Discussion for article #234541
McConnell doesn’t care what happens to the environment. he’ll be long dead by the time earth becomes uninhabitable for humans. His ‘give me mine and everyone else can bugger off’ attitude is sickening.
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Meanwhile, conservative politicians even farther to the right call for Mitch McConnell’s resignation for appearing to acknowledge such a thing as “global environmental concerns.”
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Is there anything that republicans do that doesn’t come off as cartoonish evil villains twirling pointy mustaches?
I read somewhere else that not only did Mitch write an op-ed urging states to ignore the new EPA rules, he is also providing what has been described as a well-researched legal argument that would enable them to do so.
Apparently, President GW Bush’s former EPA Administrator, the Republican Christine Todd Whitman, also penned an op-ed in which she criticized Mitch for his stance.
The ironic thing is the EPA rules provide flexibility to states to craft their own guidelines; if states do not do so, the federal government would impose their own guidelines on those states.
It’s like when the Republicans rejected the House’s call in 2009 for a federal health exchange in favor of state exchanges that presumably would be more responsive to local needs. The Senate version of the ACA that passed included state exchanges with the proviso that if states did not establish their own exchange, the feds would – which is pretty much what happened in most Republican-led states…
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Now…you arrest the FIRST one who doesn’t follow the rule and along with him you arrest McConnell as an accessory.
Okeydokey.
Then no FEMA money.
Good luck, Florida. Get the money from Scott’s personal bank account. After all, you REELECTED him.
but yet they continue to be re-elected
I would expect McConnell to take this position. He’s not the one who worries me. What does worry me is that Lawrence Tribe agrees with him, and I would imagine that is the source of the legal strategy McConnell has outlined for states to follow.
From the New York Times:
To make his case, Mr. McConnell is also relying on a network of powerful allies with national influence and roots in Kentucky or the coal industry. Within that network is Laurence H. Tribe, a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a former mentor of Mr. Obama’s. Mr. Tribe caught Mr. McConnell’s attention last winter when he was retained to write a legal brief for Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal producer, in a lawsuit against the climate rules.
In the brief, Mr. Tribe argued that Mr. Obama’s use of the existing Clean Air Act to put forth the climate change regulations was unconstitutional. He then echoed that position in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. He argued that in requiring states to cut carbon emissions, and thus to change their energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.
The article also notes that Peabody Energy is a long-time major contributor to McConnell’s election campaigns.
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In addition to stopping state-level enactment of the climate rules, Mr. McConnell’s strategy is intended to undercut Mr. Obama’s position internationally as he tries to negotiate a global climate change treaty to be signed in Paris in December. The idea is to create uncertainty in the minds of other world leaders as to whether the United States can follow through on its pledges to cut emissions. – New York Times
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Agree on all your points. It’s truly a full-court power play.