There’s much good news from the elections, but first let me wet blanket some of the fires of enthusiasm. Republican majority or Democrat, it remains the case that so long as the Dept of Health and Human Services, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, and the like still exist the Federal government will continue to do great harm. That will still be true even if a better-than-Reagan Republican wins in 2012.

Now, for the election analysis — including lots of good news from the events of Nov. 2.

There’s no doubt the American electorate in many, many places rejected the Obama-Pelosi-Reid anti-Constitutional approach to government, i.e. Progressivism.

That’s clear, even though the Republican pickup in the Senate was disappointing, especially with the re-election of Harry Reid. Take a look at Republican gains in the State legislatures: 650-700 seats, compared to 505 in 1994. That’s huge.

There’s bad news to be sure.

Boxer won, and by a surprisingly comfortable margin. Polls can still be wildly wrong, apparently. Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi coasted to easy wins, Moonbeam Brown became Governor of California again. State legislators there are their younger clones. All that seals that state’s fate. It will be at least 25 years before the once-Golden State recovers, if ever, no matter who is elected two, four, or six years from now.

(more…)

President Obama is coming to Youngstown today to tout his administration’s recovery efforts, but its policies are only making matters worse in the Mahoning Valley.

While it’s encouraging that the factory in Youngstown that the president will visit on Tuesday has recently expanded, the city’s painfully high 15.1 percent unemployment rate is a harsh reminder that the “stimulus” has not created jobs “immediately,” or held our national unemployment rate (9.9 percent) below eight percent as the president promised.

Worse yet, the policies of the Obama Administration could quickly put jobs at the factory, which manufactures steel pipes for oil and gas drilling, on the chopping block as it continues to push a “cap-and-trade” national energy tax that will raise energy prices, drive thousands of American jobs overseas to countries with less-stringent environmental regulations, and devastate our domestic oil and gas industries.

Last December the administration unilaterally acted to pave the way for this bureaucratic nightmare, and it’s not looking back. In fact, last week the EPA finalized new rules for manufacturers and power plants scheduled to go into effect in January of next year, regulations that American Iron and Steel Institute President and CEO Thomas Gibson warns “will impose significant new costs on manufacturing industries at the worst possible time… [and] arbitrarily picks winners and losers.”

(more…)

During his campaign for Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli committed himself to acting with an aggressive conservative agenda. He promised voters that he would the office to aggressively fight governmental overregulation and interference wherever he could find it.

In other words, he pledged to use the office of Attorney General for good, rather than evil. After just over one month in office, he’s off to one hell of a start.

Last week, AG Cuccinelli boldly petitioned the EPA to convene a proceeding to reexamine their “Endangerment Finding” which claims that human activity has increased atmospheric greenhouse gases to a point that people’s lives are at risk. As such, they claim, the federal government must impose new caps on emissions and other climate protection policies in the energy sector.

Cuccinelli believes, rightly, that regulations based on the findings of the EPA in this sketchy case would be both legally questionable and detrimental to Virginia’s economy. (Much of the research that the EPA has based these findings upon has come from the questionable climate-gate materials). Accordingly, the AG also has petitioned a federal appeals court to review the EPA’s findings.

(more…)

Sources in Washington say Sen. Frank Lautenberg is drafting a new version of his Kids Safe Chemicals Act, which stalled out in 2008 after environmentalists complained the bill was toothless and didn’t grant the EPA enough power to regulate chemicals used to make products. Lautenberg’s new version of the bill is likely to increase the EPA’s authority to limit – or even ban – the use of common chemicals.

As the EPA’s carbon “endangerment finding” in December has demonstrated, it might not be such a good idea to vest virtually unlimited power in a single government agency, especially one that has become as politicized as the EPA.

And like the global warming hysteria the “endangerment finding” was supposed to address, the argument in favor of this aggressive power grab is thin, based on emotional, not scientific appeals, and fairly obviously designed to encroach on the free market. One organization advocating for the EPA power grab, “Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families,” is actually sponsoring a virtual Million Baby Crawl on Washington. Expect the stunts to get more ridiculous after Lautenberg’s bill drops.

(more…)

Kim Strassel writes, in “The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles” in the Wall Street Journal, with typical insight that:

“President Obama, having failed to get climate legislation, didn’t want to show up to the Copenhagen climate talks with a big, fat nothing. So the EPA pulled the pin. In doing so, it exploded its own threat.”

Far from alarm, the feeling sweeping through many quarters of the Democratic Congress is relief. Voters know cap-and-trade is Washington code for painful new energy taxes. With a recession on, the subject has become poisonous in congressional districts. Blue Dogs and swing-state senators watched in alarm as local Democrats in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections were pounded on the issue, and lost their seats.

But now? Hurrah! It’s the administration’s problem! No one can say Washington isn’t doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency’s move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.”

(more…)