Posted on 08/25/2016 11:00:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
The nine-second video of two federal bureaucrats the White House posted on its blog last week was notable for something it omitted.
That something was very big -- and putting it on display might not have fit with the apparent propaganda purpose of the video.
The video itself starred EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, who sat side-by-side at a table.
The video starts with McCarthy and Foxx simultaneously scratching their signatures onto separate and apparently singular sheets of paper.
Eight seconds into the nine-second clip, when McCarthy has finished signing her name, she looks up and declares: "Done."
Foxx, who signed even faster than McCarthy, spreads his arms in a gesture that appears to say: That's it, folks. Then he echoes McCarthy: "Done."
So, what exactly had these two bureaucrats done?
McCarthy and Foxx published a blog text that accompanied the video on the White House website. In it, they explained that -- as part of President Obama's "Climate Action Plan" -- they had approved a regulation that imposes new "greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards" on vehicles ranging from heavy-duty pickup trucks to tractor-trailer combinations used to haul cargo.
A copy of the final regulation is posted as a PDF on the EPA website. The top of each page carries this disclaimer: "This document is a prepublication version, signed by the Secretary of Transportation, Anthony R. Foxx, and the EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, on August 16, 2016. We have taken steps to ensure the accuracy of this version, but it is not the official version."
The regulation is 1,690 pages long. Page 1,689 is the signature page for Secretary Foxx. Page 1,690 is the signature page for Administrator McCarthy.
When Foxx and McCarthy signed the regulation -- as recorded in the video on the White House website -- they did not place the first 1,688 pages anywhere within view of the camera.
Was that in deference to trees? Or did the Obama administration not want to show America that these two unelected bureaucrats were signing a 1,690-page regulation.
As this writer reported on CNSNews.com this week, the regulation includes an average of about 420 words per page or a total of about 700,000 words.
According to the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, by model year 2027, the regulation will increase the cost of tractor trucks, depending on the type, between $10,235 and $13,749. Trailers will cost from $1,204 to $1,370 more.
The regulation follows from the EPA administrator's determination, made seven years ago under the terms of the Clean Air Act, that greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, "endanger public health."
"Climate change caused by human emissions of GHGs threatens public health in multiple ways," says the new regulation.
"By raising average temperatures, climate change increases the likelihood of heat waves, which are associated with increased deaths and illnesses," it says.
"While climate change also decreases the likelihood of cold-related mortality, evidence indicates that the increases in heat mortality will be larger than the decreases in cold mortality in the United States," it says. "Compared to a future without climate change, climate change is expected to increase ozone pollution over broad areas of the U.S., including in the largest metropolitan areas with the worst ozone problems, and thereby increase the risk of morbidity and mortality."
McCarthy and Foxx argued that making truck operators buy the more expensive vehicles the regulation mandates will save these truckers money.
"Today's final standards will promote a new generation of cleaner and more fuel efficient trucks," they wrote. "That means 1.1 billion fewer tons of CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere, and operators will save 2 billion barrels of oil and $170 billion in fuel costs. The additional cost of a new truck will be recouped within 2-4 years, saving truck owners more over the long haul."
The EPA also wants non-truck-driving Americans to believe this new regulation will save them money, too.
"The program will also benefit consumers and businesses by reducing the costs for transporting goods," says an EPA fact sheet. "In total, the program will result in up to $230 billion in net benefits to society over the lifetime of vehicles sold under the program. This includes fuel savings, carbon reductions, health benefits, energy security benefits, along with travel benefits, and refueling benefits."
This is the liberal vision for the future: New rules approved by bureaucrats that increase the capital costs to start, grow or maintain a business, will help save the world from climate change while saving Americans money.
Just don't let people see the actual size of the regulation.
More job-killing BS by an unaccountable bunch of idiots. This will have NO effect on “climate” but will trash our economy. On day one Trump should abolish the EPA.
The regulation is 1,690 pages long
My copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare is 1528
I’m thinking if Trump wins (please God), these regulations whill be gone by the end of January 2017.
And how much did it cost the taxpayers to actually have this thing written?
Millions upon millions i’m sure...
I’m sure the Chinese, the Russians, the Brazilians, the Indians… the G20 are all going to follow….and laugh all the way to the bank at how Obama is giving them a huge advantage.
Another step in giving disadvantage to America and the American worker!
He never rests in the destruction of the American economy.
more Demolilion Derby directed against America and our sick Obama economy
kill more and more and MORE jobs
that’s the Obama way!
destroy America by using its federal government against it.
AND.... 700,000 words is enough to run the ENTIRE federal government....from Agriculture to Defense to Veterans Affairs. This proliferation of regulatory diktats is RIDICULOUS. I received one in the email and innocently hit the PRINT key and it was a 793 page document, totally unintelligible as you might expect. This is yet another way Obama and his co-conspirators are destroying American business and jobs
And every dollar representing an unproductive and counterproductive waste of limited resources.
Big Government: the ONLY major polluter and consumer not only unrestrained but also inherently unproductive.
so why are Mexican trucks exempted....
no problema amigo
i take my truck to mex and register it and boogie on down the road....
smell my fumes...
No government bureaucrat has ever seen a regulation he couldn’t love - and the more long-winded and incomprehensible, the better.
How big? How about 20,000 pages for 0bamacare? Don't believe me? Check the Washington Post article on it.
We should employ these people to review, edit, compress, and reduce - bonuses for discarding entire volumes of the stuff. The hazard is that the tendency will be to replace stacks of obnoxious regulations with czars whose word is law. Which, come to think of it, we're doing at the present as well.
More “high paying” jobs for bureaucrats. The rest of us can eat cake... or something less tasty.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Remember in November !
Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will put a stop to unconstitutonal federal inteference in state affairs.
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
This administration runs like the Kremlin.
I wonder how many foundation donors paid mucho $$$ to greatly benefit from what is written in those 700,000 words..
The successors of The Butchers of Beijing are laughing their a$$e$ off saying to each other "Sure,we'll stop adding a dozen 1950's-era coal fired power plants a day to our power grid.We'll just let out trillions of tons of coal sit in the ground like the Americans are planning to do".
Just another reason to vote Trump
It says something about 33,000 pages and I bet that is way low than the actual number
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