The EPA’s newest and bestest idea ever: the “Rain Tax”

Somebody, please, wake me up when the lunacy is over…

From baltimore.cbslocal.com:

The nickname is rain tax, and the more hard surfaces you have–like a parking lot–the harder it’s going to bite.

When rain falls on rooftops or other hard structures like driveways and parking lots, it scours away chemicals from air pollution, eventually running off into the Chesapeake Bay.

It’s a big source of those poor grades given to the bay’s health in annual report cards.

“The Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams are overloaded with too much nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment,” said Will Baker, Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Which destroys water quality and feeds algae blooms that create dead zones. So Maryland’s legislature has created the impervious surface tax.

“The impervious surface tax would have an enormous impact. We have 200 sites throughout the state of Maryland. If you look at Our Daily Bread for example, the proposed fee would be $5,000,” said Bill McCarthy, Dir. Catholic Charities. And that’s for just this one property of Catholic charities.

Yes, you read that exactly right.

Out-of-control Government Regulation is destroying our country

Steven Lathrop and his neighbors had a problem, which the government had identified and then inexplicably refused to solve for decades. Steven Lathrop, using his own money, finally took matters into his own hands. He bought an eyesore of a dump and used the land to save his entire neighborhood from debilitating floods.

Steven Lathrop stepped up when no one else would. Steven Lathrop is a hero, by any reasonable person’s definition.

And our over-regulated Federal Government crushed him, leaving him near bankruptcy.

From Heritage.org:

Lathrop’s home of Granite City, Illinois, regularly suffered from storm flooding that damaged his neighbor’s homes, and even cost the taxpayers money in federal disaster aid.

The Incandescent Light Bulb ban, …and the ACTUAL Dim Bulbs behind the whole mess

I went to the store last weekend to buy some replacement 100-watt light bulbs….and I couldn’t find any.

Now, they had puh-lenty of bulbs: the squiggly, wiggly ones, along with several other shapes I’d never seen before. Plus, they also had a modest section of the normal incandescent 60- and 75-watt bulbs, but no 100′s.

And then I recalled, again, the Great Light Bulb Debacle®.

If you need a refresher on this subject, or if you’d just appreciate a fresh excuse to grind some of the enamel off your teeth, here you go (h/t the Washington Times):

More helpful guidance from our loving & benevolent EPA

I truly think the EPA is making up rules just to cheese me off.

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From Audrey Hudson over at Human Events:

Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways.

These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.

“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

“This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.

Go ahead, Lefties, and tell me I’m crazy. Tell me the EPA is not deliberately trying to sabotage our nation, by making every use of every thing illegal or within their purview. If a temporary ditch of water can be construed as a “navigable waterway”, what’s next? Oh, wait, don’t tell me: you’re already taken control of basically all life, ever since you did some deep thinkin’ over at the EPA Puzzle Palace™ and came up with CO2 as the world’s worst pollutant. You’ll have to forgive me. Occasionally I forget that, by virtue of my breathing, I’m destroying the planet.

My bad.

More from Human Events:

“President Obama’s EPA continues to act as if it is above the law. It is using this overreaching guidance to pre-empt state and local governments, farmers and ranchers, small business owners and homeowners from making local land and water use decisions,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in announcing their measure in March. “Our bill will stop this unprecedented Washington power grab and restore Americans’ property rights.”

“It’s time to get EPA lawyers out of Americans’ backyards,” Barrasso said.

So, good luck, all you homeowners out there. Might want to re-grade your lawns so that water will flow off towards your neighbors (of course, your neighbors may be thinking the same thing). You farmers had better be careful when you irrigate your crops, too: the very act could end up putting you out of business.

However, in the spirit of being upbeat and positive, try this: just keep telling yourself, “Big Brother Loves Me. Big Brother Loves Me…..”

Battling the Big MACT

Lost in the shuffle of all the recent election wrangling has been the EPA’s assault upon the coal industry. The EPA’s new arbitrary rule, the Utility MACT (“Mercury and Air Toxics”), is having a chilling effect upon one of our primary sources of energy. We’ve previously seen what other Obama EPA officials feel their job is, so this isn’t exactly a surprise.

This time, EPA regional Administrator Carl Spalding speaks honestly, maybe too honestly, about the likely impact of the EPA on the future of coal.

Check out the video below.

Catch that?

“But know right now, we are, we are struggling. We are struggling because we are trying to do our jobs. Lisa Jackson has put forth a very powerful message to the country. Just two days ago, the decision on greenhouse gas performance standard and saying basically gas plants are the performance standard which means if you want to build a coal plant, you got a big problem.

That was a huge decision. You can’t imagine how tough that was. Because you got to remember that if you go to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and all those places, you have coal communities who depend on coal. And to say that we just think those communities should just go away, we can’t do that. But she had to do what the law and policy suggested. And it’s painful. It’s painful every step of the way.”

Is this even arguably necessary? Does this make ANY sort of financial sense? For an accurate answer, I’d strongly suggest you visit Wesley Coopersmith over at FreedomWorks blog. There’s really no way to summarize it, and I don’t want to repost the whole thing here. I can, however, copy his summary sentence:

“What the Utility MACT rule would do is expand the already vast powers given to the EPA by the Clean Air Act, increasing red tape and imposing billions in new costs on the economy.”

I don’t know about you guys, but that certainly sounds worthwhile to me……

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Along with the Catholic Church’s fight against Obamacare, this attempted power grab is one of the biggest fights for freedom in the country. If the EPA can basically cripple entire swaths of the energy industry completely on their own, don’t imagine that this will be the only time they do so.

It will have just begun.