The EU’s appointment of João Vale de Almeida as the new EU Ambassador to Washington confirms European Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s tightening grip on Brussels’ foreign policy levers.
Virtually-unknown on the international stage, Vale de Almeida has been Barroso’s head of cabinet for the past five years, and intimately associated with the creation of the EU’s new diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS). The fact that someone so closely associated with the set-up of this new diplomatic corps should land such a plum role in it, would be considered a conflict of interest by any other organization, save the EU.
Vale de Almeida has all the essential qualifications that Brussels requires: he is a quintessential EU bureaucrat, whose advancement of ever-closer-union is unquestionable. And his loyalty to the unelected and unaccountable European Commission, especially Barroso, is certain.
However, foreign policymaking should now be the purview of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Catherine Ashton, who should answer directly to the member states through the European Council. The British Government repeatedly claimed that the Lisbon Treaty was nothing more than a tidying-up exercise, and that foreign policy would not be supranationalized.
In less than three months, the Lisbon Treaty has made a farce of the claim that foreign policy remains the responsibility of member states. Ashton herself is a Vice-President of the European Commission and has chosen to base herself in the Commission’s Berlaymont building. Her less than stellar resume and awkward performance before the European Parliamentary confirmation hearings has left her completely reliant on Commission bureaucrats to guide the development of the EEAS and the Common Foreign and Security Policy, ensuring that power goes further toward Brussels, and further away from member states. And with Vale de Almeida’s appointment, there is little doubt that arch-federalist Barroso will tighten his stealthy control over the EU’s foreign policy making machine.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to do what Congress couldn’t: regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases because allegedly “greenhouse gases threaten both the public health and the public welfare, and that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contribute to that threat.” To prevent this backdoor policy that would grant the EPA unprecedented authority over American economy, Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) introduced legislation on Friday that would prohibit the agency from implementing national greenhouse gas emissions standards. In his press release, Congressman Pomeroy said,
Regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the current provisions of the Clean Air Act is irresponsible and just plain wrong. That is why I introduced the Save Our Energy Jobs Act which would stop the EPA from moving forward with its proposal. I am not about to let some Washington bureaucrat dictate new public policy that will raise our electricity rates and put at risk the thousands of coal-related jobs in our state.”
Regulating carbon dioxide would unnecessarily drive up the costs of energy. Because we use vast amounts of energy daily, in both personal use and the production of goods and services, those costs would spread like a virus throughout the economy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce outlines a laundry list of businesses and entities that would potentially be affected under Clean Air Act regulations including schools, farms, restaurants, hospitals, apartment complexes and more. And anything with a motor, beginning with vehicles but ranging all the way from lawnmowers, jetskis and leaf blows could be subject to price-boosting regulations.
The EPA is proposing a rule change so the regulations would only affect businesses that emit 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions would prevent some of the smaller businesses from being directly targeted, but most would still be indirectly hit through higher energy costs.
As a result, higher energy prices force production cuts, reduced consumer spending, increased unemployment, and ultimately a much slower economy. And since low-income households spend a larger percentage of their income on energy, GHG regulations would impact the nation’s poor the most.
Having EPA bureaucrats micromanage the economy, all in the name of combating global warming, would be a chilling and massively expansive shift towards a top down regulatory environment. EPA regulations would essentially assure that a great deal of such economic activity would be held up for months, if not years. These problems have even state regulators up in arms:
Regulators from around the U.S., including Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California, are calling on the EPA to go slowly with its new rules, and in some cases warning that they lack funding to regulate some of the new emissions sources that would be covered.
The states’ warnings vary in urgency, with some saying the EPA’s proposal can be easily tweaked and others urging the agency to reconsider the proposal, predicting dire consequences. South Carolina regulators, in a letter to EPA dated Dec. 23, said the proposal will cause chaos and warned that many construction projects — and jobs — are at risk.
In a Dec. 24 letter to the EPA, the California Energy Commission, which oversees energy policy in the state, said the EPA’s proposal “will likely retard, rather than facilitate,” reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from its electricity sector.”
Congressman Pomeroy’s bill is an essential one if we don’t want unelected officials destroying jobs or sending them overseas because it’s too expensive to conduct business at home. In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal emphasized that “We need sensible solutions to the environmental and economic challenges ahead.” The EPA’s actions are anything but sensible.