United States Biden administration policies and actions - megathread

DarthOne

☦️
Biden Apparently Thinks $5 Gas Isn't Painful Enough - His EPA Is Attacking America's Largest Oilfield



In case you were wondering whether the Biden administration could do anything more to cripple the U.S. fossil fuel industry, the answer is yes.

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering an “ozone violation designation” for portions of the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, according to Bloomberg News. The Permian Basin is located in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

In a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that this action “could lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump by reducing production, increase the cost of that production, or do both.”

The Permian Basin, he informed the president, accounts for 25 percent of our nation’s gas supply — 95 million gallons per day — and 40 percent of all oil produced domestically.

Abbott emphasized that this decision was entirely discretionary and that Biden had the power to stop it.

“If you do not, this action alone might serve as a catalyst for economic harm leading to an even deeper reliance on imported foreign energy and a faster economic decline into the pending recession by forcing even more pain for American consumers to pay at the pump,” the Republican governor wrote.

He concluded by saying, “Because time is of the essence in these EPA proceedings, I must hear back from you by July 29, 2022. If the EPA’s proposed redesignation is not suspended by that date, Texas will take the action needed to protect the production of oil — and the gasoline that comes from it.”



Greg Abbott
@GregAbbott_TX


Governor candidate, TX
President Biden's EPA seeks to stop gas production in the Permian Basin. This will raise gas prices EVEN MORE. This action is completely discretionary. Biden has the power to stop it. Read my full letter:
FWR76qfWAAI8nhc




2:50 PM · Jun 27, 2022·Twitter Web App

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A fact sheet on this proposal prepared by the U.S. General Services Administration says: “In 2017, EPA designated certain counties in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas located in the area known as the Permian Basin attainment/unclassifiable for the 2015 ozone NAAQS.

“EPA is now considering a discretionary redesignation for (portions of) these counties in New Mexico and Texas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS under Clean Air Act section 107(d)(3) based on current monitoring data and other air quality factors. If the area is redesignated to nonattainment, the state(s) will be required to submit a State Implementation Plan to bring the area into attainment with the 2015 ozone NAAQS.”

This action was instigated by the conservation group WildEarth Guardians, according to Bloomberg. It said monitors had found that “average ground-level ozone levels” had exceeded “the 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion several years running.”

The group petitioned the EPA in March 2021 and later threatened legal action if nothing was done.

Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth’s climate and energy program director, told Bloomberg this designation “basically says you’ve got to clean up this mess or the consequences are going to get even more severe as far as restricting your ability to permit more pollution and more development.”

If parts of this region are found to be in violation of the ozone limits, state regulators would have three years to bring those areas back into compliance.

Bloomberg spoke to Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, about the effects an EPA attack on the Permian Basin might have on future energy development.

“Creating uncertainty on permitting and inserting unnecessary regulatory barriers will only negatively impact the production necessary to meet the needs of consumers,” he said.

Why would this administration even consider moving forward now with a plan that would further discourage oil companies from starting new projects? A rhetorical question.



Rep. Chip Roy Press Office
@RepChipRoy

REMINDER: President Biden is LYING when he says he is not restricting new oil and gas drilling The Permian Basin is the top producing oil field in the world -subjecting it to more regulations will worsen the pain American families are feeling at the pump
bloomberg.com
World’s Biggest Oil Field Faces Pollution Rules That Could Curb Drilling
Biden administration is weighing tougher anti-smog rules that could curb drilling in the Permian Basin


12:15 PM · Jun 27, 2022·TweetDeck

At a time when some Americans are forced to choose between putting food on their table or filling their gas tank, this idea should have been dismissed out of hand.

While Biden claims to care about the rising cost of gas, his administration’s actions say otherwise.
 

DarthOne

☦️
Biden Wants A Filibuster Carve-Out — But Only For Democrats


… but that’s not how it works.

DAVID HARSANYI
Joe Biden was in Madrid today attacking American institutions. “The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States,” the president said of the Dobbs ruling, which sent the abortion issue back to the democratic process where it belongs. (Is this the first time in American history that a president has criticized a branch of his government on foreign soil?)

Biden went on to say that he wants to “codify Roe v. Wade into law,” and “f the filibuster gets in the way … we should provide an exception to the filibuster to deal with the Supreme Court decision.”

Now, it’s become tedious to point out the shameless, unmitigated hypocrisy of the Democrats on the filibuster. Once upon a time, Biden called the filibuster “one of the pillars of American democracy,” and now he agrees with his former boss that it’s a “relic of the Jim Crow era.” Biden, who knows a bit about Jim Crow, had nothing to say on the matter from 2017-2020 when Democrats deployed the filibuster more than 300 times during the Trump administration — easily a record.

In 2017, in fact, 30 Democrats signed a letter written by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, defending the filibuster as an imperative tool in maintaining the “deliberative” composure of the legislature. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., argued in 2018 that abolishing the filibuster “would be the end of the Senate.” He was right then. And maybe that’s the point. Now that his party is unable to unilaterally dictate policy, he says the filibuster has a “death grip” on American democracy.

Anyway, you’ll notice that Biden’s carve-outs only apply to his party’s legislative priorities. Last year, the president also advocated for a filibuster carve-out so Congress could cram through a bill that would have overturned thousands of voter-integrity laws around the country and created a corrupt national election infrastructure. That exemption was justified by the hysterical notion that asking a voter for ID, among equally rational regulations, was an assault on democracy.

What special justification is there for creating a carve-out for codifying Roe? It is a highly divisive issue. Polls show that the idea of codifying Roe nationally isn’t particularly popular. And when more voters learn that the president’s preferred policy would legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy on demand for any reason, paid for by taxpayers, it will be even less popular. This is why Democrats need to circumvent legislative norms in the first place. But since states can now, thanks to the Supreme Court, legislate their own abortion policies, there is no need for federal regulation.

Moreover, there is no such thing as a carve-out, anyway. After Harry Reid blew up that 60-vote threshold for short-term political gain in 2013, perhaps under the impression that Democrats would be running Washington for the foreseeable future, his party paid a heavy price. Today, one imagines Democrats believe that they’ll either be able to demand the parties live by two sets of rules when the time comes — as they do with so many other issues — or their long-term goal is to hollow out the filibuster.

I lean toward the latter point of view. The progressives’ crusade to end the filibuster is a Constitution-eroding, radical play to nationalize politics by empowering slim and fleeting majorities to institute wide-ranging, generational policies. First, they make the mistake of believing their own press, which constantly tells them their ideas are immensely popular. Second, they make the mistake of believing that Republicans won’t have the nerve to do the same. They used to be right about that, though it’s a risky proposition these days.

Whatever the case, just as there was no such thing as a carved judicial filibuster exemption specially crafted for Democrats, there will be no special exemptions for the legislative filibuster. In 2024, Republicans may well be in a position to repeal any new Roe-codifying law and pass an abortion ban. There is absolutely no reason for Republicans to allow Democrats to make carve-outs and not do it themselves. Back and forth it would go, with states and municipalities constantly being impelled to change their policies. Few things would be more destabilizing than allowing one party to overturn state laws and rely on centralized federal control without consensus or compromise. That is far more destabilizing than any SCOTUS ruling.

Abortion isn’t a federal concern just as it wasn’t a constitutional concern. And the filibuster, as usual, does the nation a great service.




 

DarthOne

☦️
Supreme Court deals Biden climate agenda serious blow with EPA decision



The Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, ruling Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot pass sweeping regulations that could overhaul entire industries without additional congressional approval.

The 6-3 decision limits how far the executive branch can go in forcing new environmental regulations on its own.

"Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’ But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d)," Chief Justice John Roberts said in the Court's opinion, referencing Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. "A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body."

The case stemmed from the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan which aimed to reduce carbon emissions at power plants by pushing a shift from coal, to natural gas, and ultimately to wind and solar energy. The plan was put on hold by the Supreme Court in 2016, and then repealed by the Trump administration and replaced by the less extreme Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule.

After President Biden took office, the ACE Rule became the subject of litigation that led to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacating that rule as well as the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The Biden EPA, however, has stated that it will not reinstate the Clean Power Plan, opting instead to develop and implement its own plan.

The question of how much power the EPA has was based on a provision in Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which grants the EPA power to set "standards of performance" for existing sources of air pollutants as long as they take into account cost, energy requirements, and non-air health and environmental impacts.

The Trump EPA, in repealing the Clean Power Plan, took the position that Section 111 only let them determine measures to be implemented at the physical power plants themselves (an "inside-the-fence-line" restriction) and not broadly-applied measures for entire industries.

Similarly, West Virginia and other states claimed that Section 111 does not allow the EPA to go so far as to make rules that would completely reshape American electrical grids or force industries to eliminate carbon emissions altogether.

West Virginia’s argument is based on the "major questions doctrine," which says that even though federal agencies generally have broad rule-making power as delegated by Congress through the statutes that create them, when it comes to issues of major economic and political significance to the country those statutes need to have clear language to support the agency’s action. When the Trump EPA repealed the plan in 2019. it cited the major questions doctrine.

The Biden EPA claimed that the major questions doctrine did not apply in this case, arguing that there was no issue of such great significance. During oral arguments, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asserted that there cannot be a major question because there is no current rule in place.

"Under our precedents, this is a major questions case," the Supreme Court said in its majority opinion," stating that the EPA is arguing that the existing law "empowers it to substantially restructure the American energy market[.]" The Court noted that the EPA derived this "newfound power" from "the vague language of an ‘ancillary provision’" that "had rarely been used in the preceding decades."

The Court stated that the EPA's new interpretation of the law "was not only unprecedented; it also effected a ‘fundamental revision of the statute[.]’"

Given the nature of this interpretation, the Court said it was skeptical that this is what the law truly intended.

"To overcome that skepticism, the Government must—under the major questions doctrine—point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ to regulate in that manner," the Court said, ultimately determining that the EPA failed to find such authorization.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, along with Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. Kagan described the seriousness of climate change and the risks posed if significant change is not made when it comes to carbon emissions.

"Congress charged EPA with addressing those potentially catastrophic harms, including through regulation of fossil fuel-fired power plants," Kagan wrote.

The dissent argued that Section 111 indeed authorizes the EPA to make broad changes because it allows the EPA to choose the "best system of emission reduction."

"The ‘best system’ full stop — no ifs, ands, or buts of any kind relevant here," Kagan said.

Kagan also echoed an argument made during oral arguments by U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, that there was no reason for the Court to even hear this case given that the Clean Power Plan no longer exists, and the Biden administration is working on a new plan.

"Yet this Court determined to pronounce on the legality of the old rule anyway," Kagan said, adding that "because no one is now subject to the Clean Power Plan’s terms, there was no reason to reach out to decide this case." Kagan said that the majority opinion "is really an advisory opinion on the proper scope of the new rule EPA is considering," and that the Court "could not wait — even to see what the new rule says — to constrain EPA's efforts to address climate change."
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Supreme Court deals Biden climate agenda serious blow with EPA decision

Weirdly enough, modern coal plants are hitting the upper limits of thermodynamic efficiency for fossil fuels. If it wasn't for the ash and airborne soot no one would give a shit. With modern emission control systems they're actually far less polluting, on a per kWh basis, than my 23yr old car.

It's rated at 23city/32highway. It's more like 21/29 these days because the engine and drivetrain have two decades of wear on them.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Biden Wants A Filibuster Carve-Out — But Only For Democrats


The democrats should be smart enough to understand the law of political retailation.

Right now abortion is a state issue, that means that california and texas can run things as they please. The democrats support is in the litteral dumps and things keep getting worse. Even with rampant cheating their likely to lose the sennate and the House, because people are simply that pissed off.

trying to do a special carve out for their pet cause when the public mood is this ugly....not a smart thing.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
The democrats should be smart enough to understand the law of political retailation.

Right now abortion is a state issue, that means that california and texas can run things as they please. The democrats support is in the litteral dumps and things keep getting worse. Even with rampant cheating their likely to lose the sennate and the House, because people are simply that pissed off.

trying to do a special carve out for their pet cause when the public mood is this ugly....not a smart thing.
Something I've realized after reading that excerpt from the book Skin in the Game that Agent23 posted a link to a while back, is that the establishment are not nearly as smart as they believe they are.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Something I've realized after reading that excerpt from the book Skin in the Game that Agent23 posted a link to a while back, is that the establishment are not nearly as smart as they believe they are.
No one is as smart as they think they are. A physicist with a PhD probably won't respect the guy who mows his lawn until he has to do it on a summer afternoon when the wet bulb* is about 90F.**

* The temperature between what thermometers read (dry bulb) and the dewpoint where evaporating water stops cooling the air because water in the air is condensing as fast as liquid water is evaporating.

** At 92-93F dry the air is hotter than your skin. At 95F wet you are dead without some form of artificial cooling within minutes.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Something I've realized after reading that excerpt from the book Skin in the Game that Agent23 posted a link to a while back, is that the establishment are not nearly as smart as they believe they are.

The problem with the modern intlectual class is a lack of conquences.

When you can put forward an idea and have said idea cause massive havok and recieve no conquences for fucking up that tends to lead to bad things.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Well that's bull crap. You get that in swampland around the Gulf a number of times a year. It sucks, but people still work in it.
He's not completely wrong but dramatically overstating the lethality. 95F Wet can theoretically kill you but it takes hours of exposure, not minutes, and just getting into the shade and resting periodically is typically enough to survive it handily.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
He's not completely wrong but dramatically overstating the lethality. 95F Wet can theoretically kill you but it takes hours of exposure, not minutes, and just getting into the shade and resting periodically is typically enough to survive it handily.
95F wet is where you can no longer sweat enough to avoid heat stroke no matter how good the shade is or how strong the breeze is. It's not the heat, it's the humidity that gets you.

We actually evolved to hunt in hot and muggy without using tools. That big tasty zebra over there ain't going to last long (3hrs, tops) when the daytime high is 86F dry (about as hot as the Savannah gets) and an infestation of unarmed hungry humans is nearby.

Friday's daytime high was 94F (my car was reading 104F, go asphault!) where I live and I was out in that bullshit for 15 straight hours with no shade. That's pleasant compared to standing next to a steam boiler or steam line.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
95F wet is where you can no longer sweat enough to avoid heat stroke no matter how good the shade is or how strong the breeze is. It's not the heat, it's the humidity that gets you.

We actually evolved to hunt in hot and muggy without using tools. That big tasty zebra over there ain't going to last long (3hrs, tops) when the daytime high is 86F dry (about as hot as the Savannah gets) and an infestation of unarmed hungry humans is nearby.

Friday's daytime high was 94F (my car was reading 104F, go asphault!) where I live and I was out in that bullshit for 15 straight hours with no shade. That's pleasant compared to standing next to a steam boiler or steam line.
And yet humans routinely survive for hours at a time at 95F Wet. The reason is simple, you're perfectly capable of raising your body temperature above 95, anybody who's ever had a fever has done so, and can do so for hours to days at a time, allowing a person in 95F Wet to continue to expel heat by sweating and survive a significant amount of time. Resting in the shade tends to help because the ground is generally cooler there via conduction and will wick more heat away. It's not especially comfortable and eventually it will kill you if you can't get out of the heat but the idea that 95F Wet is lethal in minutes is pure balderdash.
 
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LordsFire

Internet Wizard
And yet humans routinely survive for hours at a time at 95F Wet. The reason is simple, you're perfectly capable of raising your body temperature above 95, anybody who's ever had a fever has done so, and can do so for hours to days at a time, allowing a person in 95F Wet to continue to expel heat by sweating and survive a significant amount of time. Resting in the shade tends to help because the ground is generally cooler there via conduction and will wick more heat away. It's not especially comfortable and eventually it will kill you if you can't get out of the heat but the idea that 95F Wet is lethal in minutes is pure balderdash.

Having lived and functioned at temperatures over 100 degrees on the coast, can confirm.

Especially when long-term acclimation has your body accustomed to acting in such conditions.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Having lived and functioned at temperatures over 100 degrees on the coast, can confirm.

Especially when long-term acclimation has your body accustomed to acting in such conditions.
Were you keeping track of the dewpoint too?

You probably weren't and that's the easy to look up number that really matters.

100F ambient with a 35F dewpoint. No problem. 100F ambient with a 95F dewpoint? May God have mercy on your soul because you're about to meet him.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Were you keeping track of the dewpoint too?

You probably weren't and that's the easy to look up number that really matters.

100F ambient with a 35F dewpoint. No problem. 100F ambient with a 95F dewpoint? May God have mercy on your soul because you're about to meet him.

100 degree weather, on the coast, with the wind coming off the water, the air feeling like a hot wet blanket on you.

Maybe you're speaking about magically high levels of humidity never achieved outside of tiny areas where water mixes with volcanic activities, or man-made conditions. If that's what you're referring to, I couldn't say.

For levels of heat and humidity you could actually ever expect to experience in natural climates, no, humans can endure very high temperatures and humidity for a very long time.

Edit: Missing comma put in.
 
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mrttao

Well-known member
100 degree weather, on the coast, with the wind coming off the water, the air feeling like a hot wet blanket on you.

Maybe you're speaking about magically high levels of humidity never achieved outside of tiny areas where water mixes with volcanic activities, or man-made conditions. If that's what you're referring to, I couldn't say.

For levels of heat and humidity you could actually ever expect to experience in natural climates, no humans can endure very high temperatures and humidity for a very long time.
I have a feeling you misplaced a comma there. as it sounds like you are agreeing with him, but contextually you aren't. so you got a misplaced comma
 

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