Sunday, February 05, 2017

SURPRISE! MORE OP-EDS DISGUISED AS NEWS STORIES: Oil and Gas Regulation Edition

By William Teach

Reason #45986758677984232 that the Credentialed Media has lost trust, as the NY Times publishes what is essentially an activist opinion piece by Eric Lipton on page A1 of the Sunday NY edition. This might as well have been written by the office of Nancy Pelosi:

G.O.P. Hurries to Slash Oil and Gas Rules, Ending Industries’ 8-Year Wait

(the headline on the web front page is “GOP Leaps to End Oil And Gas Rules)

The document carried the title “A Roadmap to Repeal,” a concise list of Obama administration environmental regulations that a Koch brothers-backed group was pressing President Trump and Congress to quickly reverse after Inauguration Day.

It was a tally of rules that energy industry executives and lobbyists had waged a futile fight against for eight years, donating millions of dollars to lawmakers who vowed to help block them, filing lawsuits to try to overturn them and hiring experts to generate reports that questioned the need for them.

But in a flurry of activity this past week, Congress did what Charles G. and David H. Koch — who own a conglomerate that sells hundreds of products, including gasoline, jet fuel and coal — and other industry leaders had been asking for.

If that was a press release from the Democratic National Committee, would you know the difference? Interestingly, Lipton never actually names the group till literally the next to last paragraph. It’s Freedom Partners, who are about things like, you know, freedom. They do have a roadmap regarding regulations, including on energy. And, they receive big funding from Koch industries. Which is apparently Bad, because only left leaning folks are allowed to agitate for things.

Using a rarely invoked law, the Republican-controlled Congress nullified a measure intended to curb the venting of gas wells on federal lands, and began the process of rolling back other regulations, including one enacted to limit damage that coal mines cause to streams — each items on the “Roadmap to Repeal.”

On Friday, with his own executive orders, Mr. Trump took up two more items on the list, including a call to rewrite major provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, legislation crafted by the Obama administration and passed by Congress in response to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Not since the Reagan administration has Washington moved so quickly to roll back or nullify so many federal regulations, one of the clearest signs of an abrupt shift of power in a government now under one-party control that has flipped the script of winners and losers.

Forget the rest of the idiotic activist “article”: that line is reason to celebrate, as the regulations of Obama are washed away.


Read more at The Pirate's Cove.
 

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