From Powerline, pointing to the real bureaucratic scandal that preceded the EPA refusing California’s request for a waiver so the state could regulate auto emissions in its war against carbon dioxide:

It turns out that two top EPA staff members were so intent on having their way that they prepared talking points for former EPA administrator William Reilly (Bush 41’s guy) to use when lobbying Johnson to grant the waiver. Among the talking points, prepared for Reilly by Chris Grundler, deputy director of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, Margo Oge, the director of that office, was this:

From what I have read and the people I have talked to, it is obvious to me that there is no legal or technical justification for denying this. . .You [Johnson] have to find a way to get this done. If you cannot, you will face a pretty big personal decision about whether you are able to stay in the job under those circumstances. This is a choice only you can make, but I ask you to think about the history and the future of the agency in making it. If you are asked to deny this waiver, I fear the credibility of the agency that we both love will be irreparably damaged.

Thus, in essence, a pair of bureaucrats contrived to have a respected outsider lobby their boss by advising him that he might have to quit his job if he didn’t comply with their policy preference. Amazing stuff, even by Washington standards.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) suggests an improper use of agency resources — indeed — and potentially a Hatch Act violation (don’t know about that). But this kind of activism puts the lie to the environmental left’s claim that the EPA’s career staff are saints AND scientists and must have their opinions obeyed.

The EPA today released the documents explaining the denial of California’s waiver request. The materials are available here.

The Washington Post and CNN say Alabama Democrat Rep. Artur Davis is a future leader to watch.

The Harvard Law School graduate sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade, taxes and other vital business issues. And Davis, a guest on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” is keen on using trade deals, worker training and other steps to keep manufacturing strong.

“Obviously, we need to make sure that the international rules of trade are fairly enforced and that they just don’t apply to the United States,” he told Mike.

“America’s Business” will also go to “The Land Down Under” to meet the Australian Industry Group in our first look at manufacturing in other countries. And we’ll chat with an executive from an American mining and farm equipment company that does business in Australia.

Coal provides much of the nation’s electricity. A Duke Energy official will talk about technology that reduces coal’s impact on the environment.

This week you’ll meet the person to go to at the U.S. Small Business Administration if you need help clearing regulatory hurdles. And with Black History Month closing, we’ll talk to a University of Houston expert about the many contributions of African American inventors.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest report on tort reform while commentator Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close out the program with “The Last Word.”

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.

An op-ed in today’s Columbus Dispatch by John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, “Free-trade pacts are good for Ohio.” Excerpt:

The unrestrained attacks against free trade, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement, are reaching a deafening pitch as Ohio’s presidential primary draws near.

Drowned out in this contest of populist one-upmanship is the economic truth about trade agreements: They create good jobs, sharpen U.S. competitiveness and keep our economy growing. When politicians demonize trade, they disparage our past progress and poison the public against future agreements that offer even more economic benefits.

It is time to set the record straight on the benefits of NAFTA by looking at the facts and then pressing Congress to pass pending free-trade agreements. These agreements will increase the state’s manufacturing competitiveness around the world and strengthen the security of Ohio’s 308,000 manufacturing jobs that depend on exports.

An NAM fact sheet on trade and Ohio.

A heavy week for North Dakota news here at Shopfloor.org, mostly because the state provides a model of the economic growth that accompanies a healthy energy sector and strong exports. Oil production is at a peak.

There are 3,854 wells producing oil, up from 3,648 a year ago and the most ever since oil first was commercially produced in the state in 1951.

The new price record and growing production figures means that every day, nearly $13 million worth of oil is pumped out of the state’s wells spread across 16 western counties.

That money is divided between oil companies, the owners to the mineral rights at the well and state, local and federal governments. Mineral rights owners get, roughly, 17 percent of the crude’s value. State government gets about 8 percent.

If production and prices remain at this level, it would mean about $5 billion worth of oil harvested in 2008 from North Dakota.

Stimulated by high prices, new exploration and drilling technology have made the Bakken Formation one of the big oil plays in North America right now. (The North Dakota Petroleum Council has a good summary of Bakken developments here.)

We also assure you, western North Dakota is far more beautiful, scenic and full of wildlife than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, yet oil development is proceeding safely there. Why in North Dakota, and not Alaska?

P.S. Note the illustration for the story on the Grand Forks Herald’s website, a graphic with the label, “Boom Times.” The elements are the harvesting of grain, an oil rig, and a maple leaf. The maple leaf stands for Canada — importing millions and millions of dollars of North Dakota manufactured goods and farm products, helping the state lead the nation in export growth last year.

As Congress moves (too) slowly on legislation to encourage adoption of health information technology, some state leaders are saying, in effect, “What’s taking so long? We’ve made so much progress at the state level, now let’s get moving in Washington.”

That was a strong message left earlier this week by three governors speaking at a news conference called by Health IT Now! coalition, an event moderated by National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler.

Governors Chet Culver (D-IA), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Jim Douglas (R-VT), each outlined the widespread success of Health IT within each of their own states. Their initiatives couple public and private cooperation to bring efficiency to health care via a uniform information exchange network. In switching from paper files to digital information, the states have eased access for doctors and patients to electronic medical records, established medical information exchange via a secure network, and helped bring costs under control.

We’ve created a webpage with video highlights from the news conference, including links to each governor’s statement. Please visit the site here. And the Health IT Now! news release is available here.

(Caption: From left, Governors Culver, Douglas and Manchin discuss health IT at a National Press Club news conference, 2/25/08.)

Gov. Mitch Daniels continued talking good sense and economic reality when he returned to Indiana this week after spending a short time in Washington, D.C. Asked about the EPA’s pending ozone rules, which could ratchet down emission limits, Daniels said,

Having just finally gotten to the point where we can add jobs and grow with fewer obstacles in some of these areas, here comes the possibility that we’ll be thrown right back into the same restrictions…It makes you ask, why go to the trouble?

Gannett reporter Erin Kelly talks to the NAM’s Bryan Brendle, who provides more context.

Brendle also argued that new regulations are unnecessary because ozone pollution has dropped 21 percent since 1980.

“It would be devastating economically, and for what reason?” said Brendle, the group’s director of energy and resources policy. “Ozone levels are dropping. We’re making progress.”

BTW, we knocked a Gannett news story earlier in the week for giving short shrift to the critics of stricter standards. Judging from this localized version of the story, which includes more from Bryan Brendle, the reporter did do justice to both sides. It was the editors who cut the balancing points of view. (Gee, we used to say that ALL the time during our reporting days.) Anyway, good job Erin.

Also, video and audio from Governor Daniels remarks Monday to the American Enterprise Institute are now posted online.

And AEI’s magazine, “The American,” features a nice article, “Hoosier Fixer,” on Daniels’ government and budget reforms.

Today—February 29—means that 59 days have passed since the R&D tax credit expired at the end of last year. How long will manufacturers have to wait for Congress act to renew and strengthen this jobs credit? We’ve only heard promises from lawmakers to restore “business extenders,” yet seen no action to date to fulfill that promise. Meanwhile, most of our major trading partners offer more attractive—and permanent— R&D incentives. Right now, with no credit in place, the United States is clearly at the bottom of the pile.

Allowing this tax provision to expire 13 times, which is exactly what Congress has done since 1981, weakens the credit’s incentive value to boost private research and development spending, and ranks among the worst of tax follies by a powerhouse country like the United States. If companies cannot rely on the credit for the duration of an R&D project—for manufacturers typically 5-10 years—companies performing R&D are going to be enticed to look at the 20 OECD countries offering more generous R&D tax incentives.

We’ve got to ask ourselves, if not now, when will Congress seamlessly renew and strengthen the credit?

Valid point from The Toronto Star, editorializing on the recent anti-NAFTA rhetoric from a few political candidates: “Obama, Clinton err on NAFTA.” The editors note the many trade complaints the Canadians have against U.S. practices — softwood lumber being the most prominent dispute — and remind readers of the political dissatisfaction with NAFTA north of the border.

A U.S. push to reopen NAFTA now would invite Canada to use its leverage as the biggest fuel supplier to the U.S. to bargain for better terms. That would not be in the interest of U.S. consumers and jobs.

The prospect alarms business. “That would be a disaster for American jobs,” warns Frank Vargo, from the National Association of Manufacturers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called the Democratic candidates’ remarks “troubling.”

Business insists NAFTA has been a success. Merchandise trade among the three partners tripled to almost $900 billion between 1993, just before the pact was in effect, and 2006. Economic growth and job growth have been stronger since NAFTA than in the years before. Yet, like some Americans, many Canadians are ambivalent about the trade pact and its effects on us. We would like changes to NAFTA, too. Clinton and Obama ought to be careful about what they ask for.

In other NAFTA news, there’s a grand contretemps over a CTV report that claimed Senator Obama’s campaign had told Ottawa not to worry, the anti-trade rhetoric wasn’t serious. The Obama camp disputed the story, the Canadian embassy rejects the claims, but CTV is standing by the report. Our view? (shrug)

UPDATE (10:35 a.m.): From The Financial Times:

Canada has warned that the US’s privileged access to its oil and natural gas could be in jeopardy if a Democratic administration backtracks on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Canada is the US’s biggest foreign oil supplier, exporting close to 1.8m barrels a day – more than 10 per cent of US consumption. Nafta provisions make it difficult for Canada to restrict oil shipments to the US.

“If Nafta is ripped up then the Chinese can buy more of our oil; there’s no further obligation on the part of Canada to sell its oil to the US,” a Canadian diplomat told the Financial Times.

UPDATE (11:20 a.m.): The CTV report is becoming a campaign issue between the two Democratic candidates.

UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): CTV’s story proves legit.

The Examiner’s Quin Hillyer reads the anti-surveillance class action lawsuit, Hepting v. AT&T, and finds the arguments thin, the claims outlandish:

It reads like the account of a vast fishing expedition in which the plaintiffs claim that any small minnow they catch is a veritable Moby Dick of a privacy invasion.

It claims the surveillance program “intercepts and analyzes the communications of millions of Americans” in an “illegal domestic spying program.” Never mind, of course, that the only way “millions” of Americans could be said to be affected is if they are said to have been subject to unlawful “search and seizure” just by having their phone numbers show up as tiny data bits among “4,000 terabytes (million megabytes)” on the same network that is monitored for the targeted foreign calls. This is hardly a real privacy violation.

Moreover, the suit defines the class of aggrieved citizens as “all individuals” who were customers of the phone company “at any time after September 2001” that the program was in effect. In this one suit, that class is identified as consisting of 24.6 million people. How all 24.6 million Americans could possibly be harmed by this program aimed at suspected foreign terrorists is a question perhaps best answered in the Twilight Zone.

The suit gets wilder still. Not only does it ask for at least $1,000 for each class member for each of two alleged types of violation, but on each of two other counts it asks the companies for at least $100 per alleged victim per day of violation — plus punitive damages and attorney’s expenses.

Do the math: The total potential payout by AT&T for the first two categories of alleged violations is $49.2 billion. Meanwhile, at $100 per day for each day of the four years at issue after 9/11, the total potential liability for each of the two latter counts is $3 trillion, 591 billion.

Defending against this kind of lawsuit abuse is time-consuming and expensive, but that’s the point. The activists want to undermine the legitimate surveillance of foreign communications through litigation, getting to the Administration through legal assaults on private companies.

Do read the lawsuit, by the way. It’s fevered and far-fetched.

The movie “300″ must have produced more mash-ups, video satires and tributes than any film since “Star Wars.” Every week we happen upon a new one.

This week it’s “Anchorman 300,” using scenes from the Will Ferrell comedy with the soundtrack from the “300″ theater preview. And darn it if it doesn’t work. Thank goodness for that street fightin’ scene.

And from “300″ to 3000, Andre 3000, that is, we have a link to the preview for Ferrell’s latest, a basketball epic, “Semi-Pro.” Andre 3000 of Outkast costars.

Finally, and again, The Fall doing Sparta FC,this time live at Leeds. As the band would say, “Hey!”