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| Marita Noon |
Noon: President Scuttles One Reg...More to Go?
Obama Re-thinking EPA's Radical Approach
Daily Caller - President Barack Obama has told his Environmental Protection Agency to back down from new ozone level standards the agency has been pushing. The EPA had aimed to reduce the acceptable level of ozone in any given region from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion. If they were implemented, the regulations would have forced local governments that fail to attain this goal to develop their ozone-reduction plans. On Friday, however, Obama announced that he doesn’t support the regulations. “The President has instructed me to return this rule to you for reconsideration,” Obama’s regulatory czar Cass Sunstein wrote to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. “He has made it clear that he does not support finalizing the rule at this time.”
Sunstein wrote that Obama has told him to “work closely with all executive agencies and departments” to “implement” the president’s executive order aimed at cutting back on regulations. “The President has instructed me to give careful scrutiny to all regulations that impose significant costs on the private sector or on state, local or tribal governments,” Sunstein’s letter explains. The EPA ultimatum comes mere hours after August jobs numbers came out showing a net total of zero new jobs in August. “This letter is perfectly timed with today’s announcement that the economy produced zero jobs in August, the first time this has occurred since the end of WWII,” Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government told The Daily Caller. “The letter details a litany of job killing actions by the EPA during Obama’s presidency while delaying the issuance of one more economy-destoying rule. If the President was serious, he would fire Lisa Jackson and rescind her regulatory war on coal and other fossil fuels.” As additional reasoning for why Obama shot down the EPA rule, Sunstein cites critics’ existing complaints: the Bush administration’s new standards in 2008, and the Clean Air Act’s lack of a requirement for the EPA to revisit standards until 2013. “The Act explicitly sets out a five-year cycle for review of national ambient air quality standards,” Sunstein wrote to Jackson. Issuing new standards before 2013, Sunstein says, “would be problematic in view of the fact that a new assessment, and potentially new standards, will be developed in the relatively near future.” Read full story here: News New Mexico
Nichols: Obama Better Give One Hell of a Speech
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| John Nichols |
The Nation - On the eve of a Labor Day that will mark the unofficial launching place of his 2012 re-election campaign, on the eve of an address to Congress that could be the most important of his presidency, there is no good economic news for Barack Obama. A net total of zero jobs were added in the month of July, for which economic data was released Friday morning. In addition, Friday’s report revealed, the number of hours worked by the average American has begun to decline. And hourly earnings have dropped. So even if Americans are employed, they are working less and making less. “These numbers, with no net job creation at all—and 14 million people officially unemployed—show that the economy is dead in the water.” says Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America’s Future. But that’s not the scariest part of the story. While the official unemployment rate held steady at 9.1 percent—almost twice the level that former US Senator Hubert Humphrey and former US Congressman Gus Hawkins identified as a unacceptable when they were pushing their Humphrey-Hawkins full-employment bill in the 1970s—the real rate continues to grow worse.
The broad measure of unemployment—the Department of Labor’s U-6 figure, which includes the long-term unemployed and under-employed—rose to 16.2 percent (from 16.1 percent in June). That’s the highest level this year. The 16.2 percent figure is, by any honest measure, the real unemployment rate. And it is ticking upward. Why? Because the United States has failed to create jobs at a rate to keep up with population growth. How big a failure are we talking about? Consider these facts: The number of employed Americans in July 2011 was 139,296,000. The number of employed Americans in July 2004, 139,556,000. So there are 260,000 fewer people working today than when George Bush was in his first term as president. Yet, the US population grew during the period from 2004 to 2011 by almost 20 million—from 292,892,000 in July 2004 to 312,150,000 today. Read full column here: News New Mexico
Saunders: Solyndra Debacle Spotlights Obama's Folly
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| Debra Saunders |
Rube that I am, I didn't understand what Obamaland was thinking. Solyndra had not turned a profit since it was founded in 2005. The plant in which Obama stood was bankrolled with a $535 million federal loan guarantee. Two months before, PricewaterhouseCoopers questioned Solyndra's "ability to continue as a going concern." If the president wants to send a positive message on the U.S. economy, I wondered, then couldn't his people have found a California company that doesn't rely on a federal loan and actually makes money? Bad advance work, I figured. A month later, Solyndra canceled a planned $300 million public offering. In November, Solyndra closed its older plant and cut its workforce. Today Solyndra's lights are out. Now I am wondering: Isn't there some graybeard in the White House who -- knowing that the president won't look good if the tax-funded solar plant folds -- does some digging to make sure the president's choice of venue will not come back to haunt him? Read full story here: News New Mexico
Special Session and U.S. Senate race compete for attention
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| Jay Miller |
Week in Review
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| Susana Martinez |
No doubt the story of the week at News New Mexico emerged on Tuesday when when we linked to a video depicting Governor Susana Martinez' proficiency with a firearm on our site. The video, still available on YouTube, showed Martinez knocking down one iron target after another. She performed the feat in Las Cruces last week after re-qualifying for her "conceal and carry" weapon license. It was an impressive display of marksmanship by the Governor. The video went viral on the Internet within 48 hours of our show. You can see if here if you missed it. We enjoyed played the audio of her bullets hitting their targets all week to the delighted chuckles of listeners all over the state.
We actually began the week posting a profoundly insightful column by columnist and contributor Marita Noon. Her column addressed the importance of having reliable oil and coal energy sources at our fingertips so we can PREVENT all sorts of national disasters associated with loss of electrical power. Noon cited an absurd statement made recently by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The gaffe-prone Reid said coal and oil are “killing” us.
No doubt New Mexico Senators Bingaman and Udall as well as Representatives Heinrich and Lujan agree with Harry Reid, since they vote virtually lockstep with him to drive up traditional energy prices. We cannot wait to see who or what these elected officials blame next, when the naive national energy policies they routinely support continue to make it much more likely that New Mexicans will have to endure energy blackouts and higher gas prices.  |
| Al and Tipper |
Early in the week 
News New Mexico announced an agreement to make the brilliant political cartoons of Tony Branco part of our standard content on this site. We began posting Branco cartoons on Monday courtesy of conservativedailynews.com. We actually sought out the originator of these remarkable cartoons and are thrilled to now be associated with Branco. His talents are boundless and the appearance of his cartoons each day is reason enough to make newsnm.com your homepage. Please tell your friends and family. Each day we find ourselves anticipating what Tony will serve up as much as we do our first cup of coffee.
News New Mexico announced an agreement to make the brilliant political cartoons of Tony Branco part of our standard content on this site. We began posting Branco cartoons on Monday courtesy of conservativedailynews.com. We actually sought out the originator of these remarkable cartoons and are thrilled to now be associated with Branco. His talents are boundless and the appearance of his cartoons each day is reason enough to make newsnm.com your homepage. Please tell your friends and family. Each day we find ourselves anticipating what Tony will serve up as much as we do our first cup of coffee.  |
| Charles Ponzi |
There was a double dose of bad news for the Obama administration late in the week. First came yet another dismal “no jobs” report that showed that there is no economic fruit to be harvested from the massive Keynesian stimulus plan that was promoted by President Obama. Of course job seekers should not be so simplistic as to blame the impact of the naive economic policies solely on the president. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Udall, Ben Ray Lujan, and Senate wannabe Martin Heinrich all voted for the hair-brained borrow and spend schemes too. It truly was a community (organizer) effort.
And in what could turn out to be a somewhat related note, a Deming gun store owner and his family were arrested on charges by federal law enforcement officials late in the week. Many suspect, given that operation “Fast and Furious” appears to be nothing more than a botched attempt at tearing down 2nd Amendment rights, that making gun store owners look bad is part of the DOJ plans to further divert attention away from the scandal. All alert observers should take charges filed against these southern New Mexico business people with a huge grain of salt. The burgeoning “Fast and Furious” scandal is now threatening to take down Attorney General Eric Holder and many of his associates. And DOJ and ATF are looking for scapegoats. It would seem that any American business that directly serves those who still “cling to their “bibles and their guns,” are on notice.
Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk issued a decision on Friday concerning a tribal gaming application made by New Mexico businessman (and Bill Richardson confidant), Gerald Peters. Peters, working on behalf of the Pueblo of Jemez, made an application that attempted to take off-reservation advantage of gaping holes in the tax laws that apply to tribes with operations on their reservations. Peters’ group was wisely denied permission to develop a class III gaming facility nearly 300 miles from the Jemez reservation boundaries. With the ruling the Interior Department probably short-circuited a scheme that might have cost the New Mexico state government tens of millions of dollars in lost gaming tax revenues not to mention thousands of jobs in the city of Sunland Park. Huge tax revenues currently come from Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino and surrounding businesses. Had the Peters scheme gained Interior Department approval (and also been allowed to pass by the governor’s desk), the lost gaming tax revenues would NOT have been replaced by the off-reservation casino revenues. Immediately after the ruling, collective sighs of relief could be heard from the city of Sunland Park, New Mexico and other taxpaying entities in the area.
And finally, in what has to be the front runner for the Hypocrites of the Year Award story, the radical environmentalist group “New Energy Economy” filed a ridiculous motion to force the recusal of three Environmental Board members for what it called “bias.” We recall there once was an un-elected EIB that was stacked with completely biased job-killing environmentalists under Bill Richardson. Those zealots managed to do to New Mexico what its elected officials refused to do. The board enacted outrageous “rules” that would have permanently crippled paycheck providing industries all over the state. The radicals justification for insisting on economic suicide can be summed up as follows: They were engineering a unilateral effort to “Save the Planet” no matter what it costs. And now it seems that since the current EIB has silly members that somehow think saving jobs and paycheck writing businesses in the state is more important than propping up a dumb idea, the New Energy Economy types believe there is a “bias” at work. The most comical aspect of this motion is the name of these Kool-Aid drinkers selected for their organization. They are not "new," they know nothing about viable and affordable "energy," and they only thing they can do to the state’s “economy” is…. kill it.
Lizard Wars: Obama's Fish and Wildlife Officials in Eddy and Chaves County Next Week
Both county commissions have passed resolutions against the listing of the lizard as an endangered species. In April, Rep. Pearce joined over 700 New Mexicans at a rally opposing the listing that has drawn national attention. The species is already protected by Candidate Conservation Agreements, which Congressman Pearce has supported as a commonsense approach to protect both the species and New Mexico’s jobs in this difficult economic climate.
Obama Re-thinking Job Killing Regs
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International Business Times - The U.S. President, Barack Obama, has shelved the controversial plan to tighten air-quality rule on Friday, said the officials. The rule designed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was aimed to reduce emission of health-threatening smog, but irked the congressional Republicans and businesses in the U.S. Businessmen and Republicans welcomed Obama's decision of abandoning the "job-killing" smog rule saying it showed his growing sensitiveness toward the presently decimated American economy, whereas environmentalists criticized the decision describing it "unfortunate" and a "new low for President Obama."
They have accused him of being defeated by the corporate polluters, and the American Lung Association said they are preparing to take legal action against Obama. "This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health," said the dismayed Gene Karpinski, the President of League of Conservation Voters. However, the administration defended their decision saying it was based on merits and certainly not forced by the industry pressure. Read full story here: News New Mexico
EPA Setting Stage for Electricity Blackouts in Texas....too
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| Four Corners Power Plant |
"Had this incremental reduction been in place in 2011, ERCOT would have experienced rotating outages during days in August," the report said. Rotating power outages are implemented as an emergency measure when electricity demand is close to exceeding power supplies from generators. Peak power consumption hit record levels that exceeded 65,000 megawatts on several days of exceptionally high temperatures in August, causing ERCOT to implement initial emergency measures and putting it close to instituting rotating outages. The Environmental Protection Agency, in a statement responding to the ERCOT report, said Texas "has an ample range of cost-effective emission reductions options" for complying with the rule "without threatening electricity reliability or the continued operation of coal-burning units." Read full story here: News New Mexico
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