefeller is siding with Obama and environmental extremists, who want to end the use of coal, over his constituents, who rely on the coal industry for jobs.
While Obama wages his war on coal, Rockefeller is turning his back on the coal country communities that sent him to Washington. Rather than considering the coal industry that is so vital to West Virginia’s economy, Rockefeller — like a double agent in a spy story — is aiding the progressives in a waiting game that ends with the death of the industry.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/24/senator-rockefeller-fiddles-while-the-coal-industry-burns/#ixzz1HnRIiFjf
He’s not fiddling. He’s playing around with the AR-15 that he illegally keeps in his DC townhouse.
Sen Rockefeller, what is going to happen in two years that requies this legislation to be temporary?
If it is not for political cover, then make it permanent. If the legislation goes too far, another congress can alter it.
Automatic sunsets are coward’s work.
And Manchin.........another O stooge.
Yet the WV voters will keep this useless liberal silver spoon New Yorker in the Senate till he drops. Go figure.
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has supported Obama’s campaign since it began.
“The claims you are hearing from the McCain-Palin campaign are misleading and untrue,” Rockefeller said in a news release. “Barack Obama has been very clear with me and with you on his plan for clean coal and it’s the most aggressive plan in support of clean coal we’ve seen from any presidential candidate.
“The idea that the McCain-Palin campaign is alleging the day before the election that Barack Obama’s commitment to coal is anything but solid is absolutely ridiculous,” he added.
“This is exactly the kind of deceptive politicking voters are fed up with.”
http://www.hsconnect.com/page/content.detail/id/511265.html?nav=5010
I wonder what Rockefeller has to say now.
I’m from WV and you’re right. Proves you can fool most of the people all of the time. Eff Rockefeller.
Yet the WV voters will keep this useless liberal silver spoon New Yorker in the Senate till he drops
"Jay" Rockefeller is John D. Rockefeller, IV, also a Harvard University product, and CFR associate. From West Virginia???
Jay Rockefeller is one of the most graphic manifestations that the citizens of the United States ARE manipulated by a cabal of hypocritical, really hypocritical, well connected elitists, who KNOW what is good for us. Aided of course by the stupid electorate of West Virginia.
Look at it this way, even if you give this arrogant patrician every benefit of doubt on his "good" intentions, he is still a total product of elitist culture for which it is impossible, impossible, to empathize with middle class taxpayer conditions. (And something similar for all government careerists.)
The same could be said of George W. Bush. But at least GWB, being somewhat conservative, or self-honest, and with some business background, was not so hypocritical as to completely deny citizen responsibility and freedom in lieu of government interdiction (which leftism is).
Oh for government leadership not educated in the arrogant, a**hole, halls of the Ivy League. (Reagan was not, Nixon was not).
Johnny Suntrade
PS. Somewhere along the line Edward Gibbon abandoned Oxford University as a bunch of arrogant dons and deans and went on to better things; ditto for Bill Gates.
How long did they keep that old senile fiddle playing puke, Byrd in office?
CLEAN!
He’s got his money. Why should he care about you?
(The other just happens to be in Indonesia, and Clinton just happened to have a few hundred witnesses leave the country rather than speak under oath about his James Riady and Indonesian government dealings... purely coincidental, my FRiends!)
If the movement was truly about clean energy, the Left would have been screaming for this extemely-low-sulphur coal to be used. Instead, it has been literally covered-up, in every way that an issue can be covered up.
More than the coal industry is at stake. Our US Senator, Tim Johnson (D-SD) responded to my letter about the EPA power grab with a form BS letter saying how important it was to save the planet from global warming. Johnson may be hearing from more than me when the EPA implements its cow fart tax and farm dust regulations that will bankrupt every farm and ranch in the state of South Dakota.
When I see the pictures of the mega mansions the oil tycoons in the Middle East own, I just wonder why this can’t be the same for our coal industry. The coal is just right there for the taking, and it can generate both wealth and energy for all to benefit.
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