Free Republic

An injunction issued against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by federal judge Leigh Martin May could spell the beginning of the end for Administrative Law Courts and with them, 80 years of unconstitutional abuse of power by the Executive branch. Administrative Law “…allows for the creation of public regulatory agencies and contains all of the statutes, judicial decisions, and regulations that govern them.” These regulatory bodies include the EPA and the SEC. Many came into being during the reign of Franklin Roosevelt, the one president more arrogant and power hungry than Barack Obama. The law itself “…is created by...

The government is proposing to regulate aircraft emissions in much the same way as power plants, saying they are a threat to human health because they contain pollutants that help cause global warming and therefore should be regulated. The Environmental Protection Agency announcement Wednesday clears the way for possible U.S. adoption of international emissions standards, which are expected to be released next year. U.S. regulations wouldn't apply to small piston-engine planes or military aircraft. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, has been working for several years on developing global aircraft emissions standards for the first time.

After already socking the public, business and the economy with costly regulations, President Obama added another $110 billion in the last half year and is rushing to finish his second term with even more costly environmental rules, according to a taxpayer watchdog."The administration's time in office is coming to a close, so regulators will surely rush to finish its greenhouse gas and ozone standards before the next administration takes power," warned American Action Forum in a new analysis of the administration's latest report of new regulations.Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the Forum, studied the twice-yearly released list of...

Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued 3,373 new final regulations, equaling 29,770 pages in the Federal Register and totaling approximately 29,770,000 words, according to a count of the regulations published in the Federal Register. The Gutenberg Bible is only 1,282 pages and 646,128 words. This means the new EPA regulations issued by the Obama Administration contain 23 times as many pages as the Bible and 46 times as many words. The Federal Register publishes documents, including proposed rules, notices, interim rules, corrections, drafts of final rules and final rules....

‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is a forced shift away from inexpensive coal-fired power. Not to worry, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “With EPA’s flexible proposal, states choose the ways we cut carbon pollution, so we can still have affordable, reliable power to grow our economy.” Under the plan, the EPA will set a carbon-dioxide-emissions target for every state, and give each state roughly a year to develop and...

But a closer look at these claims of independence raises serious doubts. An online search of EPA’s web site revealed that Syracuse’s Driscoll has previously involved as a principal investigator in studies that received over $3.6 million in research grants from EPA. Co-author Dallas Burtraw, a researcher at the think tank Resources for the Future, had been involved in previous EPA grants totaling almost $2 million. Harvard co-author Jonathan I. Levy had been involved in over $9.5 million worth of grants. Co-author Joel Schwartz, also of Harvard, had been previously involved in over $31 million worth of grants from EPA....

Americans are just going to have to trust the EPA’s 44 years of experience dealing with environmental issues when it comes to figuring out ways to cope with man-made global warming, says the agency’s chief. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told Big Think in an interview that while there are limits to how much the federal government can do for issues like global warming, the public needs to trust how the EPA translates the “complicated” science into real-life actions. “Well I think we all have to recognize the strengths and limitations of government action,” McCarthy said. “But here’s what I think...

Three coal-fired power plants in West Virginia have shut down operations. Media outlets report that Appalachian Power's Kanawha River Power Station at Glasgow, the Kammer Power Station near Moundsville and the Phillip Sporn Power Station at New Haven were closed Sunday. Appalachian Power had announced in 2011 that it planned to close the plants, along with three coal-fired plants in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana. The company had said it would be cost-prohibitive to equip them to comply with new federal emission standards for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. Another coal-fired plant in Virginia is being converted to natural gas....

US investment in biofuels are to be expanded under proposals advanced by the US EPA. Under the proposed rule announced Friday, the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply would increase in coming years, just not as much as set out under federal law. That approach drew criticism from ethanol and farm groups that have pushed to keep high volumes of ethanol in gasoline. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a robust renewable fuels standard while campaigning in Iowa, host of the leadoff presidential caucuses next year. … In a bid to ethanol producers, the administration also...

Control the water, control the land This is the largest, illegal, private property land grab in U.S. history Good EPA “laws” (read: “rules”, “regulations”) are long extinct, but if you had to pick one it would be the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) passed by congress four years after the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (Images for cuyahoga river fire burning—it wasn’t the first time) because of the pollution in it. The Act authorized the clean-up of this kind of mess in America’s navigable lakes, rivers, and streams, and prohibited further dumping of dangerous industrial chemicals, waste, and other...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released a much-delayed proposal for the amount of biofuel that must be blended into conventional vehicle fuel. The proposal, which would become final by the end of November, would set levels for last year at what producers actually made but increase the total volume of renewable fuel required by 1.5 billion gallons, roughly 9 percent, by the end of 2016. That would bring the volume to 17.4 billion gallons[.]

Earlier today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) finalized a much anticipated rule that would redefine “Waters of the United States” and vastly expand the two agencies’ regulatory authority over the nation’s water resources. EPA and the Corps proposed the rule in April 2014 seeking to clarify precisely what water resources it classified as “navigable” and, thus, able to be regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The move to redefine “Waters of the United States” comes after the Supreme Court twice checked the agencies’ overly broad interpretation of the CWA in Solid...

The EPA is on the verge of finalizing a new “Waters of the United States” regulation that would greatly expand the agency’s control over U.S. waters, and may even give the EPA the power to regulate ponds, ditches and puddles. Republican lawmakers, however, are pushing back against the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, warning the agency may have inappropriately lobbied and worked with environmental campaign activists to inflate the support behind the agency’s water takeover. “Given the magnitude and controversy surrounding the EPA’s rulemaking agenda, it is very troubling that EPA has engaged in a propaganda campaign to...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Wednesday that critics say would expand federal reach over U.S. waterways, but that the Obama administration contends will clarify which farming, development and other practices are subject to regulation. The battle over the "Waters of the U.S." rule has been brewing for months and will continue both on and off Capitol Hill. The regulation attempts to define Clean Water Act regulations as stretching to bodies of water that have a "significant nexus" with "navigable waters" to prevent pollution of drinking water. The EPA told various media outlets that the rule asserts the agency's...

The Obama administration is expected to announce final details of “Waters of the United States” rule this week that could impact any property owner with water or a ditch that occasionally fills with water on their land. Moreover, the regulation could even conflict with two Supreme Court rulings. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have sought to provide more clarity to what bodies of water are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which has previously affected rivers, lakes and the streams that flow directly to them.

Senate Republicans introduced a bill Wednesday that would overturn the Obama administration’s landmark climate rule for power plants and make it nearly impossible to rewrite them. The legislation represents the GOP’s first major legislative effort in the Senate to confront the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon dioxide limits it proposed last year. It reflects the Republican Party’s broad opposition to the regulations, which they say would cost billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs and have little to no environmental benefit. Republicans in both chambers have largely avoided legislation to stop the rules and instead focused their attention on...

Energy and environmental regulations finalized by the Obama administration in the past five years come with a hefty price tag of $460.5 billion, according to data compiled by a center-right think tank. The American Action Forum’s Regulation Rodeo database shows that the Obama administration finalized 275 energy and environment regulations between 2009 and 2014, with the price tag of each regulation averaging $1.75 billion. And that doesn’t even consider the paperwork companies will have to complete. AAF data shows that Obama’s energy regulations have burdened Americans with 24.3 million paperwork hours. That means every year, Americans have to complete an...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending $84,000 to study how churches can be used to combat climate change. A taxpayer-funded graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is examining 17 faith-based institutions that have implemented "sustainability initiatives" in the hopes of developing workshops to teach pastors and other religious leaders how to change the behaviors of their congregants. "Climate change-which affects traditional faith-based efforts to improve human health, mitigate poverty and redress social inequity-is inspiring religious organizations to advocate for clean air and water, restore ecosystems, and conserve resources," a grant for the project, which began...

Better for states not to comply with the EPA’s plans than to go along and absolve the feds of accountability for the mess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) set off a firestorm recently when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply. ... While the short-term effects may be painful, the long-term consequences of submitting...

EPA claims that it’s simplifying regulations and making them easier to follow, but the fine print tells another story. Business owners around the country have joined with farmers and ranchers in speaking out on the Waters of the U.S. rule. More than 30 states also oppose the rule. Yet, even in the face of mounting opposition, the EPA still isn’t listening. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has unveiled her latest, campaign-style WOTUS spin, calling the effort the “Clean Water Rule” – as though a bumper-sticker approach to a complex regulation would change anything for people so profoundly affected by her agency’s...