Featured
Featured
Bowing to the demands of House Republicans and some business leaders, President Obama is backing off a controversial proposed regulation tightening government smog standards.
In a statement Friday, Obama said he had ordered Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposal, in part because of the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.
The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment report showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month -- and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.
The withdrawal of the proposed EPA rule comes two days after the White House, at the request of House Speaker John Boehner, identified seven such regulations that it said would cost private business at least $1 billion each. The proposed smog standard was estimated to cost anywhere between $19 billion and $90 billion, depending on how strict it would be.
Featured
A 350-pound lump of coal will become part of game day festivities for Mountaineer players.
West Virginia University is creating a new tradition. The Mountaineers are expecting a delivery of a lump of coal weighing more than 350 pounds. Click here to read more from West Virginia Illustrated.
Featured
Since everyone has a suggestion or three about what President Obama can do to get the economy cooking again, here's one of ours: Immediately suspend the Environmental Protection Agency's bid to reorganize the U.S. electricity industry, and impose a moratorium on EPA rules at least until hiring and investment rebound for an extended period.
The EPA is currently pushing an unprecedented rewrite of air-pollution rules in an attempt to shut down a large portion of the coal-fired power fleet. Though these regulations are among the most expensive in the agency's history, none were demanded by the late Pelosi Congress. They're all the result of purely bureaucratic discretion under the Clean Air Act, last revised in 1990.
As it happens, those 1990 amendments contain an overlooked proviso that would let Mr. Obama overrule EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's agenda. With an executive order, he could exempt all power plants "from compliance with any standard or limitation" for two years, or even longer using rolling two-year periods. All he has to declare is "that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so."