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Monday, Dec. 7, 2009 – A date which will live in infamy.

We’ve talked about this before (West Virginia Watchdog, Sept. 29, 2009), but Monday truly showed that West Virginia is on the front lines in the battle to decide how much affect man has on the the climate changes this planet has been going through before man even existed.

We won’t spent a lot of time re-hashing the events of Monday: the Environmental Protection Agency said that carbon dioxide threatens the public health and welfare of the American people, Robert Kennedy Jr. led a protest against mountaintop removal while miners led a counter-protest, and the University of Charleston held a debate about cap-and-trade between The Cato Institute’s Pat Michaels and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s David Hawkins.

All of this occurred in the shadow of the Copenhagen Summit, where world leaders will be dictating to the U.S., a sovereign nation, how much smoke can come out of out smokestacks. United Nations officials are already cheering our EPA’s position.

“It’s a very good signal indeed,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Convention on Climate Change. “It makes it easier for the president of the United States to commit to something.”

“If I were a businessman, I would say please, please, please do a deal in Copenhagen and please, please, please make it market based,” said de Boer. “Every business knows that taxes and regulation tend to be a lot less efficient and a lot more expensive than market-based approaches.”

Official: EPA notice ‘very good signal’ – – POLITICO.com

I’m confused how regulations set by a government agency with very little oversight somehow equals a market-based solution. You don’t do that by regulation, it’s done through incentives. But I digress.

The sad thing is the regulations currently in place have already done a great job of cleaning up the air. The Reason Foundation found a great success story:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just released a report showing that carbon dioxide emissions from light trucks, cars, and SUVs have fallen dramatically since 1975 even as the proportion of SUVs and trucks sold has increased to nearly half of all sales. Grams of carbon per mile have fallen from 579 in 1975 to 422 in 2009. Fuel economy has increased from 13.1 miles per gallon to 21.1.

Reason Foundation – Out of Control Policy Blog > EPA Reports Shows Decline in Vehicle Carbon Emissions

You only need more regulation when your current regulations are failing. But the EPA just sent out a press release today claiming that toxic chemical releases showed a reduction in 2008:

The analysis, which includes data on 650 chemicals from more than 21,000 facilities, found that total releases to air decreased 14 percent, while releases to surface water increased 3 percent.

The report shows decreases in the releases of persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals including lead, dioxin, and mercury. Total disposal or other releases of mercury decreased 11 percent. Dioxin releases or disposal decreased 77 percent, while lead releases decreased by 2 percent. Releases of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) increased 121 percent. Because PCBs are no longer used in U.S. manufacturing, these releases represent the removal of PCBs from service for disposal at regulated hazardous waste facilities.

12/08/2009: EPA Analysis Shows Reduction in 2008 Toxic Chemical Releases

So why this move to make carbon dioxide the tobacco of gases? It’s a way to put pressure on Congress to pass some sort of cap-and-trade legislation. The Wall Street Journal said it best:

With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon. With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.

This reckless “endangerment finding” is a political ultimatum: The many Democrats wary of levelling huge new costs on their constituents must surrender, or else the EPA’s carbon police will inflict even worse consequences.

The gambit is also meant to coerce businesses, on the theory that they’ll beg for cap and trade once the command-and-control regulatory pain grows too acute—not to mention the extra bribes in the form of valuable carbon permits that Democrats, since you ask, are happy to dispense. Ms. Jackson appealed to “the science” and waved off any political implications, yet the formal finding was not coincidentally announced at the start of the U.N.’s Copenhagen climate conference

EPA Regulates Carbon as Dangerous Pollutant – WSJ.com

Hopefully Congress won’t succumb to this artificial pressure. While EPA regulations on carbon dioxide emissions will hurt our state and national economy in the short run, at least the regs can be rolled back depending on who win the next election. A cap-and-trade bill from Congress would be far more damaging in the long term and far more complicated to undo. Russ Harding at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan said the following:

While only large industrial facilities have the potential to emit 250 tons of pollutants like sulfur dioxide, this is not the case with CO2. Many office buildings, enclosed malls, small buildings and other commercial establishments will now be required to obtain PSD permits. PSD permits require months of time and considerable money to obtain. EPA estimated that in 2007 an average PSD permit cost $125,120 to obtain and required 301 hours for EPA or a state environmental agency to process.

EPA, CO2, Cap-and-Trade [Mackinac Center]

The EPA is already doing a number on our state’s coal mining industry. They pulled 79 surface mining permits for further review; 23 of those were for surface mine projects here in West Virginia. This move has created uncertainty in the coal industry, resulting in a decline in mining output this year. Just today news broke that 500 miners are being laid off by CONSOL Energy.

The EPA is determined to limit the use of coal despite having nothing to replace it with, and West Virginia will pay in higher taxes, higher utility prices, and higher unemployment.

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Today was kind of a tough day for Democrat Congressman Alan Mollohan, representing West Virginia‘s 1st District.

First, a story from The Washington Post:

For three years, Rep. Alan Mollohan has chaired the important Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Justice Department‘s $65 billion budget. At the same time, he has been under a Justice Department investigation, according to documents and two sources briefed on the probe.

The investigation has centered on the West Virginia Democrat’s finances and nonprofits he created and helped fund in his district, and has put him in the unusual position of wielding control over an agency at the same time it is probing his conduct and contractors he helped while in office.

Some congressional watchdog groups, including the one whose complaints about Mollohan triggered the probe, think the House leadership has created a clear conflict of interest by allowing Mollohan to continue to chair the subcommittee.

“There are a hundred ways he can influence what happens with the department’s funding — without one vote. Everything goes through his committee,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog group that alleged in a complaint that the congressman had not reported the nature and increasing value of his real estate investments. “If that’s not a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.”

Mollohan spokesman David Herring said the congressman dealt with the issue in 2006 by recusing himself from voting on specific budget accounts for the FBI, the attorney general’s office and other investigative functions. Herring declined to release the letter describing that recusal to House leaders.

Herring also said Mollohan is not aware of the Justice Department inquiry and has not been contacted by investigators.

The Washington Post – Mollohan, under Justice Department probe, chairs appropriations subcommittee

My only problem with this story is it doesn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know. The Washington Post revealed this information in an article on Oct. 30, 2009 (West Virginia Watchdog, “BREAKING: Justice Dept. Still Investigating Mollohan”).

Leaked House Ethics Committee documents released by The Washington Post revealed that the Justice Department had asked the committee in July 2009 to halt their investigation of Mollohan while Justice continued their criminal probe. That probe began in 2006 after the National Legal and Policy Center filed their complaint, alleging that Mollohan was hiding his true assets and steering earmarks to non-profits he helped to found.

Where is the original reporting on Mollohan? Every year since 2006 Mollohan has made the corrupt politician list compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Media outlets would regurgitate this list every year with no updated content, despite the fact that Mollohan was continuing the actions that had gotten him in trouble in the first place. The only news outlet to do new reporting on Mollohan was West Virginia Watchdog and I’m proud of that work. National news outlets have ran with our Mollohan investigations because the reporting is sound and we’re thankful for their support.

Now more names have joined the growing list of Republican candidates willing to take on Mollohan. From The Charleston Daily Mail:

Four Republicans have filed pre-candidacy forms. They include Cindy Hall, Randy Smith, Thomas Stark and Daniel Scott Swisher.

State Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph, announced earlier this fall he plans to enter the race.

Add to the list two more.

David McKinley, a former state lawmaker and GOP chairman, said he is considering a run against Mollohan.

Mac Warner, a Morgantown landowner and developer who had a 23-year career in the military, said he would spend Thanksgiving finalizing a decision about whether to run.

GOP preparing to challenge Mollohan for seat  – State News – Charleston Daily Mail – West Virginia News and Sports -

Seven Republicans, holy smokes. That’s not counting the one Democrat, R.J. Smith, who is also a precandidate. Now the Cook Political Report has upgraded West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District from “Safe Democrat” to “Likely Democrat.” There are six months to go until West Virginia’s primaries in May and just under 12 months until the 2010 general elections, so that classification could change again.

Even Democrat Nick Rahall, representing West Virginia’s 3rd District, has some early competition in the form of Republicans Lee Bias and Marty Gearheart. Last week we announced that Logan County Delegate Ralph Rodighiero, a Democrat, is also running against Rahall (West Virginia Watchdog, “BREAKING: Rodighiero to Run Against Rahall”). West Virginia Blue seems to believe Rodighiero was coaxed to run to take away votes from Rahall so that a more prominent Democrat can swoop in and knock Rahall out. We shall see.

So what could hurt Rahall and Mollohan? Their support for government-run health insurance, their 11th hour votes against cap-and-trade (a decision that should have been a lot easier for these coal state Democrats), and their overall ignorance of their constituents; mostly Democrats but conservative ones who feel abandoned by the congressmen they’ve supported for almost 30 years.

It seems clear that West Virginians want new leaders who will truly represent their interests.

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