It appears that the Obama administration is in the process of using the EPA to shut down American prosperity. The agency is pursing an unprecedented rule changes and is manipulating standards and measurement techniques in order to promote the lefts radical environmentalist agenda. This includes shutting down all sources of inexpensive energy. I would argue that their ultimate goal is to destroy the coal industry completely. Of course it is coal that has not only made our electricity sector almost completely independent from foreign energy sources, for those who consider this to be an important goal, but more importantly, has also given all of us an affordable source of heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, and many other everyday services that we take for granted. 

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal is a must read. Of course everyone is aware of how the agency is already taking control of the energy industry through its “endangerment” ruling with respect to CO2. But there is activity going on at a much more subtle level. For example, according to the WSJ:

A case study in the Jackson [EPA head] method is the EPA’s recent tightening of
air-quality standards for sulfur dioxide. The draft SO2 rule was
released for the formal period of public comment last December. Yet the
final rule published in June suddenly included a “preamble” that rewrote
40-odd years of settled EPA policy. The EPA has heretofore measured the concentration of pollutants in the
ambient air by, well, measuring the concentration of pollutants in the
ambient air. The preamble throws out this sampling and ultraviolet
testing and substitutes computer estimations of what air quality might
be. The EPA favors modelling because it can plug in the data and
assumptions of its choosing, like how often a power plant is running at
maximum capacity. Gaming the models will allow the agency to punish
states and target individual plants, even if actual measurements show
that SO2 is under the new EPA standard.

This is just one example. Let’s hope that the new Congress looks into this power grab and does all that it can to put a stop to it, including withholding EPA funding. This is not only an assault on an industry, but a deliberate assault on American prosperity.