POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Administration: Let’s tweak that AGW law a little

The EPA is monstrous, and the administration wants to put it on steroids:

The administration, I suspect, does not want the Court to rule that the political question doctrine precludes tort litigation against CO2-emitters, because it wants the only solid, durable shield for industry to be the EPA’s “displacement” of common-law injury claims via the agency’s endangerment rule and ensuing regulatory cascade under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

In other words, just as the administration used the endangerment rule to try and spook Congress and industry into supporting cap and trade, it is now using CO2 tort litigation to try and spook them into supporting — or at least not aggressively attacking — EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act.

*******

The significance? This case is a very big deal: if litigators can sue large utilities for emitting CO2, they can also sue smaller utilities and manufacturers. Indeed, they can in principle sue anyone and everyone. Utilities, after all, only emit CO2 in the process of serving customers who use electricity. People lighting their homes, powering their factories, and running their laptops are ultimately to blame for destroying the planet, according to the “science” invoked by plaintiffs. In their worldview, everybody is injuring everybody else — which implies that everybody has standing to sue everybody else. Plaintiffs may preach “green peace,” but they sow the seeds of a war of all against all.

Welcome your new unelected masters, children.

Of course, the foregoing analysis assumes that Congress intended the CAA to be a statutory scheme for regulating greenhouse gases — exactly what opponents of EPA’s shocking power grab deny. The point, however, is that the Obama administration is attempting to manage rather than eliminate the threat of litigation chaos. The price we must pay for such “protection” — not spelled out but clear enough from the terms of Team Obama’s argument — is support for (or at least acceptance of) EPA’s Court-awarded authority to Kyotoize the economy.

That's exactly what it is: a protection racket. Government continues to arrogate powers away from us, because it's in our own best interests.

More President Thug-Boy policy in action:

Remember, you have a right to these overlords.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Cops Brutalize, Arrest Alaskan LaRouchite for Hate Crime

of criticizing Obama:

Brave liberal voices of outrage drowned out by crickets.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Convicted of Fraud, Ugo Madubuike’s Facebook Friends Predominantly Black

I only mention it because Beck's crowd was so overwhelmingly white.

A former employee of the state Division of Youth and Family Services was sentenced in federal court today to three years and four months in prison for stealing $800,000 by filing hundreds of phony federal tax returns and claiming refunds using the personal information of clients he pulled from state files.

Ugochukwu Madubuike, 30, of Orange [NJ], pleaded guilty in April to mail fraud, conspiracy to pass forged checks and lying to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Madubuike was a family services specialist with DYFS from June 2004 to November 2007. He admitted stealing confidential information from files to submit fraudulent tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

The returns resulted in more than 200 refund checks that were sent to addresses to which Madubuike had access. He forged the signatures of the payees on those checks, according to the charges, and deposited the checks into bank accounts controlled by him and a co-conspirator, Onyinye M. Nwokeji, 27, of Irvington.

NTTAWWT. It's just something I noticed. I consider it likely that he was driven to this act of desperation by his inability to get typical white people to friend him.

RELATED: Law school failed lawyer by not teaching business ethics.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Why Unions Need Exemption from Donations Disclosure Laws

Because Democrats don't get enough PAC money:

Top 20 PAC Contributors to Candidates, 2009-2010

PAC Name | Total Amount | Dem Pct | Repub Pct
Honeywell International $2,760,600 55% 45%
AT&T Inc $2,597,375 50% 50%
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,561,123 98% 2%
National Beer Wholesalers Assn $2,244,500 56% 44%
American Assn for Justice $2,202,500 97% 3%
Operating Engineers Union $2,109,300 89% 11%
American Bankers Assn $1,981,430 39% 61%
American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees $1,869,500 100% 0%
International Assn of Fire Fighters $1,843,500 83% 17%
National Assn of Realtors $1,818,298 58% 41%
Boeing Co $1,765,000 59% 41%
Teamsters Union $1,732,910 98% 2%
American Crystal Sugar $1,729,500 68% 32%
American Federation of Teachers $1,682,250 100% 0%
Laborers Union $1,670,000 96% 4%
Lockheed Martin $1,657,950 58% 42%
Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union $1,646,500 98% 2%
Credit Union National Assn $1,598,446 58% 42%
National Air Traffic Controllers Assn $1,594,900 83% 17%
Plumbers/Pipefitters Union $1,554,075 96% 3%

Totals include subsidiaries and affiliated PACs, if any.

*For ease of identification, the names used in this section are those of the organization connected with the PAC, rather than the official PAC name. For example, the "Coca-Cola Company Nonpartisan Committee for Good Government" is simply listed as "Coca-Cola Co."

Based on data released by the FEC on August 22, 2010.

More transparency: Fed doesn't want to cough up bailout docs.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Leonard Pitts: You Ain’t We

But even by those standards, Glenn Beck's effrontery is monumental. Even by those standards, he goes too far. Beck was part of the "we" who founded the civil rights movement!? "No." Here's who "we" is.

"We" is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. "We" is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. "We" is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. "We" is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. "We" is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. "We" is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of "Bonanza," lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

Those are some nice choices, Leonard. Let's see: Harry Belafonte's a committed Castroite, who, as far as I know, hasn't denounced torture or black civil rights abuses in the Socialist Paradise. Shirley and Charles Sherrod have some 'splainin' to do. Brando was a great actor and committed civil rights advocate, but his personal history is rather checquered; it seems not debatable that he could have been a better father, had he taken that role more seriously. May we add Sean Penn?

Even so, what registers most about Mr. Pitts' piece is what it doesn't include, such as the effrontery of huckster Al Sharpton claiming the mantle of Rev. King. Racial healer Jesse Jackson, Sr, wanted to cut Obama's nuts out. Jesse, Jr, was prominently mentioned at the Blago trial as willing to pay up for a Senate seat, and the prosecution lost in part because of their attempt to limit the damages to the Chicago mobstablishment (as well as a ringer in the jury). C'mon, get real: that's just the way it is.

Oh, almost forgot Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X's killer was never brought to justice, but I don't suppose Louis knows anything about that.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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IRS Holds Up Non-Profit Status for Z Street

because it contradicts administration policy.

J Street, though: no problem.

On the other hand, the US is helping build and restore mosques worldwide.

Full disclosure: My brother-in-law is a practicing Muslim who is no longer welcome to return to his father's country, Syria, because of the criticism of the government that the book contains.

UPDATE: Mo' monies for Islamic Brotherhoodlums

RELATED: Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin's on US taxpayers underwriting pro-Palestinian ads in Israel

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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MSM Covers the Beck Rally

Best commentary comes from Treacher, who notes a common observation that has nothing to do with talking points provided by the Obama camp or JournoList (as Ed Morrissey noted on Twitter last night), that the crowd was . . . predominantly white!

Actual crowd estimates varied considerably, from "droves" to 87,000 (plus or minus 9000), the latter an estimate commissioned by CBS news. Apparently they think it was the equivalent of a well-attended baseball game.

Church Lady didn't watch any of it, but assumes that Americans are disgruntled because of . . . Satan.

UPDATE: Cubachi on Pujols and LaRussa getting grief for attending.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Dude Who Murdered 5 in Lake Havasu, AZ, Was Internet Scammer

Here's the story.

You can read a speedboat thread about him, here.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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