Cooler Heads Digest 12 April 2013

12 April 2013

In the News

Another Dim Bulb for Energy
Steve Milloy, Washington Times, 12 April 2013

Diverse Coalition Calls for Ethanol Policy Reform
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 11 April 2013

Lawsuit and a Congressional Hearing as Fisker Bankruptcy Nears
Paul Chesser, National Legal and Policy Center, 11 April 2013

Pacific Export Terminals: The Raging War on Coal
Steve Goreham, Washington Times, 10 April 2013

BP: Back to Petroleum
Marita Noon, Energy Tribune, 10 April 2013

IMF’s Carbon Tax Shenanigans
Marlo Lewis, Master Resource, 9 April 2013

Dr. Moniz, Tear Down That Natural Gas Export Wall
Nicolas Loris, The Foundry, 8 April 2013

The Dirty Truth about the Wind Industry
Boston Herald editorial, 7 April 2013

Fracking Offers Jerry Brown a Watershed Moment
Joel Kotkin, Orange County Register, 7 April 2013

EPA: Judge, Jury, & Policeman
Eric Heyl, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 6 April 2013

News You Can Use
Heritage Analysis: Sanders-Boxer Carbon Tax Would Cost 400,000 Jobs by 2016

According to an analysis published this week by the Heritage Foundation, the Climate Security Act of 2013, a carbon tax proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (S-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), would cost a family of four more than $1,000 of income per year. By 2016, the proposed tax would lead to 400,000 lost jobs.

Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell

Senate EPW Committee Holds Hearing on EPA Nominee

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a confirmation hearing on Thursday, 11th April, on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.  McCarthy currently serves as assistant administrator for air and radiation.  Senator David Vitter (R-La.), ranking Republican on the committee, concentrated his opening remarks and questions on McCarthy’s involvement in the EPA’s lack of transparency.  Vitter remarked: “The nominee recently stated that ‘information is power.’ Apparently, she also believes that withholding information is power.”

Surprisingly, the Society of Environmental Journalists, agrees with Vitter.  The SEJ sent out a statement that was critical of the Obama Administration in general and of the EPA and McCarthy in particular.  “The Obama administration has been anything but transparent in its dealings with reporters seeking information, interviews and clarification on a host of environmental, health and public lands issues. The EPA is one of the most closed, opaque agencies to the press. Members of the Society of Environmental Journalists – a group of 1,350 journalists who specialize in environmental coverage – face substantial hurdles getting their questionsanswered about air pollution, water quality, oil and gas operations and other issues.”

The SEJ statement then criticizes McCarthy directly: “Today, the Senate holds its hearing to consider McCarthy's nomination.  A new EPA administrator is a chance for a fresh start, but we are troubled by her past statements defending the agency's tight grip on communications between journalists and agency scientists and policymakers…The policies she endorsed bottleneck the free flow of information to the public.”s

This, of course, is what my CEI colleague Chris Horner, who is not a member of the SEJ, has been discovering and documenting for several years now with a series of Freedom of Information Act requests that the EPA has inadequately complied with only after being ordered to by federal judges.  Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) asked McCarthy about the “Richard Windsor” alias e-mail account: “I wonder if anyone at the EPA objected or if you personally objected to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson using an alias that was absolutely against the policy of the EPA?  And your emails back to her go back to 2009.”

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the EPW Committee, responded to Barrasso by claiming that alias e-mail accounts were standard practice at the agency and had been used by previous administrators in the George W. Bush administration.  David Martosko published an article in London’s Daily Mail that makes it clear that Jackson’s Richard Windsor account was not like those used by previous top officials at the EPA.  

For more commentary on the McCarthy nomination, see op-eds by Senator Barrasso and CEI’s Brian McNicoll. Climate Depot provides a round-up of the confirmation hearing with the help of JunkScience.com.  And the Heritage Foundation provides a list of top quotes from Gina McCarthy. 

Across the States
William Yeatman

Green Energy Mandate Moves ahead in Colorado

By a 3-2 vote on Monday night, the Colorado Senate State Affairs Committee passed S.B. 252, legislation that would expand the state’s green energy production mandate. Currently, investor-owned utilities in Colorado are under a requirement to generate 30% of electricity sales from renewable energy by 2020. S.B. 252 would subject rural electric co-ops—a special class of electric utilities created by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal—to a renewable mandate of 25% by 2020.

The legislation was negotiated by environmentalists and the green energy lobby. Rural electric co-ops were not granted a seat at the table, even though they are the regulated entity.

Proponents of S.B. 252 claim that the bill includes an “off ramp,” in the form of a 2% maximum rate impact for any given year. I flew out to Colorado in order to testify on this subject. Specifically, I testified about how the existing green energy mandate (for investor-owned utilities) also has a 2% rate cap, which has been rendered meaningless by accounting gimmicks. I informed the Committee that the real cost of the existing green energy mandate in 2012 was 13% of electricity sales—more than six times the supposed rate cap. The basis of my testimony was a study I published earlier this year with the Independence Institute.

Democrats control both chambers of the Colorado Legislature, and I understand that S.B. 252 is a caucus priority. However, there has been push back. Intermountain Rural Electric Association (Colorado’s largest rural co-op) and Tri-State Generation and Transmission (which provides power to 18 rural co-ops in Colorado) are lobbying hard against the legislation. And on Wednesday, the pro-green energy Denver Post editorialized against the bill.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

CEI Today: Public shaming & "too big to fail," Obama's sulfur standards, and fudging on Facebook

PUBLIC SHAMING & "TOO BIG TO FAIL" - BILL FREZZA

Forbes: We Can't Save Capitalism Unless We Denounce Its False Prophets

A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks.

Quite simply, we should not shy away from tarring and feathering any supposed “capitalist” who goes to Washington hat in hand, looking for favors to “save” America’s financial sector, auto industry, “green” energy economy, or what have you. Whether it’s Goldman Sachs, General Motors, or General Electric, we need to shout to anybody who will listen that any one firm imploding will not blow up the economy. Being pro-business is not the same as being pro-market. There is no reason why defending the right of money changers to operate free from onerous regulations should translate into letting the counterfeiters run amok and the temple priests loot the public treasury.

> Read more

> Interview Bill Frezza

OBAMA SULFUR STANDARDS - MARLO LEWIS Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Environmental judge, jury & policeman Marlo Lewis Jr. is a senior fellow in the energy and environment program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank advocating limited government. Lewis spoke to the Trib regarding the Obama administration's environmental mandate to significantly reduce sulfur levels in gasoline. Q: Is there a genuine environmental need for stricter sulfur standards? A: I don't believe so. We've basically seen a 60-percent reduction in emissions since 1980, air pollution levels are at their historically lowest levels, and over the last nine years we had a reduction in the sulfur content of gasoline from 300 parts per million down to 30. The Environmental Protection Agency is like a lot of government agencies — it always assumes that it must go further. And you know, in fact, it has to assume that, otherwise it would no longer have a reason to exist. If it declared that the air pollution threat was over and we can relax now, what more need would there be for an EPA?  > Read the full Q&A > Interview Marlo Lewis

COMPUTER FRAUD - RYAN RADIA April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA Congress is mulling an update to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1984. Under the CFAA, it is currently a federal crime to enter an incorrect age on your Facebook profile or an incorrect weight on a dating website profile. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia suggests that the CFAA should be reined in, instead of expanded, as a draft currently circulating around Capitol Hill proposes. > Listen to the Liberty Week podcast >Interview Ryan Radia

More in the news... Overcriminalizing Childhood: Maryland Turns Distressing Speech Into A Crime Retailing As Liberating Regulation Roundup Taking The Taxpayers Out To Lunch Lessons From Dutch Regulatory Reform: How The U.S. Could Save $450 billion Per Year

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Back to Court to Seek Answers on EPA's Fee-Waiver Denials

Agency Is Responsive to Friends But Imposes Barriers, Including Unlawful Fee Hurdles to Public Information, Upon Those It Views as Hostile

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 4, 2013 — Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully seek to impose fee barriers as a means of denying and, at minimum, delaying groups EPA deems as unhelpful to its agenda from obtaining public information, according to a lawsuit filed today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in U.S. District Court. CEI’s lawsuit also indicates that this stands in stark contrast to EPA’s notorious collaboration with environmental pressure group allies, who are instead treated as extensions of EPA.

CEI’s lawsuit asks the court to order EPA to comply with what is known as a “simple” request under the Freedom of Information Act—which EPA nonetheless has refused to even acknowledge—seeking copies of all determinations to grant or deny FOIA fee waiver requests for approximately the past year.

Under FOIA, agencies must waive or substantially reduce fees for record requests by non-profits that broadly disseminate public information, such as CEI, when those records are “in the public interest” and “likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of operations or activities of the government.”

CEI’s success at uncovering and disseminating public information—including former Administrator Lisa Jackson’s false-identity email account in the name of “Richard Windsor”—apparently has led EPA to try and block CEI from further discoveries.

CEI’s experience of apparent retaliation also seems to be part of a new and larger pattern of EPA imposing fee barriers, generally, againstgroups deemed hostile to EPA’s agenda. Other organizations CEI is aware have been similarly obstructed of late include the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, the National Center for Public Policy Research and the American Tradition Institute. This is despite these groups’ requests being for information of obvious public and policy interest, including EPA practices of hiding its communications from Congress and the public, and its work regarding hydraulic fracturing, source of an energy boom the Obama administration nonetheless has targeted.

CEI’s lawsuit seeks to compare this treatment with EPA’s relationship with those groups it deems to be supportive of its agenda,—typically with good reason—such as the Sierra Club and Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which enjoy close working relationships with the agency.

CEI’s suit seeks to compel revelation of just how evenly, or not, EPA has applied the law. “Under FOIA no agency may discriminate or disparately treat similarly situated requesting parties”, said Christopher C. Horner, attorney, senior fellow at CEI and author of the book “The Liberal War on Transparency,” research for which set off the investigation that led CEI to look into EPA’s record-keeping practices. “FOIA’s fee-waiver provision was created specifically to ensure non-profits do not have fee barriers placed in their way of accessing public records. The public deserves to know whether EPA is singling out groups it does not perceive as friendly for discriminatory treatment.”

► Read CEI's April 4 complaint here.

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CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Today: Suing EPA, capitalism's false prophets, and computer fraud

SUING EPA

CEI.org: Back to Court to Seek Answers on EPA's Fee-Waiver Denials

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully seek to impose fee barriers as a means of denying and, at minimum, delaying groups EPA deems as unhelpful to its agenda from obtaining public information, according to a lawsuit filed today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in U.S. District Court. CEI’s lawsuit also indicates that this stands in stark contrast to EPA’s notorious collaboration with environmental pressure group allies, who are instead treated as extensions of EPA.

CEI’s lawsuit asks the court to order EPA to comply with what is known as a “simple” request under the Freedom of Information Act—which EPA nonetheless has refused to even acknowledge—seeking copies of all determinations to grant or deny FOIA fee waiver requests for approximately the past year. > Read more

> Interview an expert

CAPITALISM'S FALSE PROPHETS - BILL FREZZA Forbes: We Can't Save Capitalism Unless We Denounce Its False Prophets A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks. This has become an increasingly important issue as the financial sector has grown to take up an unprecedented share of our economy. While cleaving to tried-and-true libertarian defenses of finance as vital to the economy, some of us fear that the machinations of the crony capitalists running the TBTF banks—in cahoots with their allies in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve—will result in not only another global financial collapse, but a populist anti-capitalist backlash that could destroy what’s left of our free enterprise system.  > Read more > Interview Bill Frezza

COMPUTER FRAUD - RYAN RADIA April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA Congress is mulling an update to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1984. Under the CFAA, it is currently a federal crime to enter an incorrect age on your Facebook profile or an incorrect weight on a dating website profile. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia suggests that the CFAA should be reined in, instead of expanded, as a draft currently circulating around Capitol Hill proposes. > Listen to the Liberty Week podcast >Interview Ryan Radia

More in the news... Lessons From Dutch Regulatory Reform: How The U.S. Could Save $450 billion Per Year

CEI ANNUAL DINNER & GALA FEATURING THE HONORABLE RAND PAUL JUNE 20, 2013 cei.org/ceidinner

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI, ATI Sue EPA for Instant Messaging Records

Potential Landmark Case Seeks Discussions on Agency's War on Coal, Role of Pressure Groups from Little-Known Accounts That Have Escaped Scrutiny

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1, 2013 — In what could be a landmark case, two free-market groups—the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center—have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking communications among senior EPA officials using instant messaging or IM technology.

In the joint lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., CEI asked the court to compel EPA to produce IM discussions to or from former administrator Lisa Jackson, including her alias “Richard Windsor” account, discussing the Obama administration’s war on coal. CEI already is in court for the “Windsor” emails on the same topics.

ATI sought Jackson’s IM correspondence to, from or discussing the Sierra Club and two other environmental pressure groups, as well as similar messages of two other senior officials—Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated to succeed Jackson as administrator, and former senior counselor Lisa Heinzerling, who has rejoined one of these groups.

In the course of CEI’s “Windsor” litigation, it learned EPA staff first used IBM “Sametime” to discuss creating the “Windsor” account. EPA provides Sametime and Oracle Messenger to staff as an alternative to email. Although IMs are “agency records” under the law, they do not seem to have been searched by EPA in response to FOIA requests or requests from Congress seeking “records," or “electronic records,” both of which would cover IMs.

“In addition to important conversations both inside the agency and with outside parties, we expect this suit to provide important information about EPA’s compliance with the law and Congress’ legitimate oversight activities,” said Christopher Horner, attorney, senior fellow at CEI and author of “The Liberal War On Transparency,” the research for which led to the investigation. “Based on information we have obtained, it seems we have uncovered another major transparency scandal in that either EPA is destroying instant messages against the law, or it is withholding them in defiance of its legal obligations to produce.”

EPA’s only response to the groups’ IM requests was to deny fee waivers for both, which are provided for under FOIA for non-profits that broadly disseminate information on government activities.

But, in what Horner calls “an apparent retaliatory tantrum,” the EPA has responded to his involvement in exposing the Richard Windsor account by denying all of his outstanding and subsequent requests for these routine fee waivers, for either ATI or CEI. While these denials are overturned on appeal, Horner claims that “this seems to be yet one more way ‘the most transparent administration, ever,’ is throwing obstacles in the way of transparency for those it deems inconvenient.”

► Read CEI and ATI's March 28 complaint here.

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CEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei.