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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; lisa jackson</title>
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		<title>Here&#8217;s Your $40,000 EPA Chief Waterfall Portrait</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/heres-your-40000-epa-chief-waterfall-portrait/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=heres-your-40000-epa-chief-waterfall-portrait</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/heres-your-40000-epa-chief-waterfall-portrait/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 13:27:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189756</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lisa Jackson was actually the embodiment of a nature spirit, who, when she was forced to quit after a fake email scandal, became transformed into a waterfall, and is now flowing somewhere in Virginia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/935409_10151396337931776_1374000481_n.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-189757" alt="935409_10151396337931776_1374000481_n" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/935409_10151396337931776_1374000481_n-229x350.jpg" width="375" height="532" /></a></p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency, as everyone knows, is the only thing keeping a rapacious mankind from chopping down all the trees, polluting all the rivers and coughing up carbon all over the sky.</p>
<p>To commemorate its commitment to fighting for the waterfalls, the stinkbugs and the nitrogen, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/348534/lisa-jacksons-official-portrait-im-guessing-thats-watercolor-jim-geraghty">the EPA commissioned this $40,000 portrait</a> of insane outgoing EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, who spent much of her term breaking the law and conducting business as Richard Windsor using a secret email account.</p>
<p>This portrait of Lisa Jackson captures much of what the EPA does. It puts large wooden doors around waterfalls, so no one can get at them and pollute them, and then stands in front of them letting the pure energy of the falls soak into their bodies to energize them with its natural goodness.</p>
<p>Or, possibly, Lisa Jackson was actually the embodiment of a nature spirit, who, when she was forced to quit after a fake email scandal, became transformed into a waterfall, and is now flowing somewhere in Virginia.</p>
<p>Either that or she has a major bladder control problem.</p>
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		<title>Disgraced EPA Chief Used Fake Name to Coordinate with Liberal Groups</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/disgraced-epa-chief-used-fake-name-to-coordinate-with-liberal-groups/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=disgraced-epa-chief-used-fake-name-to-coordinate-with-liberal-groups</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/disgraced-epa-chief-used-fake-name-to-coordinate-with-liberal-groups/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 21:50:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187964</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New emails released show that Jackson used her fake "Richard Windsor" account to communicate with top liberal groups without them being aware of who she really was. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/art.lisa_.jackson.gi_.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-187969" alt="art.lisa.jackson.gi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/art.lisa_.jackson.gi_.jpg" width="292" height="219" /></a></p>
<p>The Lisa Jackson/Richard Windsor story is getting progressively weirder as new emails released show that Jackson used her fake &#8220;Richard Windsor&#8221; account to communicate with top liberal groups without them being aware of who she really was.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hard to see why Jackson would want to do that unless she was engaged in activities so illegal that she didn&#8217;t trust them or any real life assistant to handle. The current email releases don&#8217;t show anything that bad, but we haven&#8217;t seen all of it. And the only two possible conclusions is that either Lisa Jackson really had something to hide or she was insane.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m going to<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/01/epa-chiefs-alias-email-corresponded-with-environmentalists/"> assume that Lisa Jackson wasn&#8217;t crazy</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>One June 19, 2009 from the Windsor account shows Jackson corresponded with Michelle Depass of the left-leaning Ford Foundation. Depass told Jackson that soon-to-be “EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Shalini Vajjhala was going to work at the White House Council on Environmental Quality while also on payroll at the environmental group Resources for the Future,” according to Vitter.</p>
<p>The emails also seem to indicate that the environmentalists on the email threads believed that Richard Windsor and Lisa Jackson were two different people, when in fact the Windsor account belonged to Jackson.</p>
<p>The emails also show that Michael Martin, CEO of the environmental PR company Effect Partners, thought he was corresponding with Lisa Jackson’s assistant when emailing the Windsor account after he could not reach Jackson using her personal email address.</p>
<p>A March 4, 2010 email from Martin to the Windsor account reads, “Hi Richard, Thanks for your help in getting this information to Lisa this last week….If you are still there, could you please call me at [redacted],”</p>
<p>Jackson replied through the alias account, “Michael, Robert Goulding will call you tomorrow.” To which Martin responded, “Thanks Richard!”</p></blockquote>
<p>So far we&#8217;ve got the usual conflicts of interest and the EPA coordinating with the Green Lobby. It&#8217;s scandalous, but also commonplace. The EPA stopped being an honest broker a while back and became an arm of environmental groups looking to shut down most industries.</p>
<blockquote><p>What is strange is that Lisa Jackson ran this entire scam in her own head, constructing an alias assistant and using that alias to communicate with the Ford Foundation and other groups because she apparently couldn&#8217;t trust a real assistant.</p>
<p>However, the emails released by Vitter also show that Jackson used the account to correspond with former White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, who called the Richard Windsor account Jackson’s “special email.”</p>
<p>A December 12, 2009 email from Sunstein to the Windsor account said, “Hi Lisa — chance for lunch one of these days? At the White House? Maybe next Thurs or Fri? and let me know if/how I can be helpful with anything these days? – Cass (PS I have your special email from my friend Lisa H. – hope that’s ok!)”</p></blockquote>
<p>So Cass was in the know, and being moderately creepy about it. Figures.</p>
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		<title>EPA Chief Steps Down After Secret Email Account is Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/epa-chief-steps-down-after-secret-email-account-is-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=epa-chief-steps-down-after-secret-email-account-is-exposed</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/epa-chief-steps-down-after-secret-email-account-is-exposed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:31:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171254</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The EPA says there is nothing to worry about. “We said three weeks ago that we welcome any investigation,” an agency spokesperson told Politico, promising to cooperate with the investigation.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/epa-chief-steps-down-after-secret-email-account-is-exposed/lisa-jackson-cfact3-543x353/" rel="attachment wp-att-171255"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-171255" title="Lisa-Jackson-CFACT3-543x353" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Lisa-Jackson-CFACT3-543x353.jpg" alt="" width="380" height="275" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/richard-windsor-departure-from-epa-is-a-victory-for-transparency/article/2516944#.UNyReh3AeIA">EPA Chief Lisa Jackson is resigning</a> as an investigation begins into her use of a secret email account under the name &#8220;Richard Windsor&#8221; to avoid transparency and accountability.</p>
<blockquote><p>After years of whispers that EPA officials frequently used private email addresses, fake names and coded messages to circumvent the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Jackson admitted recently to using &#8220;Richard Windsor&#8221; as her chosen nom de plume on a government email account.</p>
<p>That was her choice because it reminded her of a much beloved family pet, she claimed.</p></blockquote>
<p>In the middle of December an investigation began into <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/epas-lisa-jackson-resigning-as-secondary-email-investigation-begins/article/2516938#.UNyROx3AeIA">Lisa Jackson\Richard Windsor&#8217;s </a>misconduct.</p>
<blockquote><p>“Our objective is to determine whether EPA follows applicable laws and regulations when using private and alias email accounts to conduct official business,” assistant inspector general Melissa Heist wrote to the EPA on December 13, 2012, in announcing that an investigation was under way.</p>
<p>House Energy and Commerce Committee investigators asked a similar question. “We seek to understand whether conducting business with an alias has in any way affected the transparency of the agency’s activities or the quality or completeness of information provided to the Committee.”</p>
<p>The EPA says there is nothing to worry about. “We said three weeks ago that we welcome any investigation,” an agency spokesperson told Politico, promising to cooperate with the investigation.</p></blockquote>
<p>That was on the 18th. Ten days later, Lisa Jackson and Richard Windsor and any of the other people living in her head <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/27/epa-administrator-lisa-jackson-resigns/">have left the building</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference,&#8221; she said in a statement.</p></blockquote>
<p>Probably not the right metaphor. The EPA hates ships almost as much as it hates cars and factories. And people. And following the law.</p>
<p>And Obama Inc. loses another stooge.</p>
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		<title>The EPA&#8217;s Disturbing Human Experiments</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/the-epas-disturbing-human-experiments/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-epas-disturbing-human-experiments</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/the-epas-disturbing-human-experiments/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:45:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carcinogens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human experiments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regulations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146415</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unhealthy people purposely exposed to what the agency defines as lethal amounts of toxic gas. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/large_ljackson.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146445" title="large_ljackson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/large_ljackson.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a>If the shocking allegations contained in a lawsuit <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/09/25/epa-sued-over-heinous-experiments-humans">filed</a> last Friday by responsible science advocate Steven Milloy are accurate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a major scandal on its hands. As reported by the <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/09/25/epa-sued-over-heinous-experiments-humans">National Legal and Policy Center</a>, Milloy initiated litigation in U.S. District Court in Virginia, based on evidence he accumulated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He alleges that the EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” said Milloy.</p>
<p>The suit <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-local-editorial-epa-accused-of-illegal-human-experimentation/article/2509226">accuses</a> the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,&#8221; was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its &#8220;permissible limit.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet even that phrase is misleading. In testimony <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/epas_unethical_air_pollution_experiments.html">delivered</a> to Congress in September of 2011, EPA chief Lisa Jackson claimed that exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns&#8211;or less&#8211;was <em>lethal.</em> &#8220;Particulate matter causes premature death. It&#8217;s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,&#8221; she testified at the time.</p>
<p>Milloy learned about the experiments last year, after reading about them in a government-supported scientific journal. In June, he <a href="http://nlpc.org/stories/2012/06/15/epa-bind-over-hazardous-experiments-humans">filed</a> a complaint with the North Carolina Medical Board, accusing Drs. Andrew Ghio and Wayne Cascio, both of whom were employed by the EPA, along with Dr. Eugene Chung, who worked for the University of North Carolina, of violating EPA standards of conduct in human research and the Hippocratic Oath. &#8220;During these experiments, the study subjects were intentionally exposed to airborne fine particulate matter (&#8216;PM2.5&#8242;) at levels ranging from 41.54 micrograms per cubic meter to 750.83 micrograms per cubic meter for periods of up to two hours,” Milloy wrote to Dr. Ralph C. Loomis, president of the NC Medical Board. “The EPA also believes that PM2.5 is carcinogenic to humans,” he added.</p>
<p>Dr. David Schnare, a former EPA litigator who is now director of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit, painted a detailed and chilling picture of exactly how the experiments were conducted. “EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building,&#8221; he revealed. &#8220;The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.”</p>
<p>Milloy added some historic perspective to the mix. “In the context of rules established after scientific horrors of World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the notion that EPA would pipe high levels of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust into the lungs of unhealthy people to see what would happen is simply appalling,” he said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.</p>
<p>&#8220;Unhealthy&#8221; is an accurate assessment. The 41 subjects who took part in the experiment included people who were elderly or suffering from asthma, hypertension or metabolic syndrome. One of them, an obese 58-year-old woman with a history of health problems and family history of heart disease, experienced an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and had to be hospitalized as a result. Another subject developed an elevated heart rate. Both resumed normal respiratory and cardiac functions within two hours&#8211;according to an EPA report.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Enviro-Racketeering</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-enviro-racketeering/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-enviro-racketeering</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rich-trzupek/obamas-enviro-racketeering/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:20:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cellulosic ethanol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OIL]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=118986</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Struggling job producers slapped with fines -- for a green fuel that doesn't exist. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118990" title="eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eyeconic_071111_pump-oil_stone_1122.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>As I have noted on more than one occasion, in recent years the United States EPA has been acting more and more like a revenue-generating arm of the government than an agency that’s actually interested in protecting human health and the environment. A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/energy-environment/companies-face-fines-for-not-using-unavailable-biofuel.html?_r=1">recent story</a> published in the <em>New York Times </em>amply illustrates the point: fuel suppliers are being fined for failing to add a “green fuel” &#8211; cellulosic ethanol &#8211; that doesn’t actually exist into their gasoline blends.</p>
<p>Cellulosic ethanol has long been a particularly prized panacea among environmental groups. As any moonshiner knows, conventional ethanol has long been produced by fermenting naturally grown sugars. These sugars are readily available and relatively easy to get at in corn for example, which is why ethanol production plants commonly use corn as their feedstock.  However, even Al Gore eventually realized that it was rather idiotic to take millions of acres of farmland out of food and feed production in order to “grow” a fuel that (in many gases) actually ends up on the deficit side of the energy ledger. Cellulosic ethanol theoretically addresses those concerns.</p>
<p>There are sugars theoretically available in cellulose, a naturally-occurring polymer found in all sorts of plant life. If you can figure out how to get at those sugars, then you can make ethanol out of things that don’t have a lot of intrinsic value and that don’t compete with food and feed crops, like tree trimmings and corn cobs. Unfortunately, getting at those particular sugars is (for a lot of reasons that would bore the heck out of the average reader) extremely difficult. Like the Chevy Volt, the concept of cellulosic ethanol is very attractive, but the reality is expensive and impractical.</p>
<p>Expense and practicality are hardly matters of concern to environmentalists though. Environmentalists prefer the pixie dust approach to dealing with energy policy: if they believe hard enough, their wishes will come true. They wanted cellulosic ethanol and once Democrats took control of Congress after the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid duly granted their wish. The <a href="http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=IssueItems.Detail&amp;IssueItem_ID=f10ca3dd-fabd-4900-aa9d-c19de47df2da&amp;Month=12&amp;Year=2007">Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007</a> mandated the use of certain minimum quantities of cellulosic ethanol that started at 100 million gallons in 2009 and ends at 16 billion gallons is 2022. (Annual US gasoline sales are about 130 billion gallons, by way of comparison). In 2011, oil companies were mandated to sell at least 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol.</p>
<p>This was a problem for oil companies, because there are no plants currently producing cellulosic ethanol. And so, using her authority under the Clean Air Act, USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson duly issued penalty demands of $6.8 million to oil companies for not using a non-existent fuel.  If the rallying cry in 1776 was “No Taxation Without Representation!”, perhaps the equivalent in 2011 ought to be “No Penalty Without Reality!”</p>
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		<title>The Auto Industry Talks Some Sense into the Obama Administration</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/tait-trussell/the-auto-industry-talks-some-sense-into-the-obama-administration/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-auto-industry-talks-some-sense-into-the-obama-administration</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/tait-trussell/the-auto-industry-talks-some-sense-into-the-obama-administration/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:00:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tait Trussell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[auto industry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAFE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fuel standards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama Administration]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=115952</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An agreement on car mileage rules can save money and jobs—thanks to industry. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/filling_gas_tank.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-116016" title="filling_gas_tank" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/filling_gas_tank.gif" alt="" width="375" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>The automotive industry managed to talk a bit of sense into the Obama administration and thereby save thousands of jobs and probably billions of dollars.</p>
<p>The administration in 2009 had brazenly announced it would change the law for fuel standards, raising the future Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard by four years. Then, earlier this year, the administration laid out four mileage levels—as if to see what it could get away with.</p>
<p>It had called for future (CAFÉ) standards with the highest being 62 miles per gallon by 2025. Then it dropped the requirement to 56.2 mpg in 2025. Still too much to expect, said the industry.</p>
<p>The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers launched a barrage of radio ads in key battleground states charging that the 56.2 mpg fuel economy rules would mean <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/07/automakers-will-air-ads-attacking-obamas-562-mpg-rule/1">job losses</a> and higher car prices just when the industry is making a comeback.</p>
<p>The industry, which has fought mandatory CAFÉ since it was first enacted in 1975, is now, however, more willing to go along with the final standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025 (an increase of 5 percent a year in mpg starting in 2017). The industry agreed partly because of the reduction, plus consumers’ renewed interest in better mileage because of high gas prices, and because of more industry innovations.</p>
<p>The industry’s position of resistance to any higher standard was aided by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), which spent 11 months of <a href="http://www.cargroup.org/pdfs/ami.pdf">extensive research</a> with help of the National Research Council and other sources to examine the effects on mileage, car sales, prices, and other factors. It found the higher standards the administration first called for could raise the average price of a car by $10,000, cut auto sales by a third, and cost hundreds of thousands of car industry jobs in the U.S.</p>
<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) formally unveiled their joint proposal to set the lower but somewhat <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/c153bac1a0f4febc8525794a0061da1f!OpenDocument">tougher fuel</a> economy and “greenhouse gas pollution standards” for model year 2017-2025 for passenger cars and light trucks. They began praising it as if it had been their proposal all along.</p>
<p>Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks are currently blamed by the petroleum-fearing bureaucrats for 60 percent of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.</p>
<p>Their announcement was termed the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to “strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congressional Republicans to act,” as the heads of DOT and EPA phrased it in their totally non-partisan statement.</p>
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		<title>The Government Greenpeace</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-government-greenpeace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-government-greenpeace</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-government-greenpeace/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:10:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=58079</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lisa Jackson's increasingly radical Environmental Protection Agency launches a new scheme to damage the economy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/jackson-lisa-epa-administrator.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58080" title="jackson-lisa-epa-administrator" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/jackson-lisa-epa-administrator.jpg" alt="" width="366" height="275" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">National unemployment rates may be high, but there’s no shortage of work if you happen to be an academic type willing to conduct Environmental Protection Agency-funded research and undertake EPA directed studies. Last October, the EPA formally began the process of creating new stormwater management rules. We’ve actually got quite the pile of stormwater management rules already, including measures crafted during the Clinton administration and then implemented during the Bush administration. But, having never met a regulatory program that went far enough for her tastes, EPA head Lisa Jackson took one look at a report prepared the <a href="http://sites.nationalacademies.org/NRC/index.htm">National Research Council</a> that reviewed the Agency’s stormwater management programs and fell in love. This will come as a shock, but the <a href="http://dels.nas.edu/dels/viewreport.cgi?id=5525">NRC committee</a> that looked into the issue – a committee consisting mostly of academics – concluded that new stormwater regulations are desperately needed.</p>
<p>The NRC’s recommendations are troubling, but entirely typical of what happens when a group of professors get together to decide how to run the world. It should be noted up front that I did not read the NRC’s report in full, since the organization charges the public <a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12465">more than forty bucks</a> to purchase copies of this study, notwithstanding that it is being used to set public policy. No doubt the full report contains a number of hidden gems, but the Executive Summary, which NRC kindly allows citizens to download for free, provides enough of a peek behind the curtains. If Jackson’s EPA follows the NRC’s advice – and history suggests that Jackson generally takes the most radical environmental advice available – then there are more rules coming, more restrictions on your lives and, of course, more tax dollars that need to be redistributed. If you think that using the adjective “radical” to describe the advice Jackson is getting from NRC is a bit over the top, don’t take my word for it. Here’s how NRC describes what is needed in their Executive Summary:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Radical changes to the current regulatory program (see Chapter 6) appear necessary to provide meaningful regulation of stormwater dischargers in the future.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>What kind of radical changes appear necessary? How about having USEPA use its licensing authority to place further restrictions on the formulation and use of even more consumer products? Quoting again from the Executive Summary:</p>
<blockquote><p>“EPA should engage in much more vigilant regulatory oversight in the national licensing of products that contribute significantly to stormwater pollution. De-icing chemicals, materials used in brake linings, motor fuels, asphalt sealants, fertilizers, and a variety of other products should be examined for their potential contamination of stormwater. Currently, EPA does not apparently utilize its existing licensing authority to regulate these products in a way that minimizes their contribution to stormwater contamination. States can also enact restrictions on or tax the application of pesticides or other particularly toxic products. Even local efforts could ultimately help motivate broader scale, federal restrictions on particular products.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, if a product is used outdoors or is part of a machine that is used outdoors, like your automobile for example, it needs to be regulated, restricted and possibly taxed. Just what an ailing economy needs. What could possibly go wrong? It’s easy to imagine some well-meaning EPA committee deciding that tire residue left on the street, to take one example, helps deteriorate stormwater quality. Ergo, the EPA should come up with standards for tire wear. Of course such standards might make tires more expensive, but that’s not EPA’s problem; they’re here to save a planet or two. Or perhaps such standards would unintentionally lead to more blowouts, but that will be the tire manufacturer’s fault, not EPA’s. Of course I don’t know if any of this is going to happen as far as tires are concerned, but that kind of thing will inevitably happen somewhere when EPA sticks its nose into the free market. It always does. The EPA is Exhibit A when it comes to demonstrating the timeless truth that is the Law of Unintended Consequences.</p>
<p>NRC also believes that another layer of bureaucracy is necessary to better manage stormwater. They believe that stormwater permitting should be “watershed based,” a proposal that would essentially create a new regulatory authority in between the local agencies that already have jurisdiction over stormwater and state and federal agencies charged with overseeing their programs. How to pay for more rules and more bureaucracy? The federal government ought to pour more money into these programs of course.</p>
<p>The regulated community isn’t quite as fired up about NRC’s recommendations as is Lisa Jackson. Many members of the regulated community recently commented most unfavorably about these proposals. Their comments are part of <a href="http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=EPA-HQ-OW-2009-0817">the USEPA docket</a> covering a proposal to start gathering information in anticipation of formulating new rules. Ironically, the regulated community offering damning comments in this case doesn’t consist of evil corporations, it’s rather made up of the organizations that are currently responsible for stormwater management which, like the EPA itself, are units of government. The question of whether one regulatory agency can regulate so much so as to offend fellow regulators has thus been answered in the affirmative. The <a href="http://nafsma.org/">National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies</a> (NAFSMA) commented on EPA’s proposed Information Collection Request (ICR) wondering, among other things, why EPA was abandoning the Phase 1 and Phase 2 stormwater management practices that have been put into place already. From NAFSMA’s comments, dated December 23, 2009:</p>
<blockquote><p>“In addition to our comments on the specific elements of the ICR, NAFSMA must express its strong concern that EPA’s announced intention to promulgate a substantial change to the Phase I and Phase II stormwater program, based on this ICR, constitutes a breach of the current regulations and the program evaluation agreement reached through the Stormwater Phase II Federal Advisory Council Act (FACA) in which NAFSMA was an active and involved participant with three of our members involved throughout the process.”</p></blockquote>
<p>That’s from an organization representing almost one hundred state and local stormwater management agencies, serving about 76 million people. Many comments in the docket from individual agencies themselves are similarly critical, of both the approach the EPA is taking and the manner in which it’s approaching the issue. I can’t recall the last time local environmental agencies were this critical of their federal counterpart. That ought to tell you something about what’s happening in Lisa Jackson’s EPA. Admittedly, I’ve never been a big fan of the EPA, but then I have to work them, so my perspective is a tad jaded. Still, while no friend of industry, the EPA has traditionally blunted most of the worst excesses that extreme environmental groups would otherwise foist on America. No longer. There’s little to distinguish between Greenpeace and Lisa Jackson’s EPA.</p>
<p>When pressed, you can usually get an honest, informed environmental advocate to admit that our air and water actually got cleaner under George W. Bush’s administration, as they have under every administration since Nixon’s. The problem they say, such as it is, is the Bush didn’t “go far enough.” That’s a political argument, not a scientific one, because no Republican president can ever “go far enough” to satisfy the environmental movement. Bush’s EPA promulgated regulations reducing mercury emissions from power plants on a massive scale. It wasn’t enough. Bush’s EPA faithfully followed George H.W. Bush’s wetlands restoration policies, such that we had many more wetlands when W left office than when he first took the oath of office.</p>
<p>It wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. Most veterans in the EPA understand the politics involved and take that kind of criticism with more than a few grains of salt. Lisa Jackson appears to have swallowed the most extreme environmental activist arguments whole and, mostly unnoticed by both the press and policy-makers, has unleashed a series of crippling initiatives that will do untold damage to the nation’s economy at a time we can least afford it.</p>
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		<title>The War on Coal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-war-on-coal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-war-on-coal</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:21:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50434</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How a new regulatory scheme could undermine coal power and raise energy costs for Americans. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/coal-power-plant.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50447" title="coal-power-plant" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/coal-power-plant.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="330" /></a></p>
<p>The United States Environmental Protection Agency is soon expected to make a decision that could have an enormous impact on coal-fired power plants across the nation and, by extension, on the cost of energy and building materials. No, we’re not talking about greenhouse gas regulations here. The question that USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson must answer is this: Should the ash generated from the burning of coal be classified as a hazardous waste or not? It’s a decision that has the potential to pile more costs onto the price of energy at a time we can least afford it.</p>
<p>The Agency began considering reclassification following a <a href="http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/24/tva-ash-spill-crews-mount-round--clock-cleanup/">disastrous release</a> of 1.7 million cubic yards of fly ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant, a large coal-fired power station located east of Knoxville,  Tennessee, in December 2008. That release, caused by the failure of an earthen retention wall, caused many environmental groups to renew their call for the USEPA to classify coal ash as a hazardous waste.</p>
<p>Such an action would be another way to undermine coal-fired power, forcing coal-fired power plants not only to dispose of the ash they generate, but to pay a premium to do so. The cost to dispose of ash as a hazardous waste is typically four or five times higher than the costs to dispose of it under a lesser classification. Coal fired power plants generate about 130 million tons per year of ash. If we conservatively assume that the cost of ash handling would rise by approximately $200 per ton, reclassification would cost over $25 billion per year, and those costs would inevitably be passed along to consumers.</p>
<p>The Sierra Club, and other environmental groups, maintain <a href="http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/09/coals-ash-is-on-the-line.html">that this action is necessary</a> because coal ash contains, among other things:”…arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, boron, thallium, and aluminum – toxic heavy metals that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and neurological disorders, and which clearly threaten nearby communities and ecosystems.”</p>
<p>True enough, as far as it goes, but your body and mine also naturally contain measurable amounts of arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, boron, thallium, and aluminum. The relevant question is not whether these elements are present in ash, but how much is present and in what form. The ancient adage, “the dose makes the poison” applies, but the Sierra Club and other environmental groups generally steer well clear of that sort of analysis. Fortunately, USEPA has standard methodologies for determining whether wastes exhibit toxic characteristics sufficient to classify such wastes as hazardous. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) analyzed samples of coal ash from eighty different plants across the country, following USEPA’s evaluation methodology. Results of these analyses showed that none of the ash could be classified as hazardous wastes following USEPA’s own rules.</p>
<p>The worst part of this ill-considered over-reaction to an isolated incident is that it would undercut one of the <a href="http://www.epa.gov/osw/partnerships/c2p2/index.htm">most successful recycling programs</a> in the nation. Without any government interference, the free market led coal-fired power plant operators to look for markets for coal ash and they have been spectacularly successful in doing so. Today, millions of tons of coal ash are used to produce cement, make bricks, build roadways and in a wide variety of other beneficial ways. According to EPRI’s analysis, recycling ash saves the equivalent of thirty two billion gallons of oil in energy annually, and – for those concerned about global warming – displaces eleven million tons of greenhouse gases per year, simply by utilizing an inert byproduct that could only be replaced by increased mining operations. What’s not to like?</p>
<p>But, if the Sierra Club has its way, coal ash will not be recycled in the future. USEPA rules prohibit the use of hazardous wastes in manufacturing processes. A decision to classify the coal ash as hazardous wastes, despite all of the scientific evidence that they are not, would not only drive up the cost of operating coal-fired power plants, it would also make manufacturing the many products that utilize coal ash as a raw material that much more expensive. Given the state of the economy this would be a foolish, unpardonable decision.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.epa.state.il.us/director/">Doug Scott</a>, the Director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, who has been close to the decision-making process, addressed the issue during a City Club of Chicago luncheon earlier this month. For a while, it seemed that USEPA was determined to press on with the reclassification and damn the consequences. According to Scott, that might not happen. In recent weeks, he said, the Agency has been more receptive to creating a multi-faceted regulatory structure instead. Power plants that use surface impoundments to store their ash, like the Kingston plant, would face tougher oversight, but USEPA would not impose rules that would undercut ash recycling.</p>
<p>If this happens, it would be absolutely the right decision. The Agency should work hard to make sure that a release like the Kingston event doesn’t happen again, but it would be foolish and irresponsible to further undermine the power industry, the manufacturing sector and the economy while doing so.</p>
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		<title>Politicizing Smog &#8211; by Rich Trzupek</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:03:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration’s new smog standards will mean higher costs for millions of Americans. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45878" title="smog-infinite-wilderness_1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/smog-infinite-wilderness_1.jpg" alt="smog-infinite-wilderness_1" width="500" height="324" /></p>
<p>Last Thursday, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-smog-pollution-08-jan08,0,3711459.story">plans </a>to lower its standard for urban ozone, popularly known as smog, to a level between 60 and 70 parts per billion. This would be the fourth such reduction since the implementation of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s.</p>
<p>The original standard was 120 parts per billion, a goal that was reduced under the Clinton administration to 80 parts per billion in 1997 and further reduced under the Bush administration to 75 parts per billion in 2008. The Clinton-era reduction in the smog standard was widely-hailed among environmental groups, while the further reduction during the Bush administration was roundly criticized by those same groups.</p>
<p>“Using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier,” USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/D70B9C433C46FAA3852576A40058B1D4">said in a press release</a>. The “best science” refers to the advice of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) a purportedly independent board of scientists who participate in the process of setting increasingly more stringent definitions of clean air.</p>
<p>However, USEPA is not supposed to base its decisions solely on CASAC’s recommendations. <a href="http://www.epa.gov/groundlevelozone/standards.html">According to the EPA</a>, the “scientific community, industry, public interest groups, the general public and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)” all get to play a role whenever the Agency sets new standards. That formula, which every president from Nixon through Bush has employed, has been effectively tossed out the window by the Obama administration, which has chosen to defer to CASAC.</p>
<p>The fact that CASAC picked the lowest proposed standard as the best proposed standard should come as no surprise. Of <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabpeople.nsf/WebExternalCommitteeRosters?OpenView&amp;committee=CASAC&amp;secondname=Clean%20Air%20Scientific%20Advisory%20Committee">the seven CASAC members</a> four are engineers, modelers and one eco-systems analyst, all of whom are wholly unqualified to opine on issues regarding public health. The remaining three have a vested interest in seeing lower smog standards promulgated, since all are academics whose research funding depends on air pollution alarmism. CASAC chair Dr. Jonathan Samet, for example, has spent a great deal of his professional career decrying secondhand smoke and is also an advisor to the American Lung Association (ALA), an organization that spends a great deal of time and money lobbying for more restrictive smog standards. Another CASAC member, Dr. Helen Suh MacIntosh, was once <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/introducing_ask_1.php">the answer lady at treehugger.com</a>.</p>
<p>EPA estimates the costs of implementing new smog standards at $19 to $90 billion, but the Agency hastens to add that the benefits will total $13 to $100 billion. The benefits consider only avoided costs, in terms of reduced medical care, worker productivity (due to a reduction in sick days) and the like. Factors like increased unemployment, due to reduced profit margins in the manufacturing sector, and the increased cost of goods and services associated with a tighter standard are not part of the analysis. Further, when estimating the cost of compliance, the EPA acknowledges that it factors is the unknown cost of installing controls that haven’t yet been invented yet.</p>
<p>One of the biggest reasons that EPA and organizations like ALA say that this new, drastically more stringent, standard is necessary is to prevent childhood and other forms of asthma. In the last thirty years, data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics indicate that childhood asthma as increased by over 150%. However, in that same period, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/ozone.html">according to USEPA monitoring data</a>, smog concentrations have decreased by 25% nationwide.</p>
<p>If adopted, the new smog standards will significantly increase the cost of living for millions of Americans. They will be forced to purchase low-vapor pressure, and therefore more expensive, special formulations of gasoline. Vehicle inspection programs, ubiquitous to large metropolitan areas, will spread to mid-sized metropolises. Remotely-located power generation facilities, heretofore untouched by smog rules, will have to install and maintain expensive new control systems and will pass that cost along to consumers. Perhaps most distressing of all, the beleaguered American manufacturing sector, which has so far managed to escape the most painfully expensive parts of clean air regulation, will face new mandates that will make it even more difficult to compete against plants overseas that are not similarly constrained.</p>
<p>But, for the Obama administration, there is nothing to lose. At the absolute earliest, the new smog standard will require industry compliance in 2014. Given the inevitable legal challenges and regulatory inertia that accompany any rule making of this type, the full effects won’t likely be felt until 2016 or beyond. Thus, the president has once again written another I.O.U., one that he won’t have to cash, but will be rather deferred to another generation that will be faced with the Hobson’s choice of paying the bill or of rejecting the “consensus” that Obama has embraced.</p>
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