Discussion for article #223361
The Chamber of Commerce said the rule would cost $50 billion to the economy and kill jobs.
Iâm betting the CoCâs PR people donât even type that into a document any more: They just hit a keystroke and it goes to a template with an algorithm that comes up with a different number.
Itâll be the usual thing:
Climate Change? âScience not in, and even if it is, itâs not our problem!â
GOTP? âSOHHHSHULLISSST!â
Dems in Red states? âUmmmmmâŚâ
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While Obama has made major reductions in carbon pollution from cars and trucks by increasing fuel efficiency, manufacturers cooperated after an $85 billion government bailout.
This is just too funny!!!
Obama has made major reductions in carbon pollution from cars and trucks? ROTFLMAO!!! So it was Obama who caused the oil prices to spike to never before seen levels a few years back and caused a huge demand for fuel efficient and electric cars?
I guess on the same token itâs Obamaâs fault that many so called âgreen companiesâ that have received billions upon billions of federal money are now failed and mostly bankrupt? Is that how it works? Oh dearâŚ!!!
âBillions upon billionsâ? Child, PLEASE! Compare that to the TRILLIONS of dollars GOP Presidents have shoveled at industries theyâve done their level-best to prop up, only to have them come back and say, âMore, please!â You want to get out the yardstick and measure the dollars, joystick? Trust me, you will lose!
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Obama jawboned unheard of concessions from automakers and heâs got them to agree to raising mpg by rather significant amounts. He did it! And you are dead wrong about âgreen companiesâ being bankrupt. Go ask Elon MuskâŚ
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I think Krugman recently rebutted the CoC claims and rather definitively. He also said that the CoC no longer even really believes their own blah blah blah.
Mainly what bugs me is that the MAJOR advances by Obama are announced by the press, including here, as full of pitfalls, bugs, and illusions. I wonder if any objective reporting has ever been done on the actual significance of what the president has done in framing the issues and acting on them.
âPerilsâ indeed.
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Every minute not spent doing anything about carbon combustion is another minute in lost opportunity cost, so the CoC argument is specious right out of the gate. The real shame is that policy did not move in the 1960s when the costs would have been far more modest, species decline less serious and population issues addressed. Global carbon emissions need to start falling 2-3% a year, and 20% of that can come from the US.
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As is your habit, you make disingenuous remarks not based in fact and expect us to believe the bilge you post.
Once again, a Massive Fail for youâleaving your record intact.
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a) Millions, not billions.
b) Program started under George W. Bush.
c) One of several companies went bankrupt. Most of the recipients have thrived.
d) The amount spent on clean energy is a fraction of what special tax breaks for oil companies cost the Treasury every year, and yet I hear nothing from you lamenting this unfair intervention into the working of the free market.
e) Dunning-Kruger Syndrome Look it up.
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Yes, specifically this is what Krugman explained in his blog and a subsequent column:
So, is $50 billion a lot? Letâs look at the CBOâs long-term projections. These say that average annual US real GDP over the period 2014-2030 will be $21.5 trillion.
So the Chamber is telling us that we can achieve major reductions in
greenhouse gases at a cost of 0.2 percent of GDP. Thatâs cheap!
He further implied that the Chamberâs pearls-cluching was akin to Dr. Evilâs pronouncement of âOne. Million. Dollarsâ
P.S. The chamber also doesnât factor in the jobs created by controlling carbon, nor savings accrued by mitigating the externalities caused by uncontrolled carbon emissions.
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Jesus, what an egregiously stupid, shockingly uninformed and wrong-heated pile of AP horseshit.
At the crux of the problem is Obamaâs use of a 30-year-old law that was not intended to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. Obama was forced to rely on the Clean Air Act after he tried and failed to get Congress to pass a new law during his first term. When the Republicans took over the House, the goal became impossible.
Well, everybody knows that old laws arenât actually legally the law anymore!
Idiot. Fucking dimwitted plutocrat ballwashing idiot. The âold lawâ of which this corporate-submissive twit speaks is, of course, the fucking Clean Air Act. Possibly, one or two of her readers might have recognized it and seen the connection between that law and the regulation of shit spewing into the goddamned air from coal burning plant smokestacks thatâs causing catastrophic environmental damage had she had simply called it by itâs fucking goddamned well-known name instead of dismissively referring to it as âa 30 year old law.â
And god forbid she undertake to learn and inform her readers that by its plain terms, the CAA requires the EPA to regulate âair pollutantsâ and defines âair pollutantsâ as âany air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.â
And whatever we do, letâs not even think about disrupting the Official Centrist Approved CW narrative by mentioning that the Supreme Fucking Court of the United Fucking States held in 2007 that CO2 is an âair pollutantâ under the act that the EPA is legally required to regulate under the CAA, overruling a Bush Administration attempt to argue otherwise. No, instead, let us do whatever is necessary to hammer the facts of this story into the official plutocrat authorized frame of Obama outrageously abusing âexecutive authorityâ rather than say, Obama following the clear mandate of the law as decreed by the godless communist haters of the free market on the Roberts Court.
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Choices for the dirtiest words in todayâs politics: Chamber of Commerce, followed by National Rifle Association, followed by The Federalist Society.
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There, fixed it for you. Youâre welcome.
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Facts are annoying things arenât they?
âNow, special interests and their allies in Congress will claim that
these guidelines will kill jobs and crush the economy,â Obama said in
his address. âLetâs face it, thatâs what they always say.â
And, theyâve been saying this sort of thing for years. If the economy has been crushed and jobs killed, itâs not because of regulations; itâs been the Republicans in congress have been the purveyors of crushing and killing with their mindless obsession with the âfree marketâ [free market, my ass], âdeath taxesâ, unwarranted wars and the obligatory tax cuts. And yet, the MSM continues to repeat this bullshit without any critical analysis as if this claptrap were the foundation of serious evidence-driven policy.
These assholes need to be trussed up and suspended head-down in the chimneys of the Navajo Generating Station at peak operating hours.
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It was Obama who pushed through the the new CAFE standards that were held up for eight years under Bush.
So, let me ask, does your mommy pay someone to walk around and wipe the drool from your chin or does she just put a bib on you before she sends you down to the basement to play on your computer?
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Sing it, mah Brutha!
This isnât underhanded, sneaky or unprecendented. It is what the law intended, and what the President and EPA are required to do!
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ââŚThere are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breatheâŚâ
In plain English, Republican Party policy defends the right of every person, corporation, church, and government agency to suck every bit of oxygen out of the atmosphere whether anybody likes it or not.
To oppose the Republican policy is to oppose capitalism.
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Thatâs the thing that makes me so goddamned furious that Iâve reverted to the more, er, colorful language of my Kentucky roots.
Heâs the president. His job is to execute the laws. The Supreme Court has held that the Executive Branch is required to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant under the CAA, After trying, for far too long, frankly, get Congress to weigh in, thatâs what heâs doing. Itâs just the president doing the job of executing the laws.
And yet, somehow, whenever this particular president executes the laws, itâs framed as illegitimate, arrogant, overreaching, yada yada yada. The last one can lie us into a war that kills tens of thousands, ignore laws left and right, issue hundreds of âsigning statementsâ proclaiming his right to ignore the law as written when it conflicts with an over-inflated conception of executive power, throw Americans in prison without trial or recourse to counsel, and itâs all just presidentinâ as usual, but let this one just do the job as itâs supposed to be done and somehow, itâs âoverreaching.â
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It will be interesting to see how the TPP (that Obama is shoving through behind the curtain) affects this all.
Legislation designed to address climate change, curb fossil fuel expansion and reduce air pollution could all be subject to attack by corporations as a result of TPP. Additionally, the deal could criminalize internet use, undermine workersâ and human rights, manipulate copyright laws, restrict government regulation of food labeling and adversely impact subsidized healthcare.