Republicans
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Coal ash regulations would create 28,000 jobs
Republicans have been arguing that environmental regulations kill jobs. But research keeps showing that it's just not true. An independent analysis of the coal ash industry, for instance, reveals that stricter safety regulations would create 28,000 jobs overall.
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Republican anti-EPA jihad, explained
National Journal's Ronald Brownstein has an excellent column on the unusual party discipline of House Republicans have displayed in recent votes against EPA regulations.
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Campus revolts over bottled-water bans
Two Minnesota college campus have banned bottled water, and students are, like, totally flipping out. As one College Republican, who apparently is also enrolled in the Sarah Palin School of Political Oratory, put it:
“A little bit goes along the line of free choice. For us, that’s a big principle, in College Republicans is that you can’t really delegate to students what they can and cannot do in their own free will,” said Caitlyn Spence, chair of the St. Benedict Republicans.
(What?)
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Republicans risk $1 billion in revenue to squash a trickle of funding for biking and walking
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is threatening to hold up the passage of the transportation bill over a tiny portion of its funding, which (of course!) happens to be the portion dedicated to forms of transportation other than cars and highways. Streetsblog explains what's at stake here:
Sen. Coburn, and possibly other members of Congress, are declaring their willingness to throw the entire transportation industry, as well as commuters, under the bus while they quibble about the pennies spent on bike paths. According to the White House, if the bill is delayed just 10 days, the country would lose over $1 billion in transportation funding — “money we can never get back.”
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Jon Huntsman speaks out on climate change
In a tweet last week, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman made the apparently super-controversial claim that he "trust[s] scientists on global warming." This weekend, he went a step further, telling ABC's Jake Tapper that his opponents' opposition to the idea of climate change is wrongheaded and extremist.
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Critical List: Bachmann goes after Pawlenty on cap-and-trade; a bubble shield for wind turbines
At last night's Republican debate, Michelle Bachmann tried to stake Tim Pawlenty on his support for cap-and-trade.
The EPA wised up and banned DuPont from selling Imprelis, the herbicide that was killing trees.
San Francisco could require businesses to let bikers bring their ride inside. -
Wall Street Journal uses infrastructure as excuse to tell Tea Party to shove it
If you thought the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal couldn't possibly become any more backward or retrograde, the good news is, you're right! Today, the editors of the only newspaper opinion section to occasionally defeat Fox News in terms of sheer mendacity finally turned the corner and found a reason to break with the Tea Party notion that government should just go away already, so the country can turn into Somalia or Pakistan as quickly as possible.
The surprisingly powerful op-ed, written by Ed Rendell (Democrat, former governor of Pennsylvania) and Scott Smith (Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz.), advances the notion that transportation is the one thing our government should be spending money on, even in this economic climate.
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Republicans voted against environmental protections 110 times in six months
Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Edward Markey (Mass.), of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, have been keeping tabs on Republican votes to undermine environmental legislation. They say that since taking over the majority in January, Republicans have voted 110 times to block or weaken legislation intended to protect the environment.
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Issa wants cheaper cars, more climate change
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), whose official role as chairman of the House oversight committee is to be an administrative gadfly, is investigating the new fuel economy standard the Obama administration announced last Friday.
Issa is concerned about how the Obama administration negotiated with car manufacturers over these standards, which will push the average fuel economy of the country's fleet of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The problem, according to Issa, is that the standards could make cars cost more money and limit consumer choice.