The EPA Is Rotten To The Core

000Once again proving they care nothing about jobs, the economy, or our pocketbooks, the EPA  slashed the maximum allowable sulfur content in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 ppm, claiming its new Tier 3 rule will benefit society up to $19 billion in annual health benefits by 2030.  Using Obamamath they calculate that this change will add less than one cent to the cost of gasoline.  Personally I think they’ve been sniffing too many fumes.

Industry sources say the EPA is lying.  Imagine that!  The Tier 3 rule will require $10 billion in upfront capital expenditures  and an additional $2.4 billion in annual compliance expenses, not counting the increase in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and will easily add another five to nine cents per gallon to your weekly fill-up, all to reduce monthly ozone levels by just  1.2 parts per billion, during rush hour.  That is equivalent to twelve cents out of every one hundred million dollars or 1.2 seconds out of 32,000 years.

It’s not like you can’t trust EPA science right?   According to an article by Ron Arnold at the Washington Examiner,  the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is a joke.  A voting majority of these unbiased ‘scientific’ advisors are on  the EPA payroll.  Fifteen of the 20 CASAC ozone review panelists received $180.8 million in EPA grants, the largest of which,  $51.7 million, went to Ed Avol of the University of Southern California; the lowest, $102,000, went to Michelle Bell of Yale University.  The seven members of the panel’s executive committee took $80.2 million of the total.  Any claim that the 15 grant recipients on this panel have “complete independence” from the EPA, as federal law requires, when their careers have depended on EPA grants of such magnitude is a disgusting farce.

The EPA’s and their environmental lackeys, the American Lung Association and the Sierra Club, also claim that this rule will significantly reduce asthma in children.  That is another false claim.  While it  is true that incidents of asthma in children has been on the rise yet at the same time, air pollution has decreased.

And the American Lung Association doesn’t have clean hands either.  Between 2001 and 2010, the EPA paid them $20 million and those payments are still ongoing.   The EPA also buys “independent”  scientific review from those squeaky clean environmental pressure groups like the Sierra Club.

Since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, America’s cars have eliminated some 99% of pollutants that once came out of tailpipes, according to Joel Schwartz.  Since 2004, under Tier 2, refiners have already reduced sulfur in gasoline from an average of 300 ppm to 30 ppm, a 90% drop, on top of pre-2004 reductions.  And because newer cars start out cleaner and stay cleaner throughout their lives, fleet turnover is reducing emissions by 8 to 10 percent a year.

The Clean Air Act, Information Quality Act, Executive Order 12866 and other federal laws require that federal agencies assess both the cost and benefits of regulation chances and implement them ONLY if the benefit clearly exceed and justify their cost.    But, like most of Obama’s agenda driven agencies, the EPA ignores laws they don’t like while inflating benefits and minimizing  or completely ignoring their adverse impacts on energy supplies, prices, jobs, the economy and your pocketbook.

According to studies by the Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Government Accountability Office, total compliance costs for all federal regulations range to nearly $2 trillion a year,  resulting in millions of lost jobs, less jobs created and steadily declining quality of life for millions of Americans, who can barely afford to heat or cool their homes, pay the rent or mortgage, or save for their retirement.

The Tier 3 rule change is just the latest in the EPA’s escalating war on America to force us into compliance with the U.N. global warming scam.

It’s time for Congress  to grow a set and defang the EPA  as a  serious danger to businesses, energy independence, our pocketbooks, the rule of law, and U.S. sovereignty.     Remember, this is an election year and your vote counts.  Any U.S. lawmaker who claims to be  serious about creating new jobs, lowering energy costs and preserving our constitutional form of government must make gutting this rogue bureaucracy their top priority or else.

 

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