NEW CONGRESS TO MAKE LIFE MORE MISERABLE FOR ITS CONSTITUENTS

The 2014 election is ancient history, the lame duck session is a distant memory, and the 114th Congress is ready for work. The 113th Congress was one of the most unproductive and unliked in history. Initial signs that the next two years will be any better are unpromising.

The House and Senate are both devoting significant chunks of time to passing well-worn Keystone XL legislation that the President has threatened to veto. Last week the House voted to approve the Keystone pipeline for the 10th time. This week they’ve moved on to similarly well-tread and unproductive terrain by revisiting and passing another measure that Obama recently threatened to veto: one with much greater potential for harm to the government, let alone the environment.

The Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA), which the House passed on Tuesday, is ostensibly aimed at cutting costly regulations imposed by federal and independent agencies, but it would actually make it much more difficult to pass and enforce protective measures overseen by the government.

“It is actually a stealth attack on all the various statutes Congress has passed over the last 40 years.”

“It is actually a stealth attack on all the various statutes Congress has passed over the last 40 years to protect public health environmental quality,” according to Ronald White, director of Regulatory Policy at the Center for Effective Government. The RAA adds at least 70 new procedural steps into a process that already takes years for agencies to navigate through Congress. He said this is part of “a whole slew of anti-regulation legislation” that he expects to see in coming months.

“I think Congress is trying to lay down some political markers and make some political statements,” said White. “A lot of these bills were proposed in the last Congress and we expect many more that will be probably very close to the same.”

The RAA for its part would hamper the rule issuing and enforcing processes currently in place for clean air, clean water, safe food, stable financial markets, safe workplaces, and fair wages, according to the Center for Effective Government.

For one, the measure would require all federal agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses including speculative estimates of “indirect” costs — even when some agencies are barred from relying on cost-benefit analyses for adopting standards. For instance, the RAA would require the EPA to consider the cost of any new clean air rule, even though the Clean Air Act prohibits the EPA from factoring in cost when adopting new standards.

“The whole point is that these acts all say that costs come into account after you’ve made a decision to protect public health,” said White. “The Clean Air Act says costs should be considered in strategies, but not in what constitutes appropriate levels of air quality. That’s based on science, not cost.”

Furthermore, the RAA would mandate that federal agencies adopt the least costly rule unless the agency can demonstrate that the additional benefits of any alternative justify additional costs. The legislation would also allow any interested party to ask an agency to hold a public hearing to challenge data that the agency used in drafting proposed rules. The only way to avoid the public hearing is for the agency to revoke the information being petitioned. It is not hard to foresee industry lobbyists taking advantage of this to request numerous public hearings relating to information they see as harmful to their goals.

“The goal of administrative procedure is to ensure that the government’s adoption of regulation is accountable and fair, but not at the expense of hamstringing the ability of agencies to fulfill the public interest,” wrote Sidney A. Shapiro, Wake Forest University law professor and Center for Progressive Reform scholar, this week. “The House obviously has no such concern.”

Shapiro writes that agencies already take four to eight years to “promulgate” complex regulations and that the new requirements would add two or three years to the process.

“It’s telling that the newly-empowered Republican majority in Congress has made it its first order of business to protect the profits of its corporate benefactors at the expense of the public interest,” writes Shapiro.

In an analysis for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Celia Wexler, a representative for the Scientific Integrity Initiative at UCS, says this “special-interest interference” jeopardizes the mandates of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. “The RAA emphasizes the costs to businesses, not the long-term benefits to the public,” she writes.

The Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act have offered economic benefits as well over the 40 years since their passage. The Administration has been pursuing an update to the CWA that would protect about 20 million acres of wetland and two million miles of streams. A recent analysis found that the economic benefits of this update would be between $300.7 million and $397.6 million.

The CAA’s track record is even more impressive. A 2013 study by the EPA concluded that between 1970 and 1990, the total monetized health benefits of the Act was between $5.6 and $49.4 trillion. By removing harmful pollutants from the air, the CAA helps people stay healthy — keeping them at work, at school, and out of the hospital


[H/T thinkprogress]

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

‘What on Earth Were They Thinking?’

RACHEL MADDOW RIPS IN CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS

Rachel Maddow tore in to Senate Democrats on Tuesday for voting down the Keystone Pipeline (or Keystone XL), a Republican energy plan.

Maddow couldn’t believe that Democrats would use what little time they have left as the majority party to waste time on Keystone when Republicans will simply pass it in January anyway.

She believed that Democrats made the decision to vote in order to try and save Senator Mary Landrieu’s job.

Landrieu wanted the Pipeline and she’s coming up on a runoff that she is expected to lose against the man who helped sponsor the Keystone XL bill that passed a House of Representatives vote earlier this week.

“What on earth were they thinking,” an exasperated Rachel Maddow asked, “spending their time doing this? How is this even, conceivably, by any stretch of the imagination, a constructive use of time by Democrats?”

Maddow said that the “most frustrating of all” was that “the Democrats will hold a vote on this issue right away, but want to wait a while to hold a vote on confirming Loretta Lynch as the new attorney general.”

“If they’re honestly not worried about Republicans confirming her, I would love some of what they’re smoking,” Maddow said, adding “Democrats, you are amazing… You are astonishing. Now roll over and play dead.”

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:




Its a rare day when Rachel cuts into liberals so harshly, but often when you're screwing up - it is then when you are in need of a severe ass chewing.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Teapublican Congress And Their Troglodytes Ignore Faux News' Facts

Yes I know this sounds like an oxymoron - facts and Faux News together as one.

Yesterday POTUS said the administration denied TransCanada's application for the $7 billion Canada-to-Texas oil sands pipeline because there was not enough time to review an alternate route that would avoid a sensitive aquifer in Nebraska -- within a 60-day window set by Congress.

Keystone seems certain to become a key issue for the coming presidential campaign, with teapublicans accusing Obama imperiling U.S. energy security. The administration rejected the attacks, arguing teapublicans inserted an unrealistic deadline in legislation in December that was designed to force Obama's hand by the end of February.

Angry congressional teapublicans voiced their displeasure over POTUS' actions to deny the pipeline project. 

At the press conference, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other House Tepublicans blasted the Obama administration’s decision to deny new jobs to tens of thousands of Americans and surrender America’s energy security to China by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline. Speaker Boehner pledged to continue fighting for the thousands of much-need jobs the pipeline will create - especially for those hit hardest by the Obama administration’s disastrous economic policies.

What I find most disturbing is that according to Mediaite, an overwhelming amount of teapublcians follow Faux News and Faux News only. If this is the case, what the hell are congressional teapublicans watching?

"Poll results bear that 73% of self-identified Republicans said they trusted only Faux News."

So a funny thing happened on the way to forum this morning - a very good friend submitted to me a story from Faux News. After several hours of research the writer has it right!

Directly from the horses mouth, Faux News writer Sally Kohn writes:

"In reality, the president was resisting an artificial deadline from Republicans trying to force his hand."

"But the fact is, for the good of our country and our economy, rejecting the Keystone XL deal was the best decision possible."

Kohn goes on to say:

.....why the pipeline was a bad deal for America and why it deserved to be rejected".

Instead of claiming timeline fouls, POTUS and the administration should have given the below facts, which would have solidified the nail in the coffin - ensuring that the talking heads of congress had little reverberation or little ripple effect in the Keystone pond.

Keystone XL Would Not Reduce Foreign Oil Dependency
The oil to be sent through Keystone XL pipeline was never destined for US markets. In its own presentation to investors about the proposed pipeline extension, TransCanada (the company behind Keystone XL) boasted that most if not all of the extracted and refined oil would be exported --- sold in oversees markets where oil fetches a higher price (and thus turns a higher profit for the company).

Keystone XL Would Have Increased Domestic Oil Prices
Currently, Canadian oil reserves stored in the Midwest help suppress gas prices in the United States, particularly for farmers in our nation’s heartland. In its permit application for the pipeline, TransCanada noted that the Keystone XL pipeline would allow the company to drain these reserves and export that fuel as well. According to TransCanada’s own statements, this would raise gas prices in the United States, especially in the Midwest.


Keystone XL Overstated Number of Jobs to be Created
In 2008, TransCanada’s original permit application to the State Department said the Keystone XL pipeline would create “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” in temporary jobs building the pipeline.

By 2011, now facing growing opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada had inflated these numbers (using undisclosed formulas) to 20,000. Supporters of the proposal, backed by big oil, have since trumpeted these trumped up numbers.

Current Keystone Pipeline Leaked 12 Times in Last Year
The pipeline that the Obama administration has rejected the permit for would be an extension of a pipeline that has already leaked -- not just once, but 12 times in the last year.

While TransCanada tried to dismiss these leaks as “minor” averaging “just five to 10 gallons of oil” each, the leak on May 7, 2011 near Millner, N.D., spilled about 21,000 gallons of oil in total.


The Environmental Concerns About Oil Leaks Are Justified
Nebraska’s Republican Governor Dave Heineman strongly opposed the Keystone XL project because the pipeline would run through a massive and vital aquifer in his state the supplies clean drinking water to over 2 million Americans plus water that fuels the region’s agriculture industry.

Building the pipeline might have created a few thousand temporary jobs but even a minor oil spill in or near the aquifer would have jeopardized hundreds of thousands of jobs, not to mention the health and safety of millions.

Meanwhile, in Michigan where a similar tar sands pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, residents are still complaining of headaches, dizziness and nausea while studies continue to look at the long-term effects of just being near such an oil spill when it happens.

Mining Tar Sands Would Worsen Global Warming

Assuming you believe, like the vast majority of the world’s scientists, that climate change is both real and of concern, the Canadian tar sands are the second largest carbon reserve in the world.

Mining these reserves would release all of that carbon into the atmosphere, to detrimental effect on our environment. Sure, Canada might go ahead and mine the tar sands anyway, but the United States doesn’t have to help pollute the planet and our own states in the process.

Many disturbing factors exist here. No matter how you look at it, the Keystone XL proposal was a scam of a deal. John Boehner and his fellow banshees are under pressure to create one job, to which they will throw any bogus sham at their troglodytes to ensure their job creation success.

Its evident that congressional teapublcians are not a collection of the 73% following Faux News, or maybe better yet, facts just elude this radical group when it stares them in the face.

Quoting an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:

"The problem is, Keystone should be approved. This is a good project. It will give us energy and give us jobs. You want stimulus? This is a $7 billion deal to be done with private-sector funding."

Readers, I have always said that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste", especially when ideological talking points outweigh the facts.

This is what happens when humans as a society fail to think for themselves.

If you watch the below video one wonders if Ms. Kohn actually works for Faux News.



I applaud Ms. Kohn for credit due, its just a shame that her facts fell on deaf ears. In hindsight I would imagine that Ms. Kohn is unemployed by Roger Ailes for giving facts and for being 'fair and balanced"!



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West