Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized new federal standards on toxic pollutants and mercury emissions from coal power plants Wednesday, a move being praised by environmentalists but criticized by others, who predict lost jobs and a strain on the nation’s power grid.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, at an event at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, announced that for the first time U.S. coal and oil-fired power plant operators must limit their emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.

“I am glad to be here to mark the finalization of a clean air rule that has been 20 years in the making, and is now ready to start improving our health, protecting our children, and cleaning up our air,” Jackson said. “Under the Clean Air Act these standards will require American power plants to put in place proven and widely available pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases. In and of itself, this is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children…”

All qualities which mean nothing to people who paper their souls with greenbacks and pimp for profits above all else on this tawdry planet.

“These standards rank among the three or four most significant environmental achievements in the EPA’s history,” said John Walke, clean air director of the National Resources Defense Council. “This rule making represents a generational achievement.”

The new regulations are among the most wide-reaching to come from the EPA during Barack Obama’s administration. They include separate limits for mercury emissions, acid gasses, and other pollutants from several metals…

According to an EPA analysis, the larger economic benefits of the reduced pollution will more than pay for the short-term clean-up costs. The EPA also predicts more jobs will be created than lost as power plants invest million of dollars in upgrades.

It also estimates health costs — as a result of less exposure to these toxins — will be reduced to between $59 billion and $140 billion by 2016, and the new regulations will prevent 17,000 premature deaths each year…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group traditionally sympathetic to Republicans, has aired ads urging listeners not to “let the EPA turn out the lights on the American economy…”

If memory serves me right, the US Chamber of Commerce didn’t spent a cent on whining about sub-prime derivatives and sleazy Wall Street practices that dumped the world’s economy into the crapper a few years back. Anyone sense something hypocritical about that?

Century City and downtown Los Angeles
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said…it would again delay issuing a final limit on smog pollution opposed by manufacturers and many Republican lawmakers until the Obama administration has finished reviewing it.

In December, the agency said it would issue the rule by the end of July…

“Following completion of this final step, EPA will finalize its reconsideration, but will not issue the final rule on July 29th, the date the agency had intended,” the EPA said in a release…It was the fourth time the agency delayed the smog standards, originally slated to be finalized last August…

The proposal was stronger than 2008 standards set by the Bush administration. Environmentalists blasted those for being less than what government scientists recommended.

Under the rule, factories and oil, natural gas and power generators would be forced to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides and other chemicals called volatile organic compounds. Smog forms when those chemicals react with sunlight.

The rule has been opposed by industry groups. The American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable complain that it would damage the economic recovery and that many areas would not be able to meet the new limits…

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the ozone rules would save as much as $100 billion in health costs, and help prevent as much as 12,000 premature deaths from heart and lung complications…

Every additional day of delay means more Americans will suffer…that is, ordinary Americans. Not those who will return to their home districts after another do-nothing session of Congress. Those politicians who should be prompting the EPA to get off their rusty dusty butts and aid the lives of American people aren’t risking their health by doing anything more than passing quickly through pollution zones.

The same holds true in spades for that herd of dinosaurs who smoke their cigars in private clubs funded by the American Petroleum Institute, the greenback claque chauffeured forth-and-back to meetings of the US Chamber of Commerce. Perish the thought anything other than filtered, conditioned air reaches their pampered respiratory systems.

Wall Street banks and allied interest groups have spent $600 million and hired 243 political insiders to represent their interests before Congress and U.S. policymakers since early 2008…

The labor-backed study, which tracks the lobbying and campaign spending of major banks from the 2008 government-brokered buyout of Bear Stearns to the Senate’s current financial reform debate, said Wall Street’s lobbyists include former top aides to Senate Democrats Harry Reid, Christopher Dodd, Charles Schumer and Tim Johnson.

During the 2008 presidential race, securities and investment firms gave Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign nearly $14.9 million and Republican John McCain about $8.7 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Researchers found 28 former legislative directors and 33 former chiefs of staff among Wall Street’s army of lobbyists, as well as 54 former staffers to the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking Committee or current members of those panels.

Former aides to Republican Senator Richard Shelby and former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt have also been working to represent Wall Street’s interests, the study said.

The list of lobbyists also includes former officials from the White House, Treasury Department and government agencies…

The six biggest Wall Street institutions — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo — have accounted for a disproportionate share of the lobbying and campaign activity.

The study was paid for by “gigantic” left-wing sources like the Service Employees International Union. Their group is probably responsible for less than $10 million and damned few Congressional staffers.

The yearlong legislative fight over health care is drawing to a frenzied close as a multimillion-dollar wave of advertising that rivals the ferocity of a presidential campaign takes aim at about 40 House Democrats whose votes will help determine the fate of President Obama’s top domestic priority.

The coalition of groups opposing the legislation, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, is singling out 27 Democrats who supported the health care bill last year and 13 who opposed it. The organizations have already spent $11 million this month focusing on these lawmakers, with more spending to come before an expected vote next weekend…

Several on-the-fence Democrats said they were scrambling to sort out their constituents’ views…

“On-the-fence” is Congress-speak for too cowardly to be capable of leadership.

The Chamber of Commerce is leading the opposition to the health care bill with a coalition called Employers for a Healthy Economy. In two weeks, the group has bought more than $7 million in television advertising and plans to spend up to $3 million more. Americans for Prosperity, a group financed by David Koch, the oilman, is also jumping into the fray with an advertising campaign of nearly $1 million…

We have a shiny new congressman named Harry Teague in downstate New Mexico who rode the Obama coattails into office. He was ready and willing to sell out almost immediately.

Harry will cave in on health care hoping it will get him conservative support – and re-elected. It won’t and he won’t be.

Apple is the latest company to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the technology company disagrees with the business group’s climate change policy.

“We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis,” Catherine Novelli, a vice president of government affairs at Apple, wrote in a letter to the business group.

Novelli wrote that Apple resigned its membership in the business group “effective immediately.”

Last month three big power utilities, Exelon Corp, PG&E Corp and PNM Resources Inc, said they were leaving the chamber over the group’s stance on climate…

Bravo!

Exelon Corp, the largest nuclear power operator in the United States, is the latest U.S. power company to say it will leave the Chamber of Commerce over that group’s opposition to the climate bill.

“The Chamber and other groups think climate legislation will be bad for the economy,” an Exelon spokeswoman said. “We think it’s going to be good for the economy.”

Exelon’s top executive John Rowe said in a speech on Monday that the company would not renew its membership in the Chamber, which has pushed for public hearings to challenge the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Nuclear power is virtually emissions free, which means Exelon could face less emissions costs under climate regulation than a utility that generates electricity mostly from coal and natural gas.

Exelon followed California utility PG&E Corp and New Mexico based PNM Resources Inc in leaving the chamber over the dispute…

“Inaction on climate is not an option,” Rowe said in the speech. “If Congress does not act, the (Environmental Protection Agency) will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive, and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution.”

Way too rational an analysis for lobbyists and their Congressional flunkies.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the world’s best example of money-grubbing guided by an outlook that peers ahead a good three to six months into the future. At best.