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ASSIGNMENTS / APPOINTMENTS / ANNOUNCEMENTS

SOURCE:  Office of Senator Mitch McConnell

The State Electricity Revolt

A promising way to resist Obama’s federal climate coercion.

Wall Street Journal editorial  April 10, 2015

Health care, Wall Street, the Internet—by the time President Obama leaves office, there may not be much of the economy left for his successor to take over. The better news is that his attempt to do the same to the energy industry is meeting heavy resistance in the states.

The Environmental Protection Agency is finishing a rule—expected in June or July—that requires the states to meet carbon-reduction targets by reorganizing their “production, distribution and use of electricity,” as the EPA puts it. This is an unprecedented federal usurpation of what has been a state responsibility since the invention of the modern steam turbine in the 1880s.

States are normally allowed as much as three years to comply with EPA mandates that are far less complex than this one. But the EPA will instruct them to submit implementation plans by summer 2016 and make interim progress as soon as 2020. The rule is intended to impress the greendees of the Paris climate conference this year, so Mr. Obama can announce a global climate deal.

The plan hangs on an obscure section of the 44-year-old Clean Air Act. That law’s section 111(d) was well understood but the EPA has published a new interpretation of these several hundred words that runs 1,200 pages. No less a dean of legal liberalism than Harvard’s Larry Tribe is stunned by this attempt to nationalize U.S. electric generation.

States will be told to meet the targets using four “building blocks.” The first is uncontroversial: improving the efficiency of fossil-fuel power plants and installing pollution-control technology like smokestack scrubbers. But for the first time the EPA is also telling states to roam “outside the fence line” of power plants to force coal and eventually natural gas to shut down, mandate quotas for renewables like wind and solar, and impose energy conservation.

The problem is that the federal government has no legal power outside the fence line. Last year the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s bid to claim authority over “demand response” on the electric grid.

Thus the EPA is trying to coerce the states into doing what it can’t do itself. Most will need to pass new laws or rush through new rules to comply, jammed into a single year. The EPA wants to embed policy changes that a Republican President couldn’t reverse and deny Governors and legislatures the time to think through the consequences. But some states are thinking, and they may tell the agency: No mas.

Under the cooperative federalism of the Clean Air Act, states are invited to draw up implementation plans for EPA approval. But they have no legal obligation to do so, because the feds cannot commandeer the states. The EPA can pursue a fallback federal plan if it doesn’t like what states do. But there is good reason for the states to band together, refuse to participate, and thus call the EPA’s bluff.

In particular, states would avoid making themselves complicit in dangerous behavior. Virtually everyone who understands the electric grid, from state utility commissions to the regional transmission operators, warns that the EPA’s ambitions threaten reliability. These apolitical organizations think brownouts or cascading blackouts are possible.

To take one example, the northeast blackout of 2003 cost about $13 billion, and the New York Independent Systems Operator now reports that the EPA’s reductions “cannot be sustained while maintaining reliable electric service to New York City.” It calls the plan “inherently unreasonable” that “no amount of flexibility can fix.” This is not Texas talking.

The section 111(d) rewrite will be litigated for years or decades and almost certainly resolved by the Supreme Court. The 2016 White House budget requests $52 million merely to hire lawyers to defend this single rule. It would be prudent for states to postpone cooperation until the lawsuits shake out, rather than spend billions of dollars now that may turn out to be unnecessary.

We also know from ObamaCare that the feds do not have the bandwidth to successfully reconstruct part of the economy without state participation. A mass state-by-state boycott, though risky, could limit some of the damage by overloading the EPA’s limited resources and personnel.

More to the point, the states ought to decline to lend political legitimacy to an extraordinary abuse of federal power. The EPA is not merely exercising the lawmaking that belongs to Congress but frustrating democratic accountability. If the EPA causes a blackout, then voters should understand that the EPA is the cause, not a Governor.

General Officer Assignments

Flag Officer Assignments

PHOTO(s) OF THE DAY

SOURCE:  Department of Defense /Defense News Lead Photo

Army Trials athletes compete in the first women’s archery category in Warrior Games history at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas March 31, 2015. From left are Jasmine Perry, Chasity Kuczer, and Laurel Cox. (DoD News photo by EJ Hersom)

Airman 1st Class Luke Locken, 4th Operations Support Squadron aircrew flight equipment technician, fits Jeremiah Seaberry, 334th Fighter Squadron pilot for a day, with flight gear during a 4th Fighter Wing Pilot for a Day event, April 3, 2015, at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina. PFAD organizers chose the call sign “Swoosh” for Jeremiah as an allusion to his admiration for his favorite basketball player, Lebron James. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Ashley J. Thum)

Vice President Joe Biden speaks on U.S. policy in Iraq at National Defense University on Fort McNair, April 9, 2015.

U.S. Marine Scout Snipers assigned to Sniper Platoon, Second Battalion, Third Marines (2/3), fire down range at Range 10 aboard Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH), Apr. 8th, 2015. Marines improve their sniper proficiency by utilizing MCBH’s natural resources to execute their training exercise. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Julian Temblador, MCBH Combat Camera/Released)

WHEN CELEBRITIES LIKE CHARLES BARKLEY TALK ABOUT THE N-WORD, THEY TEND TO FORGET THE CHILDREN

SOURCE: Attorney Roy Miller / Blacknews.com

Nationwide – It concerns me that everyone in support of n-word usage is publicized and treated as an expert. I don’t think they even care about our children. Charles Barkley, Samuel L. Jackson, Terrance Howard and many other Black celebrities have tried to convince our youth to accept being called n-words and pretend that spit is actually cool rain.

However you pronounce it or spell it, we still know what you mean. I do not believe that these type of celebrities really love our black children or their hearts would not let them treat them so coldly. They would see their pain. They should go to integrated elementary schools and ask a black child, how does it feel? Does it hurt? Our youth are the invisible innocent ones that get hit by the rocks of disrespect that adults throw into crowds, just for pleasure. Children are like dogs on a chain and cannot get away from parents that disrespect them and expose them to things that can only hurt them. I see the little guys in cars and their parents play music with profanities and sexually stimulating language. How can adults say they love a black baby, look at her and then call her the n-word?

In 1994, I became the first and only person to succeed at having the n-word deleted from a major dictionary. I am the only person in the world that can speak beyond theory about the n-world, yet my name is never mentioned in discussions. I am a scholar. I don’t smoke drink or do drugs, never have. I have an excellent reputation and I truly love everyone. I have a lot to say, because I love my people and I care dearly about what happens to our children. Positive self-esteem is critical to our babies, especially when they are being predicted by third grade as to whether they are candidates for prison.

Prior to 1994, the typical definition read something like, “n-word: any dark-skinned or colored person… profane, obscene… see negro.” This had to go. The documented acknowledgment, by an expert of words (Funk & Wagnall’s,) that such definition was wrong towards innocent black children and babies. The accomplishment that God allowed me forced dictionaries throughout the world to quietly make changes. Anyone can go to a library and look at the definitions before 1994 and after and see for themselves. Change began with my accomplishment. I have spoken with thousands of people on the topic since and I always listen to people, especially children. I feel that God chose me for a reason and I will stand. I feel very proud that a respectable and good child can now look in a dictionary and not see the pre-1994 definition. They may never know me, but I love them.

As a Professor at Fort Valley State University and having taught at Morehouse College, I often talk with students regarding the power of giving and demanding respect. God gives us the choice to love Him and accept Him, but he doesn’t give us a choice in respecting him. In fact, words of blasphemy against God are unforgivable. We should learn from God. We should never accept usage of the n-word, the ultimate word of disrespect against us and ever spoken.

Around the world, in every country, in every city and in every group, two things have always been certain. Those that demand respect have always been on top and those that accept disrespect have always been on the bottom. The demand for respect is a Godly requirement; Acceptance has its unfortunate consequences. I will fight until death for our children and I will have no regrets. I feel that God will know that I did my best to answer His call.