After Killing Your Job and Your Healthcare Republicans Are Now Targeting the Air You Breathe

[babylonsister]

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/02/24/killing-job-healthcare-republicans-targeting-air-breathe.html

After Killing Your Job and Your Healthcare Republicans Are Now Targeting the Air You Breathe
By: Rmuse
Monday, February, 24th, 2014, 10:15 am


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Since their preferred manner of killing is slow death, Republicans are methodically defunding the Environmental Protection Agency to either abolish the agency or eliminate its ability to protect Americans from poison in the water they drink and toxins in the air they breathe. It is slow death by environmental poison the Koch brothers and dirty energy industry are paying ALEC-directed Republicans to implement, and this week Republicans are demanding that the Supreme Court eliminates the EPA’s authority to regulate the poison the dirty energy industry’s coal-fired power plants, chemical facilities, and oil refineries are releasing into the environment with impunity.

The question the court will address today is if the EPA extended its authority by including greenhouse gases to the list of pollutants it may regulate under permits it said was necessary because new emissions standards for passenger cars “triggered” a need to regulate greenhouse gas pollutants under permits for new facilities. The greenhouse gases have been deemed an endangerment to “public health or welfare.” According to the Clean Air Act, the environmental watchdog is allowed to review permits to decide if the necessary technologies to limit poison in the air are being used in the construction and powering of plants. Republicans in the employ of the Koch brothers and dirty energy industry have already boasted slashing the EPA budget 20% over the past three years, and passed legislation in the House banning the agency from inspecting and enforcing clean air and water regulations in the states, so it is no surprise they are appealing to the High Court to ban the EPA from fulfilling its mandate to review permits for compliance with the federal Clean Air Act.

In a brief to the Court filed by perennial moron Michele Bachmann and other House Republicans, they claim the 2010 EPA regulations are “an intolerable invasion of Congress’s domain that threatens to obliterate the line dividing executive from legislative power.” The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Energy and Power, Ed Whitfield (R-KY), complained that “the agency has been expansively construing its legal authorities under the Clean Air Act, and this ever-growing web of regulations has the potential to be the most complex, far-reaching and expensive in the agency’s history, and reflects an unprecedented expansion of regulatory control over the U.S. economy.”

Whitfield, like every murderous Republican fails to comprehend that the EPA’s regulatory control is not over the U.S. economy, that purview belongs to the Federal Reserve. The EPA’s regulatory control is over the dirty energy industry’s wanton disregard for Americans’ lives and whether they have the right to clean air and water that Republicans contend they do not. One of the reasons Republicans are taking the EPA to court is to secure a ruling against the environmental agency to reinforce their contention that climate policies under the Obama Administration are an abuse of power. One wonders if Republicans consider it is an abuse of power because the President is attempting to thwart their killing spree, or simply for attempting to protect Americans while being Black; it is likely a combination of both.

It is glaringly apparent that there is no end to the ways Republicans are attempting to kill Americans and there is little doubt that even the dirty energy industry knows clean air and water regulations are critical to protect the lives of Americans. In fact, the CEO of Exxon recently joined a lawsuit detailing the deadly consequences of fracking in close proximity to his home in Texas at the same time he complained about EPA environmental oversight. When the EPA attempted to fulfill their mandate and oversight in drilling operations he said “This type of dysfunctional regulation is holding back the American economic recovery, growth, and global competitiveness. There are important questions about the things that people worry about, and we have an obligation to address them, and we devote a tremendous amount of effort in addressing those. But as long as we as an industry follow good engineering practices and standards, these risks are entirely manageable. It’s all just a matter of perspective.” True, it is a matter of perspective until him and his family’s life is endangered by the unregulated dirty energy industry and then his perspective changes to join a lawsuit to keep the poison away from his home.

The GOP’s barbaric killing spree is only matched by their method of killing off Americans slowly at the hands of the energy industry whose concern is killing the EPA, regulations, and Americans. At least the Republicans’ embrace of the NRA’s gun proliferation scheme for regular street shootouts means a quick death whereas starvation, ill-health and disease, or carcinogen-laden air and water is a slow painful demise that no animal deserves. Republicans have proven time and time again there is nothing Americans need that they will not kill whether it is jobs, unemployment benefits, good wages, regulations, the economy, and poor working Americans who are barely surviving. Killing the EPA is a new standard because all Americans, rich and poor, are dependent on clean air and water. Republicans will kill by toxins. It is unclear if Republicans will ever end their killing spree, and the danger to Americans is they are in a veritable killing frenzy like ravenous sharks in a feeding frenzy, and with ALEC, the Koch brothers, the oil and coal industry providing unending campaign cash as an incentive to continue, no American is safe.

[freshwest]

1. Yup, they can't wait for a Rand Paul presidency, since he runs on eliminating the EPA...

Let the 'free market' decide who will live and die. De-population by any other name is the same thing. Toss that bleeding heart liberal Jesus portrait into the dumpster!

[louis-t]

2. I remember talking to a 'Libertarian' on the phone.

Business contact, somehow got on the subject of de-regulation. I asked him if it would be ok if a company killed 3,000 people because their product was defective and before the words got out of my mouth he yelled "THAT WOULD HAPPEN EXACTLY ONCE!!!11" I said "My, how Republican of you to let 3,000 of your fellow citizens die for your ideology."

[freshwest]

3. Well said. As long as he got his first, he'd let 'em all FOAD. n/t