One of the mores striking aspects of this presidential campaign is how little President Obama is saying on the stump about his plans for a second-term agenda. So keen is the president to keep his ideas from leaking to the public, that his administration is now trying to hide its regulatory agenda.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe has spent the past week noting that the Obama administration as of today will be missing a statutory deadline on regulatory transparency. The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires federal agencies to publish in the Federal Register descriptions of economically significant regulations they expect to propose. These agendas are required to be published on a semi-annual basis, in both April and October. The Obama administration has now failed to meet this legal requirement since the fall of 2011.

FOXNEWS: Inhofe: EPA 'punting' regs until after election that 'spell doom' for jobs, economy: Republican Sen. James Inhofe says the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed action or “punted” on numerous regulations while President Obama tries to “earn votes” for a second term. The Oklahoma senator and ranking Republican on the chamber’s Committee on Environment and Public Works has released a report stating that when the agency approves the roughly one dozen regulations next year in 2013, they will “spell doom” for jobs and economic growth… Obama's campaign referred a request for comment to the administration. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/21/inhofe-epa-punting-regs-until-after-election-that-pell-doom-for-jobs-economy/#ixzz29z9ai9GW



GREENWIRE: Inhofe says Obama plans post-election 'regulatory onslaught': It's a somewhat new angle from Republicans, who have spent the past few years criticizing Obama for issuing too many expensive regulations that they say kill jobs. Environmental groups, on the other hand, have accused the White House of holding up important rules in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. But in the report, Republicans characterize the Obama administration as a vehicle for the "radical environmental left," with EPA officials waiting to fully pursue their anti-fossil-fuel agenda until after the election. Among the report's list of upcoming regulations, the agency's boiler MACT makes the cut, as does the federal government's efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing. Such rules would create a "regulatory onslaught that will drive up energy prices, destroy millions of jobs, and further weaken the economy," the report states. An EPA spokeswoman declined to comment. http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2012/10/18/archive/2?terms=Inhofe



INSIDEEPA: Inhofe Says Post-Election EPA Rules Will Shutter Fossil Fuel Production: The report also cites promises allegedly made by former White House climate and energy czar Carol Browner to environmental supporters on a recent call telling them not to worry about the unfinished agenda because Obama is committed to the cause in a second term. “This report is a wake-up call on the economic pain that the 'abusive' Obama EPA plans to inflict next year,” Inhofe says. “It reveals a president who is more concerned about saving his own job than the millions of Americans who are looking for one today.” Inside EPA reported in July that EPA completed most of its controversial work early this year while killing or delaying other regulations until after the election. “I think we all understand there are political windows that are better and others that are worse,” one environmentalist said…EPA did not respond to a request for comment. http://insideepa.com/201210182413318/EPA-Daily-News/Daily-News/inhofe-says-post-election-epa-rules-will-shutter-fossil-fuel-production/menu-id-95.html





DAILYCALLER: Sen. Inhofe warns of unfettered EPA in second Obama term: According to the senator, Obama has moved more to the center with his rhetoric on environmental regulations and away from the far left environmental movement to appeal to voters who are concerned about the economy and their pocketbooks. But during a “second term, he’s made the commitment” to moving his environmental policy back to the left, Inhofe said. “They are all jumping on him. All the Al Gore people, the elites, the MoveOn.orgs, saying, ‘You had control of the House and the Senate you still didn’t do it.’ And he says ‘wait until I get past this election and then I’ll do it.’” http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/18/sen-inhofe-warns-of-unfettered-epa-in-second-obama-term/#ixzz29zFgUrY4



WASHINGTONEXAMINER: Obama Washington Wink-Winking like crazy at EPA: This week, the Columbia Journalism Review and Pro Publica released a report stating that Obama has proved more secretive in some respects than his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush. One of those quoted by CJR/PP is Society of Environmental Journalists President Ken Ward Jr., a staff reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, who tweeted this yesterday: "The Obama EPA is the most difficult to get information and answers out of that I've covered in 20 years." That's the kind of transparency we get from politicians who do the Washington Wink-Wink. http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-washington-wink-winking-like-crazy-at-epa/article/2511132#.UISiyBwqURg


HERITAGE: Report: EPA Delaying Job-Killing Regulations to Aid Obama Re-Election: The decision to delay implementation of these rules is part of what the New York Times called a “new calculus on political and policy shifts as the White House sharpens its focus on the president’s re-election.” Tensions between the White House and top environmental regulators flared when the president announced he would delay an EPA rule on ozone emissions until after the election. EPA chief Lisa Jackson was livid, but the president assured her that he would move forward with the rule after the election. Inhofe’s report presents that decision as part of a coordinated strategy to achieve punitive environmental regulations without suffering significant setbacks at the ballot box. http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/report-epa-delaying-job-killing-regulations-to-aid-obama-re-election/

CNSNEWS: Report: 'EPA Rules Placed On Hold until after the Election Spell Doom for Jobs and Economic Growth': A new EPW Minority Report provides “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013: Numerous Obama EPA Rules Placed On Hold until after the Election Spell Doom for Jobs and Economic Growth.” The report enumerates the slew of environmental regulations that the report says the Obama-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has delayed or punted before the election while President Obama is trying to earn votes; but the Obama-EPA plans to move full speed ahead to implement this agenda if President Obama wins a second term. The report concludes that these rules taken together will inevitably result in the elimination of millions of American jobs, drive up the price of gas at the pump even more, impose construction bans on local communities, and essentially shut down American oil, natural gas, and coal production. http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/report-epa-rules-placed-hold-until-after-election-spell-doom-jobs-and-economic

Opponents of EPA soot science are asking the agency to pick a side: evil or inept.

A lawsuit being trumpeted by Sen. Jim Inhofe makes the most lurid of accusations against the agency's long-running experiments on the health effects of particulate matter, explicitly likening them to Nazi atrocities.

The suit, by website publisher Steve Milloy, offers the EPA two unattractive options: either admit that the agency deliberately exposed the sick and elderly to dangerous air pollution, or admit that soot isn't that hazardous after all - undermining the agency's regulations.
Agency lawyers will probably look to defend the agency with a third option: arguing that the studies use carefully calibrated short-term exposure to air pollution, similar to what many people experience in cities such as Los Angeles and Beijing.

The EPA didn't respond to questions about the lawsuit Monday.
Milloy, who filed the federal suit last week in Alexandria, Va., runs JunkScience.com, a website dedicated to taking down bad science - and the EPA. He also wrote the book "Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them."

"When the work underground stops," a TV reporter in Boone County, W.Va., said last Friday, "everything above pays the price." She was reporting that two local coal mines would soon start laying off workers. One was preparing to lay off 116 miners in a matter of weeks, the second had yet to finalize the number to be let go.

This is a situation that has sadly become all too familiar under the Obama administration's war on coal. Alpha Natural Resources Tuesday announced it will be scaling back its coal production, eliminating 1,200 jobs and closing eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Alpha's chief executive officer, Kevin Crutchfield, lamented "a regulatory environment that's aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal."

The House on Friday plans to launch a counterattack to the administration's relentless efforts to regulate coal into oblivion, by voting on the Stop the War on Coal Act to prevent more job losses and plant closures. This is a series of bills that aim to stop the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory assault on the U.S. coal power sector.

It has been a long time since we heard the term "global warming" from the mainstream media and the environmental left-but now that we're experiencing a hot summer, we're back to the good old days, as the left tries to drum up the hysteria they once enjoyed.

Over the past few weeks, I had the chance to welcome my alarmist friends back to the discussion about global warming: we've heard news reports with headlines proclaiming this summer is "what global warming looks like" and Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have all jumped to blame the recent heat, droughts, and-in Sen. Reid's case-even the cherry blossoms blossoming early in Washington, D.C. on man-made global warming.

When the weather is hot, according to them, we have proof of global warming. But this is a dangerous game to play because once it turns cold, they will go right back to saying it's climate change not global warming, weather is not climate, and that freezing temperatures are consistent with an overheating planet.

LAS VEGAS -- Following a speech that many observers here saw as among the most forceful confrontations of climate change in recent memory by a high-ranking government official, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he hopes the Senate will take up a bill to put a price on carbon emissions if Democrats maintain control of the chamber next year.

"We certainly can't stay where we are; we have to do something," Reid told Greenwire yesterday as he browsed exhibits at his National Clean Energy Summit 5.0.

Asked whether the Senate would return to climate legislation aimed at adding a price to carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, Reid said, "I hope so."