Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to regulate carbon dioxide emissions no matter what the elected, policy-making branch of government does.

New York Times, “E.P.A. Proposes Rule on Greenhouse Gas Emissions“:

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule Wednesday to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of power plants and large industrial facilities.

The proposal, long anticipated and highly controversial, marks the first government move toward controlling the emissions blamed for the warming of the planet from stationary sources. The E.P.A. has already proposed an ambitious program to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, expected to take effect early next year.

From the EPA website:

EPA proposes to focus first greenhouse gas permitting requirements on large industrial facilities
September 30, 2009 – EPA proposed new thresholds for greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that define when Clean Air Act permits under the New Source Review and title V operating permits programs would be required. The proposed thresholds would tailor these permit programs to limit which facilities would be required to obtain permits and would cover nearly 70 percent of the nation’s largest stationary source GHG emitters—including power plants, refineries, and cement production facilities, while shielding small businesses and farms from permitting requirements.

• Fact Sheet
• Proposed Rule (PDF) (416pp, 534k)

Think Progress, a blog of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, explains the regulatory process:

Today’s proposed rule — which allows public comment until December — technically is a “tailoring rule” to limit regulation of global warming pollution to emitters of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, instead of the automatic statutory amount of 250 tons. This 250-ton standard would cover about four million businesses and homes — the “glorious mess” President Bush used as an excuse for his inaction. The EPA plans to raise the pollution limit to 25,000 tons, so that only 14,000 industrial pollution sources nationwide would be covered by the regulations, 11,000 of which are currently covered by the Clean Air Act permitting requirements already. Each stationary source covered would be required to apply for a title V operating permit, and all new sources would require a new source review permit.

Just a mere 14,000 industrial pollution sources, and 11,000 are already familiar with the process. So it’s no big deal, right? No additional costs, no effect on U.S. competitiveness, and certainly no negative impact from a more powerful, intrusive and ideologically driven federal government extending its control over economic activity.

After all, think of all the green jobs created when the EPA hires more enforcement personnel.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) held a news conference this morning on the East Front Lawn of the Capitol to announce their cap-and-trade-and-tax climate control bill. (Media advisory) From Sen. Kerry’s news release, “Kerry, Boxer Introduce ‘Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act’“:

This is a security bill that puts Americans back in charge of our energy future and makes it clear that we will combat global climate change with American ingenuity. It is our country’s defense against the harms of pollution and the security risks of global climate change,” said Kerry. “Our health, our security, our economy, our environment, all demand we reinvent the way America uses energy. Our addiction to foreign oil hurts our economy, helps our enemies and risks our security. By taking decisive action, we can and will stop climate change from becoming a ‘threat multiplier’ that makes an already dangerous world staggeringly more so…”

Senator Boxer said, “We know clean energy is the ticket to strong, stable economic growth — it’s right here in front of us, in the ingenuity of our workers and the vision of our entrepreneurs. We must seize this opportunity, or others will move ahead. This is our time. Global warming is our challenge. Economic recovery is our challenge. American leadership is our challenge. Let’s step up right now. Let’s not quit until we have fulfilled our responsibility to our children and our grandchildren.”

Also from Sen. Kerry’s site:

• Read an overview of the bill.
• Read a summary of the bill.
• Read a section by section summary of the bill.
• Read the press release announcing the introduction of the bill.
• Read a description of the Pollution Reduction and Investment mechanism in the bill.
• Read the full bill text

You’ll note the attempt to reframe the discussion through by turning carbon dioxide into “pollution.” (Why not water vapor, also a greenhouse gas.) Cap and trade becomes “pollution reduction and investment.”

So here’s a bill to fundamentally reshape the economy of the United States, render U.S. companies less competitive globally, and reward favored constituencies and what do we get? Marketing…

The NAM will have a statement later in the day.

UPDATE (5 p.m.): Here’s the NAM’s statement. We briefly had it up as a blog post, but since it’s also a news release, no point in duplication.

From the Truth About PLAs blog, notice of a news conference held by Pennsylvania legislators and the Keystone chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors about new legislation prohibiting project labor agreements (PLAs) on public construction in Pennsylvania.

The follow-up blog post notes that local union workers were paid to disrupt the news conference. Included is a report from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Foundation:

[When] Rep. Bear got up to speak he was catcalled and booed by the mob of union members. His message was drowned out; in typical fashion organized labor used tactics of intimidation to silence the voice of opposition. What’s worse is that we overheard union members mentioning that they were being paid $26 an hour to protest. In contrast, most of Rep. Bear’s supporters were contractors who took time off of work to stand on principle. And yet the union members had the nerve to persistently ridicule supporters as clueless businessmen in suits bought off by special interests.

So organized labor, which pays members to disrupt public events, claims employees shouldn’t fear intimidation if the Employee Free Choice Act eliminates secret ballot elections?* Well, disruption speaks louder than words.

* Various “compromises” touted by Senate supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act have supposedly dropped the card check provisions. But at this point, all we hear are rumors of spin of Senator Specter portents.

John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, sat down with reporters and columnists yesterday for a discussion of the economy and the elements that would comprise a “growth strategy” — infrastructure, energy and exports.

Tim Aeppel of The Wall Street Journal wrote about the export piece of the conversation, “NAM Chief: U.S. Needs to Stimulate Exports.” Excerpt:

Calculations by the nation’s largest manufacturing trade group show the U.S. ranks last among the world’s 15 largest manufacturers in terms of “export intensity.” Rather than measuring raw export numbers, export intensity gauges the proportion of the nation’s manufacturing production that is exported.

Export powerhouses Germany and Taiwan top the list. But others, including Brazil, Turkey and Spain, also exceed the U.S. in terms of the proportion of their goods that are exported.

“If we could simply get exports up to the world average — which is a little more than two times where it is — we could eliminate the trade deficit,” says Mr. Engler.

Here’s the handout. The methodology is in the extended entry.

(continue reading…)

From The Associated Press, “Labor agency: La. needs more 2-year college grads“:

BATON ROUGE, La. –Suggestions from a Jindal administration official Monday that Louisiana has a “surplus” of four-year college degrees rankled members of a commission looking at ways to overhaul the state’s public college systems.

Curt Eysink, executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, the state’s labor department, told the commission that Louisiana needs more students enrolled in — and graduating from — vocational training and community college programs.

Eysink said there are more graduates with four-year college degrees than the state can employ in their fields while the state has a shortage of workers needed for skilled labor jobs. He presented occupational forecasting data that showed the top growth jobs projected for the state included ticket-takers, home health aides, retail salespersons and nurses.

Not sure how that list of jobs in the last sentence was selected. You probably don’t need a two-year degree to be a ticket-taker.

But Eysink and the commission have identified real workforce trends that are affecting students and manufacturers nationwide. Skilled jobs, the kind you find more and more in high-tech manufacturing, often do not require a four-year degree. Two years degrees, vocational certification and apprenticeships can serve students with training that not only leads them into well-compensated careers but also aligns with their individual skills and interests.

In the story, Arits Terrell, chairman of the Louisiana Board of Regents asks, “Can you ever have too many four-year degrees?”

Yes! Of course! In fact, AEI scholar Charles Murray wrote a valuable book on the issue, “Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.” In a 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “What’s Wrong With Vocational School?,” Murray anticipated Chairman Terrell’s argument:

Large numbers of those who are intellectually qualified for college also do not yearn for four years of college-level courses. They go to college because their parents are paying for it and college is what children of their social class are supposed to do after they finish high school. They may have the ability to understand the material in Economics 1 but they do not want to. They, too, need to learn to make a living–and would do better in vocational training.

Combine those who are unqualified with those who are qualified but not interested, and some large proportion of students on today’s college campuses–probably a majority of them–are looking for something that the four-year college was not designed to provide.

Terrell’s comments could well reflect a common point of view about higher education. To many state officials and people who earn their paychecks from a university system, students equal income. But yes, you can have too many four-year degrees, especially when the degrees serve neither the student nor the demands of the economy.

See also:

• Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission homepage.
• Kansas City Star, “Manufacturing summit looks at shortage of skilled workers.”
• Gov. Jindal’s Aug. 11 remarks to the Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission.

From The New York Times, “Senators’ Climate Draft Mirrors House Bill, With Some Exceptions“:

Both the early draft and the Boxer-Kerry bill due for release tomorrow will leave blank key information about how the senators intend to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in emission allowances. Following the path of Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, those figures will come next month when Boxer releases a chairman’s mark of the bill before an EPW Committee markup.

For advocates of the legislation to establish government control over carbon dioxide the overriding concern is not this provision or that, but getting the tax and regulatory regime in place. First, enact the law, and later on you can make the targets, limits and charges more onerous.

• AP, “Senate climate bill tougher than House version
• Reuters, “Long road, little time for US climate bill“
• Reuters, “FACTBOX-The path to enact a US climate change bill“
• The Hill, “Senate climate bill calls for 20 percent cut“

Twenty-seven trade associations yesterday sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), and ranking member, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), expressing strong disagreement with provisions of H.R. 2868, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009. (Waxman is a cosponsor.)

The National Association of Manufacturers was one of the signers of the letter, which is available here. The letter was sent in anticipation of Thursday’s subcommittee hearing on the bill.

The context is this:

Our industries recognize and take seriously the need to protect our nation’s chemical plants, storage facilities, and infrastructure against security threats and potential terrorist attacks. Since 2006, businesses have spent approximately $4 billion to enhance the security of our own chemical facilities and systems. Given the importance of these safety issues, we generally have supported the federal government’s efforts to develop and implement reasonable risk-based and performance-oriented security standards that focus on facilities posing the greatest risk to our workers, communities, and national security interests. To that end, we have worked constructively with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in providing valuable input for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program and are actively working to implement these new standards.

But there are provisions that are actually detrimental to effective security, complicating the implementation of safety measures and adding major new liabilities (that is, costs).

First, Section 2109 is anti-preemption language, meaning it allows states and local governments to create more stringent — or different — standards than federal law. This is a proposed anti-terrorism statute, in great part, so a single national standard should apply; uniformity brings predictable rules, enforcement and costs.  (The letter doesn’t raise this specter, but history suggests we’d also see grandstanding politicians ginning up public fears for political gain.)

Second, the bill’s “citizen suit” provision (Section 2116), allows any person – even those who have not suffered any harm – to sue the facilities or the Department of Homeland Security to enforce the law. As the letter states, allowing laypersons rather than DHS security specialists to challenge a facility’s selection of security measures does nothing to enhance security. There’s also the real possibility that the discovery process in federal litigation could lead to the disclosure of classified or sensitive information to terrorists. Previous versions of the bill have never had this provision: Why is it being added now?

And, “Finally, we strongly oppose the bill’s provision (Section 2111) requiring all covered chemical facilities to assess so-called “inherently safer technologies” (ISTs) and mandating that chemical facilities assigned to “tier 1” or “tier 2” actually implement ISTs, if so ordered by DHS. This provision essentially provides DHS the authority to implement manufacturing process changes, an action that is unnecessary and potentially very disruptive to many chemical facilities.”

The associations are reaffirming the points that the NAM made in a September 11 letter to the committee (available here). Other coverage:

• Oil & Gas Journal, “Business groups ask House panel to modify chemical plant bill,” noting opposition from seven oil and gas industry association.
• Congress Daily, “House Panel Becomes Flash Point For Chemical Bill.”
• Point of Law, “Chemical facility security not aided by ‘citizen suits’“

Earlier Shopfloor.org posts.

Proponents of the Healthy Families Act are unfortunately taking advantage of the Administration’s guidance for employers on dealing with the potential H1N1 pandemic by advancing a restrictive mandate on employers that will reduce flexibility of leave options for employees.

“Workforce Magazine” reports that that advocates of the bill are interpreting recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “establish policies for employee compensation and sick-leave absences unique to a pandemic” in a way to further promote federally mandated paid leave.

What isn’t noted is that most employers are already providing some form of sick leave for their employees; 83 percent of workers in private industry have access to illness leave.

The NAM encourages manufacturers to review the Administration’s information and develop contingency plans, as appropriate, in an effort to limit the potential negative impact on our workers, their families and our communities. However, mandating a costly one-size-fits-all approach to paid leave is far from the right approach. This legislation threatens an employer’s ability to provide the benefits that best fit the needs of their workforce. Additionally this bill would place limits on employers that provide more benefits than the minimum requirements proposed in the bill.

The advocates who are calling for passage of the Healthy Family Act in response to the H1N1 are also purposely overlooking the regulatory realities that would disconnect any new law from this year’s illness. It took 17 months to implement the final regulations for the Family and Medical Leave Act (enacted February 5, 1993; final regulations January 6, 1995). The Healthy Families Act is an equally complicated piece of legislation and there’s just no possibility of implementing it before the winter flu season. So what we’re seeing is alarmism for political purposes.

Twin Cities humorist James Lileks is scanning content into his The ’30s website, and today brings us the colorful world of flooring courtesy the Armstrong promotional publication, “Dream Kitchens for 1939.” 

The nice thing about Lileks is that while he pokes fun and satirizes, he doesn’t mock. And Linoleum floors must have been a big hit in 1939, both durable and colorful. The kitchen designs are nice, too:

[Note] the ingenious use of vertical space for serving. A sparkling chromium frame supports broad plate glass shelves and underneath is a spice for parkgin the de luxe custom-built glass and chromium service cart. At the left is another tidy arrangement — a chopping board with extension to house a stool, a wide ledge to accomodate the food grinder, and underneath, a neat slide to hold the pan for drippings.

A slide for the drippings? Sold!

Armstrong remains a great American manufacturer of flooring products and more, we note.

Twice this year President Obama has traveled to Elkhart County, Ind., to promote his economic policies, first to the city of Elkhart on February 9 and then the nearby community of Wakarusa on August 5. Northeastern Indiana makes for a good backdrop for speeches on the economy since Elkhart County has 16 percent unemployment, worst in the state.

The region has been especially hard hit because it’s the nation’s center of travel trailer manufacturing, with several major companies doing business there. High fuel prices followed by tight credit and then the recession have just hammered the industry.

With all due respect for the President’s policies, the area just got excellent news on the economic front last week from the U.S. court system. On September 24, a jury in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, rejected the first of at least 30 lawsuits against trailer manufacturers who sold their products to FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

From The Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal jury on Thursday rejected a New Orleans family’s claims that the government-issued trailer they lived in after Hurricane Katrina was defective and exposed them to dangerous [formaldehyde] fumes.

The jury decided that a trailer made by Gulf Stream Coach Inc. and occupied after the 2005 hurricane by Alana Alexander and her son, Christopher Cooper, 12, was not “unreasonably dangerous” in its construction.

The jury also concluded that Fluor Enterprises, which had a contract to install trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was not negligent in doing so. The government was not a defendant in this first of several “bellwether” trials.

Last year the House Oversight and Investigations Committee, then chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), held a hearing to drag the trailer manufacturers into the mud for supposedly dangerous manufacturing practices — charges the manufacturers have always forcefully rejected. The hearing built upon already one-sided media coverage that also served the interests of the trial lawyers suing the businesses.

This is just one jury verdict, but the message must be very, very encouraging to the people of Elkhart County, and especially those involved in the trailer industry: The companies built safe products that met consumers’ demand, and when responding to the Katrina disaster, they maintained their high standards.

Now that would be a good topic for a nationally televised speech.

Note: The RV trade industry publication/website “RV Business” did a thorough job covering the trial, and kudos to them.

• “Jury Clears Gulf Stream Coach in FEMA Trailer Case” (Sept. 25)
• “Federal Jury Deliberating Gulf Stream Coach Fate” (Sept. 24)
• “FEMA Suspected Sierra Club Bias in Gulf Stream Matter” (Sept. 23)
• “Gulf Stream Coach Inc. Trial Ends First Week” (Sept. 21)
• “Witness: Welding Fumes Caused FEMA Trailer Illness”(Sept. 17)
• “Lawyers Present Cases in First Day of FEMA Trial” (Sept. 15)
• “First Trial on FEMA Trailer Suit Starts Today” (Sept. 14)