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EPA regulations cause the loss of 500 energy sector jobs

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

It was sadly ironic that Texas energy company Luminant announced it would lay off 500 employees on the same morning that President Obama unveiled legislation designed to promote job growth. The company said that a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency will force it to cease operations at two electricity generating plants, and close three coal mines.

“We have hundreds of employees who have spent their entire professional careers at Luminant and its predecessor companies,” Luminant CEO David Campbell said in a news release. “At every step of this process, we have tried to minimize these impacts, and it truly saddens me that we are being compelled to take the actions we’ve announced today.”

The company cited the EPA’s new cross-state pollution rule as the impetus for the decision, and noted that it had worked to identify other means of reducing emissions, but that “meeting this unrealistic deadline also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs,” Campbell said.

Campbell also announced that the company has filed a lawsuit against the EPA in an effort “to achieve [EPA emissions] goals without harming critically important Texas jobs and electric reliability.” The suit seeks to block the cross-state pollution rule for Texas companies, and to grant a stay to Texas companies to prevent them from having to comply with sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions standards by the existing January 1, 2012 deadline.

Can we afford to lose jobs in a recession?

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Videos from the Monday night Tea Party Republican debate

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Here are the videos of the debate on Youtube:

ABC News says Michele won, and I can’t disagree, since she is my preferred candidate, by far. Go Michele!

Excerpt:

With her standing in the polls slipping, Michele Bachmann needed to find a way to capture the spotlight she held earlier this summer.

She just may have done that tonight at the Tea Party Express/CNN debate in Tampa, Florida.

Bachmann, the founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, knew her audience well and it showed.

Unlike former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Bachmann took a pass at criticizing front-runner Texas Gov. Perry on Social Security and she refused to weigh in on Perry’s comment last month that  Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may be “treasonous.”

Instead she waited patiently to pounce on Perry when the debate turned to the issues she knew would connect with the audience in the hall.

She attacked Perry for his decision to require HPV vaccinations in Texas, calling it “a government injection through executive order” and a “violation of a liberty interest.”

She knows that while the Tea Party activists are not fans of the federal government, they don’t love big business either.

“We cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order,” said Bachmann, “there was a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate…The drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor and this is just flat out wrong”

She also attacked Perry on illegal immigration – another issue that plays well in a GOP primary.

A longer review from the UK Telegraph emphasizes that Perry got beat up Monday night.

Ron Paul got booed for his foreign policy views:

More Michele in the latter half of this clip:

Christian philosopher Doug Geivett has another review of the debate here. He thinks Bachmann won, as well.

I think right now my candidates are 1) Bachmann and 2) Santorum a distant second. I really think we need to make Michele Bachmann the nominee.

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Many Iraqis having second thoughts about U.S. forces pulling out

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From the crazy left-wing New York Times.

Excerpt:

Sheik Kamal Maamouri, the leader of one of the largest Shiite-dominated tribes in Iraq, used to call the United States troops here occupiers, demanding that they withdraw because he said they killed and imprisoned innocent members of his tribe.

But now he is not so sure he wants the Americans to go, at least not yet. Like many others across Iraq, he felt conflicted, and a bit frightened, after it was revealed last week that the United States may keep 3,000 to 4,000 troops in Iraq next year.

“The political changes that have occurred here and the security problems have led a lot of Iraqis, including me, to change our minds about the withdrawal of U.S. forces,” Mr. Maamouri said. That was a view that few Shiites, empowered by the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni government, would ever have spoken — when it seemed the United States was never going to go.

“They bring a balance to Iraqi society,” he said.

Though Iraqis have called for Americans to leave from the start of the occupation in 2003, the prospect of such a drastic drawdown, from the 48,000 troops here now, has revealed another side of the Iraqi psyche. This is a nation that distrusts itself, with little faith in the government’s own security forces or political leaders. It is as if people here never actually believed that the United States would leave, so all along demands for a pullout were never carefully weighed against the potential fallout.

This is not to say that Iraqis no longer want to be liberated from a foreign military, which of course they say they do. But Iraqis who once cheered the fall of a dictator recall all too vividly the chaos and bloodshed that came after Mr. Hussein’s iron rule was broken. Iraq still has the fault lines of that past, Sunni versus Shiite, Arab versus Kurd. What it does not have are strong institutions, or a collective sense of national purpose, to hold it together.

“We shouldn’t think about the occupation emotionally,” said the governor of Anbar Province, Mohammed Qasim Abed, who for eight years wanted the Americans out, but now has had second thoughts as violence in his area escalates. “Iraq is just not ready, and it’s necessary for the Americans to stay to prevent Iran from overrunning the country and helping to prevent violence. But we know 3,000 troops will not be enough.”

Interesting.