Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial today is on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, “Pelosi’s Library Quarantine“:

It looks like “Jumanji” in local libraries these days, after the classic children’s book about chaos unleashed by the failure to heed warnings. In February, an overzealous law governing lead in products resulted in toys going from store shelves to the trash heap. Now, confusion over how the rules affect children’s books has led some libraries to rope off kids’ sections.

And the conclusion,

Nancy Pelosi boasted last summer that the toy safety law would mean products weren’t merely made differently in the future but would be removed from the shelves today. That’s the real source of this mayhem, as she was amply warned at the time by Democrat John Dingell, among others. Ms. Pelosi prevailed, and now the harm to thousands of businesses, charities and even public libraries is manifest. Since the House Speaker won’t admit a mistake and fix the law, the CPSC must do what it can to prevent more damage to the already challenging economy.

H.R. 4040 passed the House last year with just one no vote and three nays in the Senate. So let’s concede that passage of this extreme, unclear and economy-damaging legislation was a bipartisan mistake. And then let’s fix it.

Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com notes that while ATVs have drawn the most notice, kids bikes are also affected by the CPSIA’s inflexible, unreasonable lead standards.  And in the Bookroom Blog entry he links to, “Bikes and Kids,” the writer Valerie makes an important point about who’s being hurt by the CPSIA:

This wouldn’t occur to many in Washington, but in America the wide and ready availability of all kinds of used children’s products–books, educational supplies, clothing, toys, bikes and more–really is a mercy to low income families. Low-cost, minimally used children’s products can go a long way toward closing the gap between the wealthy and poor, in terms of childhood experience. CPSIA directly attacks one of the greatest blessings that disadvantaged families now enjoy in our advantaged country. Please, think about it.

The San Francisco Chronicle [update: and other Bay Area media] interviews Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, eliciting this revealing admission about the impetus for House action this year on cap-and-trade legislation.

It’s about the revenue.

The speaker disappointed environmentalists when she said earlier this month that she may not bring climate change legislation to the House floor this year because it may lack the votes needed for passage. “I’m not sure this year, because I don’t know if we’ll be ready,” she told Capitol Hill reporters. “We won’t go before we’re ready.”

But in the interview Wednesday, she shifted her stance, saying she plans to move the bill this year. She said she hopes to hold a vote before December, when climate negotiators gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to work on a successor to the treaty many countries adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.

“I believe we have to because we see that as a source of revenue,” she said, noting that proposed cap-and-trade bills would raise billions of dollars by forcing major emitters to buy credits to release greenhouse gases. “Cap-and-trade is there for a reason. You cap and you trade so you can pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables.”

Cap-and-trade equals revenue raising equals tax increase. So stimulus bill in February, huge tax increase in November.

• New York Times, “Drilling Boom Revives Hopes for Natural Gas “: “HOUSTON — American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.”

• Reuters, “First mass U.S. crossing for hydrogen cars completed“: “LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hydrogen fuel cell cars from nine automakers completed a 13-day cross-country trip this weekend, in the first such mass U.S. crossing for vehicles powered by a zero-emission technology still in its infancy.” The vehicles were trucked between Rolla, Mo., and Albuquerque because of the lack of hydrogen filling stations.

• Wall Street Journal, Washington Wire Blog, “Pelosi on Natural Gas: Fossil Fuel or Not?“: “On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, the speaker twice seemed to suggest that natural gas – an energy source she favors – is not a fossil fuel. …”I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels,” she said at one point. Natural gas “is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels,” she said at another.

• Wall Street Journal, Environmental Capital Blog, “Texas Breeze: Landowners Call Wind Turbines Ugly; Court Says Too Bad“: “For now, wind power’s triumphant march in the U.S. can count on another legal smackdown of “NIMBYism,” after a Texas appeals court yesterday dismissed a suit by landowners upset with a big wind farm built by FPL Energy. Landowners decried the turbines’ noise and their spoiled sunsets—which the court agreed was a pity—but the appeals court couldn’t find grounds to rule against the power company.”

• Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, “ANWR Option“: “Sean Parnell, lieutenant governor and a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed a land swap as a way of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ‘I propose a land swap of 2,000 acres of state land to the federal government in exchange for 2,000 acres of the coastal plain in ANWR into state hands,’ Parnell said at a press conference Tuesday in Fairbanks.”

 
• George Will, “Obama’s Economic Fairytale“: “Obama has also promised that “we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years.” What a tranquilizing verb “get” is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both — billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.”

From today’s Washington Post, an editorial, “No Drilling, No Vote“:

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won’t find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.

The editorial chides Speaker Pelosi for blocking votes, quoting a very confused rationale that fails to justify the political machinations in the House.

The Post also makes an obvious observation that still triggered a thought: “There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?”

Here’s a piece of a map from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

Of course, unlike the Americans, the Norwegians don’t care about protecting their coastal beauty.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:

I write to you today regarding Select Committee on Energy Independence Chairman Ed Markey’s (D-MA) introduction of his long-awaited legislation aimed at reducing the level of carbon in the air by imposing new taxes on emitting it.  Based on his comments last week, Chairman Markey’s legislation is expected to be much more far-reaching – and much more costly – than the legislation the Senate is debating this week.  Make no mistake: House Republicans support responsible climate change policies that will protect our environment, advance our energy security, and create more American jobs.  But in both cases, Chairman Markey’s bill and the Senate bill amount to large tax increases that would impact virtually the entire economy and would saddle consumers with even higher energy costs.  I believe this approach is not only inadvisable; it is reckless and inappropriate…

While I disagree fervently with the logic of raising energy costs while consumers already face astronomical prices for gasoline, I respect your prerogative as Speaker to follow through on your promise and schedule a vote on the bill.  And frankly, I welcome the debate.  At a time when families are reconsidering their summer travel plans because of the record-high gas prices, I believe there is no clearer distinction between the two parties in Congress than on this issue.

Boehner’s full letter is here. 

We hadn’t looked at Chairman Markey’s proposal since the influence of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming’s is in inverse proportion to the length of its name — the longest committee name in the House. But it’s quite the proposal, “revolutionary,” as Markey calls it. We can’t make out in the plan just where the proletariat seize the means of production, but they sure wind up with all the proceeds.

It would be a very illuminating debate.