pRESIDENT TEES OFF FROM ABANDONED OIL RIG

"A recent study by IHS CERA concluded that a more-efficient and timely permitting process could create more than 200,000 new jobs in the United States, one-third of which would be generated outside the Gulf region in states like California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York. In today’s world, that amounts to a stimulus package in itself - and one that doesn’t require American taxpayers to foot the bill."

Lori LeBlanc in The Washington Times October 19 2011. (Left click on image for full story).

SO2 Air Pollution control Equipment

A recent Krugman pontification comes under fire.  "Instead of the intellectual vandalism that typifies too much of Paul Krugman’s writing, it would be more useful if he returned to writing about economics…with facts.....What evidence does he use to support this cynicism? Krugman points to the billions of dollars of estimated damage from pollution as proof that the American right is unwilling to address pollution issues. He ignores the phenomenal pollution control costs we already pay and the surprising political forces behind them."

TORCHING: Eco-terrorist weapon of choice

We all agree. What could be more praiseworthy than defending Planet Earth and/or life on it? But today’s Environmentalist Movement, however noble its goals (and perhaps unwittingly) has hatched, harbored and given cover to some of the most unsavory elements in American society.  Anti-war and anarchism of the 1960s has resurfaced as Eco-Terrorism. “Although ample precedent for radical protest has long existed in America, the FBI pegs the rampage of organized 'direct action' arson, theft, vandalism, harassment and violent physical attacks allegedly to save the environment or hype animal rights, as beginning only in 1977. Regardless of when a blastoff date is pinpointed, the insurrection took off running.” (Double left click on image for full story).

By Bill Rife

Courtesy: AP

EDITOR'S CHOICE: From Huffpost Green, March 21 2011: MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Federal regulators on Monday gave the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant a 20-year license renewal, despite calls for reconsideration following the nuclear disaster in Japan. Issuance of the license was a foregone conclusion after the NRC voted to approve it on March 10, one day before an earthquake and tsunami triggered the still unfolding crisis at the Fukushima reactors in northeastern Japan, which are of the same design and about the same age as Vermont Yankee. (Click on image for full story)

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller

EDITOR’S CHOICE: Posted By Nicholas Loris February 9th, 2011 on the Heritage Foundation’s "Energy and Environment"  site. (www.heritage.org). “The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding gives the agency justification to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2), under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA already began targeting motor vehicles last year and will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse-gas-emitting plants (more than 25,000 tons of CO2 per year) this year. (Left click on image for full story)

Courtesy/Jasonjeffrey.worldpress.com

The President’s appointment of yet another “czar” (sorry, “czarina”) means yet more federal overreach. Elizabeth Warren’s title, “Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” forebodes creation of another sprawling government agency, one which may well be intended to give the feds control of the country’s entire financial structure. The prospect of the stock market, our credit cards and Wall Street itself in Big Brother’s pudgy paws is too disheartening to imagine. The bright idea for this Bureau of Financial Protection sprang from that Fannie-Freddie tainted twosome: Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank. That says it all.

By Bill Rife

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Gulf birds soar again/Mariacat.worldpress.com

BP Officials say the Deepwater Horizon well is close to being permanently capped. When this actually happens it will be despite the counterproductive roles played in the spill crisis by a plodding federal government and the Obama administration. Cleanup efforts all along the way were stymied by bureaucratic turf battles, organizational infighting, unnecessary federal permitting delays, and massive paper work. Operations had to be coordinated through five layers of approval and command before responders could be dispatched to the scene.

By Bill Rife

ASPEN, COLORADO/nyportraits.blogspot.com

ASPEN THINKERS UNEASY: At the 2009 Aspen Institute’s Conferences, an annual gathering of the country's brightest lights, President Obama was the toast of the town. The mood has soured considerably in the last 12 months. Lloyd Grove, one of the president's supporters, has written on the Daily Beast that among the intelligentsia Obama’s support has run dry. “You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen meetings in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own."

 "In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave by the Aspen Institute think tank would be seen as President Obama’s natural base. Apparently not so much.” Mort Zuckerman, owner of the NY Daily News, and Boston Properties and one of the most successful businessmen in the country said: “The hostility (by Obama) to the very kind of business culture that has made this the great country is now doing great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.”

netizennewsbrief,blogspot.com

EDITOR’S CHOICE: “Energy Pipedreams” by Robert Samuelson appeared recently in Realclearpolitics.com. He writes “Just once, it would be nice if a president would level with Americans on energy. Barack Obama isn't that president. His speech the other night was about political damage control -- his own.”

A CREATIVE BORDER CROSSING

The catastrophic Gulf Oil Spill has deservedly eclipsed Immigration in the headlines. But environmental wreckage wrought upon U.S. Soil by the Border Crashers may be no less a Long Term Disaster. And what does the Sierra Club say?

By Bill Rife