When you think about idle or under-used factories all around the United States like those in Indiana, Michigan, Georgia and Tennesse where automobiles used to be built, it’s obvious that for the hoped-for recovery to get anywhere near the 138 million non-farm jobs we had around 2006, those factories need to start up again and get humming with the production of new automobiles, or perhaps, retooled and modernized . . . producing new something elses. For those who don’t think the government is the problem, listen to the words of Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn, a member of the House energy and commerce committee . . . .
“Not far from my district the Spring Hill plant sits idle. GM pulled out of Spring Hill, once the proud home to the Saturn line, in the wake of its bankruptcy last year. Reopening the plant, either for the production of cars or anything else, will be critical to jobs growth in Middle Tennessee. At a listening session with constituents who live in the 7th district and used to commute to work in Spring Hill, the message was clear: to get the plant up and running again, Washington is going to have to do ... less.
“Washington, or more specifically the Environmental Protection Agency, poses a significant challenge to any new enterprise that hopes to revitalize Spring Hill and Tennessee’s economy. While Tennesseans are looking for a new owner to come in, take over the Spring Hill plant and get it producing again, the EPA has proposed a series of regulations that would require businesses to certify they have limited carbon emissions or pay steep fines. These regulations are a result of their “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act that carbon dioxide and other green house gasses pose a threat to human life. (Rajjpuut interjects here . . . The EPA was violating its own rules with these “endangered findings.” They are prohibited by law*** from making environmental regulations based upon somebody else’s studies such as the discredited CRU “global-warming” nonsense. They must conduct their own studies and base all regulations only upon their own studies, if the studies prove conclusively that the moves are warranted. Marsha Blackburn continues . . . .)
“The new greenhouse gas rules will require anyone who buys the Spring Hill plant and performs any modifications on it — which they will likely have to do — to analyze all the greenhouse gas emissions from the plant and from all its potential new processes. Any new owner will have to report these emissions to the EPA. All the while, Tennesseans remain jobless.
“Most possible uses for the Spring Hill plant would cause the plant to exceed the 25,000 annual tons of carbon dioxide emissions the EPA proposes to allow, classifying it as a “major emitter.” Major emitters must go through additional review and permitting by the EPA, a process that could take months or years. These are years when an entrepreneur owns, maintains, and pays taxes on a non-productive facility — clearly a disincentive to anyone thinking of reopening a plant in the United States.
“To add to the cost, the EPA will require major emitters to purchase and install the ‘best available control technology’ to reduce emissions to an acceptable level. Even when that equipment is installed, the new owner isn’t done with EPA-imposed costs. Because the EPA found that the Clean Air Act applies to carbon dioxide, any new owners of the Spring Hill plant are open to being sued if the carbon capture technology fails or the plant ever exceeds the EPA emission ceiling. Such a specter of unanticipated cost would hang over the plant for its entire operational life. While potential new owners calculate the possible cost, Tennesseans go jobless.
“As Washington works to balance economic impact with the need to spur energy independence, the EPA lurks on the Hill with these disastrous carbon restrictions in its briefcase, threatening to detonate them on the economy in the event that the Senate doesn’t meet its minimum standard of economy-killing carbon limits. Its actions are a clear executive overreach.”
The rest of Blackburn’s commentary can be found at:
http://thehill.com/special-reports/earth-day-april-2010/93643-epa-stands-in-the-way-of-recovery
She proposed a bill that would void the EPA’s endangerment findings and prohibit the agency from regulating carbon emissions under the auspices of the Clean Air Act in an effort to help the Spring Hill plant re-emerge from its near death experience. She then talked about the EPA announcing a video contest with a $2,500 prize to help Americans appreciate how EPA regulations and the entire regulatory process “benefits the citizens.” The fact of the matter is that the EPA’s regulations are killing the country and are a huge part of the problem and the proposed Cap and Trade legislation would cost America at least $220 Billion each and every year it’s in effect probably much more. One of Mr. Obama’s cronies at CCX (the Chicago Climate eXchange) has admitted on TV that their group sees climate exchange as a “Ten TRillion Dollar industry.” Since that industry produces nothing but only sells literal “blue sky nothingness to the productive parts of the economy (a shakedown, if you will, by the EPA) then the rest of the economy must lose $10 TRillion for the CCX to exist since the output of the whole non-government economy is now between $15-$16 TRillion . . . you get an idea of just what a raping cap and trade will prove to our nation and its future. Clearly, Mr. Obama as a board member of CCX is operating in conflicting of interest when he pushed the legislative process and again when he commanded the EPA to regulate carbon emissions a la cap and trade. You can read the specifics of this illegal and unconstitutonal matter and of Al Gore’s and President Obama’s betrayal in these three prior Rajjpuut’s Folly blogs:
http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/02/thanks_to_media_obama,__gore_and_cronies_might_make_trillions.thtml
http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/04/27/bend_over,_america,_here_comes_your_re-raping.thtml
http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/04/30/obama_c_and_t_corruption_bared_for_all_to_see,_media_ignores.thtml
As mentioned often by this blogger, the President has been repeatedly guilty of illegal and unconstitutional acts. After his impeachment, it would also be fitting and proper if the mainstream media that aided and abetted his rise to power and his illegal activities by refusing to engage in journalism but instead served as cheerleaders who refused to vett his connections, his activities and his personal background . . . Obama’s betrayal might be great but the betrayal of mainstream journalism upon the American people has been greater. Here Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn explains the simplest truths that are so basic to understanding how a capitalist economy creates jobs . . . and yet such a story is never a part of the media’s “hot topics,” never.
Like Obama himself, the EPA has seriously overstepped their bounds and the misuse of bureaucratic power by the president and by the EPA is a huge problem. Ask the folks around Fresno county (the richest vegetable-growing region in the world) about their nearly 40% unemployment in some areas while the EPA to save the purportedly endangered Delta Smelt has forbidden use of irrigation piping and pumping in the region to save the smelt. The Fresno county workers got shafted by the EPA during a drought; and the consumers are paying much more for vegetables thanks to the EPA . . . and the EPA with such nonsense is killing the economy.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut*** The efforts of Marsha Blackburn and other Republicans in other states, made the EPA back down from their illegal stance. Supposedly, they canNOT return to this kind of heavy-handedness unless they themselves prove that global-warming is occurring and dangerous and that human activity is driving it. Of course we know from the Climate-Gate scandal that global-warming is a trumped-up result created by overzealous environmentalists pretending to do science but actually "cooking the books" by manipulation of data, as verified by the following article by the very liberal London Times talking about the actions of fellow Brits:
twelve days after the Climate-Gate data manipulation scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) erupted, the most important liberal voice in Europe recognized the error of its ways and stopped promoting the lie that is "global-warming" but five months later our American media is still cheerleading for global-warming and for the godawful cap and trade and for the progressive Obama administration that will further kill our economy if allowed . . . and they still refuse to print any meaningful coverage of climate-gate; of cap and trade or about the connections between Gore, Obama, Goldman Sachs and several progressive foundationsa and CCX . . . .
