You Can’t Contain the Clean Air Act
Posted February 24th, 2009 at 11.25am in Energy and Environment.
This Sunday climate czar Carol Browner said the Obama Administration will soon “make an endangerment finding” on carbon dioxide and said, “the next step is a notice of proposed rule making” for new regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. According to the Wall Street Journal, Browner claims that the Obama Administration “would limit regulation to facilities over a certain size” but as we have pointed out many times, the Clean Air Act does not for such selective enforcement.
Chamber of Commerce vice president William Kovacs told WSJ: “Once carbon dioxide is regulated, they can no longer contain the Clean Air Act…and it would completely shut the country down.”
The New York Times adds:
If the environmental agency determines that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, it would set off one of the most extensive regulatory rule makings in history.
…
“Potentially, it’s a huge mess, not only for E.P.A. but for state regulatory agencies, because the Clean Air Act is second only to the Internal Revenue Code in terms of complexity,” said Mr. Holmstead, now director of environmental strategies at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.He said that under the clean air law any source emitting more than 250 tons of a declared pollutant would be subject to regulation, potentially including schools, hospitals, shopping centers, even bakeries, which has prompted some critics to call it the “Dunkin’ Donuts rule.”
- Author: Conn Carroll
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February 24, 2009 Dick, Washington, D.C. writes:
In 2000, a jury found that the EPA, under then-administrator Carol Browner, was guilty of race, sex, and color-based discrimination, and that Ms. Browner tolerated a hostile work environment. During subsequent oversight hearings of the Congressional Science Committee, the Chairman instructed Browner to clean up the working conditions at EPA so the next administrator wouldn’t get handed “a garbage can.”
Despite promising to do so under oath, Ms. Browner never accepted the jury’s findings as EPA Administrator. She never disciplined any of the senior managers under her supervision at EPA who were implicated in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner. She never stopped the appeal process in the case. It was her successor, Christine Todd Whitman, in her 1st act as EPA Administrator, who announced that the verdict in Coleman-Adebayo would not be appealed, and that the Agency would accept the jury’s findings.
Congress was so outraged by the conditions within EPA, that it passed unanimously in both houses the NoFEAR Act (Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation) 2001 and mandated that all Federal new hires be instructed in Coleman-Adebayo v Browner within 90 days, and that all Federal workers receive the instruction every 2 years.
Apparently, being found guilty of discrimination by a jury of her peers, having Congress enact legislation to outlaw her administrative behavior, and mandate that all Federal workers be instructed in Coleman-Adebayo v Browner was not enough to derail Ms.Browner’s career, or to prevent the retaliation against Dr. Coleman-Adebayo from the EPA that continues to this day.
These are not “allegations,” they are matters of public record.
The core of the case in Coleman-Adebayo v Carol Browner was Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. President Obama is a civil rights attorney. The question of justice in this matter has not been adequately addressed, with Ms. Browner’s ascension back into the heights of power, while Dr. Coleman-Adebayo, who stood up for civil rights for all Federal employees was thrown under the bus where Rosa Parks, a generation before her, took her stand.
The media need to start asking the president, Ms. Browner, and new EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, what the public is to make of this regrettable case of a whistleblower being vilified, while her tormentors, Carol M. Browner, and the staff Browner left behind at EPA are still retaliating, still discriminating against whistleblowers (who may be able to prevent poisonous peanuts from killing people). The very system and many of the same managers — so vilified by the courts, Congress, and the Executive, are still thriving within the EPA after 8 years and two administrators since Browner’s departure.