Most of the rest of the country does not.
The goal of the Clever People who run our local newspaper is not, as you might think, to understand why Texas works and why most of the rest of the country does not. It is not to celebrate that Texas works and most of the rest of the country does not. No. The goal of the Clever People who run our local newspaper is . . .
. . . to make Texas less like Texas and more like the rest of the country. The goal is the fundamental transformation -- to borrow a phrase -- of our sweet state.
The latest evidence came Tuesday with this gem, the very model of all that we know and despise about the Houston Chronicle.
The Environmental Protection Agency is intent on shutting down as many coal-powered electric-generation plants as it can, including several in Texas. This must be done quickly, of course, because the coming Great Repudiation of November 2012 will send the EPA's presidential patron into early retirement.
The attorney general of Texas had the temerity, to use the Chronicle's own brand of sarcasm, to step in front of the runaway regulatory agency and shout Stop!
The main issues posed by Attorney General Abbott's lawsuit are whether the EPA has authority to adopt rules that will shut down the plants and whether, if it does have such authority, it adopted the rules in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern such things.
Go here for an AG press release that explains the lawsuit. If you're too sophisticated to trust a press release, read the AG's motion for a partial stay and petition for court review of the new rules.
Authority? Proper procedure? Legitimate questions, no?
Not at the Houston Chronicle.
Instead the Clever People there simply swell up and preen. They display instead of arguments their precious sense of moral superiority and absolute solidarity with the most leftwing EPA administrator in U.S. history.
Last week, Texas sued [the EPA], yet again, for having the termerity to ask it, yet again, to stop poisoning our air.
Later:
[In] spite of EPA projections that cleaner air would save lives, create jobs and save about $100 billion a year, it's still "Groundhog Day" [meaning that Texas has sued before] in Texas.
No wonder the Chronicle so thoroughly dislikes the Texas that is. We are sacrificers of lives, destroyers of jobs, wasters of billions. And all this must be true because it's based on the word of Lisa (Lisa!) Jackson's Environmental Protection Agency.
(What's especially funny about this list of horribles is what it omits: any mention of global warming, despite "overwhelming scientific evidence" that it's the biggest, hairiest old problem in the whole dang world. Why the silence? Well, fashion has changed. Anthropogenic global warming is, if not out, at least faintly embarrassing. Jobs and billions are in. Whatever it takes.)
Think about it. Shutting down power plants, depriving our state of adequate supplies of electrity, will through leftist alchemy save lives (federally inspired brownouts will apparently skip over hospitals, signal lights at busy intersections, the air conditioners of old folks in poor health), save jobs (knee-capping industries that use electricity, downtown newspapers, for instance, will magically give them more time to hire people), and save billions of dollars (as, for instance, banana republics regularly save billions by immiserating their subjects; enforced poverty is a great way to save billions).
Better the Chronicle should consult another energy expert who, despite his unfortunate and stunning disfluency, once averrred:
You know, when I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal, uh, y--, you know, under my plan a--, of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
Even, you know, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural ga--, you name i--, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, uh, retrofit their operations.
That would cost money. They will pass that money [read cost] on to consumers.
Congress refused to enact cap-and-trade. A Congress controlled by Democrats. A Congress that the Houston Chronicle said in May 2009 (snicker, snicker) had "made up its mind that there will be a price on carbon dioxide, most likely via [read through] a cap-and-trade system." That Congress.
So Ms. Jackson (Lisa!) is trying to enact by regulatory fiat something Congress refused to pass by law, which certainly shows disrespect for the rule of law. If Congress won't adopt cap-and-trade, how can an agency do it by rule, with or without applause from the sidelines by useful idiots on editorial boards?
Attorney General Abbott has queued up the question of legality. The Chronicle, predictably, is hysterical.
The Chronicle's wrongheadedness on this issue is nothing new.
Fire them. Fire them all.
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