Reading through the Supreme Court EPA case syllabus

[origami]

Here is the syllabus:

supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 … 0_n758.pdf

It’s a much more complicated case than the abortion and 2nd amendment cases, largely because it scrutinizes very obscure regulations of an already obscure beaurocracy (the EPA), and an equally obscure legal back-and-forth that has been going on for a couple of years.

In essence, though, what is at stake is whether the EPA is taking on legislative functions that constitutionally belong with the US Congress.

[origami]

First, the court held that the case was justiciable, which means it was still the court’s business. There were arguments that it wasn’t, because of the aforementioned convoluted history, but the court did away with all that.

Second, this:

Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act
the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting
approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan.

You can’t just do whatever you want ffs. Get it through Congress, let people vote on it. Then send the US back to the stone age.

[origami]

This is a major questions case. EPA claimed to discover an
unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its reg-
ulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely
used, statute designed as a gap filler. That discovery allowed it to
adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined
to enact itself.

That doesn’t sound like communist weasel tactics at all.

Oh wait.

[origami]

Clarence Thomas deserves an imposing marble statue bigger than Lincoln’s.

[origami]

The Government attempts to down play matters, noting that the
Agency must limit the magnitude of generation shift it demands to a
level that will not be “exorbitantl y costly” or “threaten the reliability
of the grid.” Brief for Federal Respondents 42. This argument does
not limit the breadth of EPA’s claimed authority so much as reveal it:
On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it
alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy
implicated in the basic regulation of how Americans get their energy.
There is little reason to think Congress did so.

This argument does not limit the breadth of EPA’s claimed authority so much as reveal it

The problem with Clarence Thomas is that he is not only an enlightened legal scholar, but a gifted writer.

[origami]

“We’re going to do a little non-invasive surgery. Don’t worry, we’ll stop right away if you lose too much blood or become permanently disfigured.”

“You what?”

Not so much limit as reveal.

[origami]

@origami

This is a major questions case. EPA claimed to discover an
unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its reg-
ulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely
used, statute designed as a gap filler. That discovery allowed it to
adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined
to enact itself.

That doesn’t sound like communist weasel tactics at all.

Oh wait.

Nor can the Court ignore that the regula-
tory writ EPA newly uncovered in Section 111(d) conveniently enabled
it to enact a program, namely, cap-and-trade for carbon, that Congress
had already considered and rejected numerous times.

But this is impossible, the left has made it clear that we are the authoritarian fascists wanting to take power from citizens. How can this be?

[origami]

Finally, the Court has no occasion to decide whether the statutory
phrase “system of emission reduction” refers exclusively to measures
that improve the pollution performance of individual sources, such
that all other actions are ineligible to qualify as the BSER. It is perti-
nent to the Court’s analysis that EPA has acted consistent with such
a limitation for four decades. But the only question before the Court
is more narrow: whether the “best system of emission reduction” iden-
tified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan was within the authority
granted to the Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. For the
reasons given, the answer is no.

Cut, print, ship.

[Mr_Reasonable]

@origami

Clarence Thomas deserves an imposing marble statue bigger than Lincoln’s.

lolwut

[origami]

Fuck yeah.

[origami]

politico.com/news/2022/07/2 … s-00045920

You know, this article makes a point that had escaped even me.

The new left, led by the EU and the US faction that allied itself with it under Obama, or traitorpieceofshitama, has for some decades now taken the strategic approach of imposing its agenda through government agencies. These agencies take their mandates as blank checks and perform all the things that can never pass congress or a president could never get away with. It is a common communist tactic to, where you can’t get something through legally or through democratic motions, use existing infrastructure to slide it through. Or ram it through.

What this article is pointing out is that, essentially, the Supreme Court has now established a firm precedent that government agencies can be called out on this. From now on, if it can be shown that what they are trying to do is both consequential and contentious, they will have to stop and ask Congress for permission (or the president, if it is an executive thing).

We used to call this separation of powers, but communists obviously don’t care about any of that shit. Now we can sue them for it.

This case is not about pollution regulation. It is about regulatory overreach.

[origami]

Long quote incoming, bear with me:

The Clean Air Act establishes three main regulatory pro-
grams to control air pollution from stationary sources such
as power plants. Clean Air Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat.
1676, 42 U. S. C. §7401 et seq. One program is the New
Source Performance Standards program of Section 111, at
issue here. The other two are the National Ambient Air
Quality Standards (NAAQS) program, set out in Sections
108 through 110 of the Act, 42 U. S. C. §§7408–7410, and
the Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) program, set out in
Section 112, §7412. To understand the place and function
of Section 111 in the statutory scheme, some background on
the other two programs is in order.

The NAAQS program addresses air pollutants that “may
reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or wel-
fare,” and “the presence of which in the ambient air results
from numerous or diverse mobile or stationary sources.”
§7408(a)(1). After identifying such pollutants, EPA estab-
lishes a NAAQS for each. The NAAQS represents “the max-
imum airborne concentration of [the] pollutant that the
public health can tolerate.” Whitman v. American Trucking
Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 465 (2001); see §7409(b). EPA,
though, does not choose which sources must reduce their
pollution and by how much to meet the ambient pollution
target. Instead, Section 110 of the Act leaves that task in
the first instance to the States, requiring each “to submit to
[EPA] a plan designed to implement and maintain such
standards within its boundaries.” Train v. Natural Re-
sources Defense Council, Inc., 421 U. S. 60, 65 (1975); §7410.
The second major program governing stationary sources
is the HAP program. The HAP program primarily targets
pollutants, other than those already covered by a NAAQS,
that present “a threat of adverse human health effects,” in-
cluding substances known or anticipated to be “carcino -
genic, mutagenic, teratogenic, neurotoxic,” or otherwise
“acutely or chronically toxic.” §7412(b)(2).

EPA’s regulatory role with respect to these toxic pollu-
tants is different in kind from its role in administering the
NAAQS program. There, EPA is generally limited to deter-
mining the maximum safe amount of covered pollutants in
the air. As to each hazardous pollutant, by contrast, the
Agency must promulgate emissions standards for both new
and existing major sources. §7412(d)(1). Those standards
must “require the maximum degree of reduction in emis-
sions . . . that the [EPA] Administrator, taking into consid-
eration the cost of achieving such emission reduction, and
any non-air quality health and environmental impacts and
energy requirements, determines is achievable . . . through
application of measures, proc esses, methods, systems or
techniques” of emission reduction. §7412(d)(2). In other
words, EPA must directly require all covered sources to re-
duce their emissions to a certain level. And it chooses that
level by determining the “maximum degree of reduction” it
considers “achievable” in practice by using the best existing
technologies and methods. §7412(d)(3).

Thus, in the parlance of environmental law, Section 112
directs the Agency to impose “technology-based standard[s]
for hazardous emissions,” Alaska Dept. of Environmental
Conservation v. EPA, 540 U. S. 461, 485, n. 12 (2004) (em-
phasis added). This sort of “‘technology-based’ approach fo-
cuses upon the control technologies that are available to in-
dustrial entities and requires the agency to . . . ensur[e]
that regulated firms adopt the appropriate cleanup technol-
ogy.” T. McGarity, Media-Q uality, Technology, and Cost-
Benefit Balancing Strategies for Health and Environmen-
tal Regulation, 46 Law & Contemp. Prob. 159, 160 (Summer
1983) (McGarity). (Such “technologies” are not limited to
literal technology, such as scrubbers; “changes in the design
and operation” of the facility, or “in the way that employees
perform their tasks,” are also available options. Id., at 163,
n. 18.)

The third air pollution control scheme is the New Source
Performance Standards program of Section 111. §7411.
That section directs EPA to list “categories of stationary
sources” that it determines “cause, or contribute signifi-
cantly to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated
to endanger public health or welfare.” §7411(b)(1)(A)

What the justices are doing here is laying out, with specific references, something we all already know but commies operate by pretending like we don’t all already know: the EPA was founded for and is tasked with avoiding pollution in the air that is bad for your health. It was not founded for or tasked with regulating the planet’s atmosphere to avoid some hypothetical future carbon-induced apocalypse. There is a difference between determining what substances are very bad for your health in the air and what can be done to reduce them, and saving the world from climactic change.

Everybody knows this intuitively. Conservatives know it and now and then are brave enough to say it, and communists know it but pretend like they don’t so that they can twist an existing legal organization into something new that they can’t get passed in Congress.

Now, the Supreme Court is brave enough to lay it on paper, and have done us the favour of pointing out the specific regulations and legislations that describe what only a profound ill intention tries to tell us is not the truth.

[Mr_Reasonable]

you against clean air?

[origami]

Lol yes, that’s what it is, I am against clean air.

[Mr_Reasonable]

@origami

Clarence Thomas deserves an imposing marble statue bigger than Lincoln’s.

not sure marble would work because he’s black. maybe granite or something like that

[origami]

Lincoln wasn’t marble color either.

It’s incredible how the more an anti racist warrior a person is, the more likely they are to be a rotting festering pool of racism.

Fuck it, it’s your right to feel about anybody the way you decide to feel about anybody.

[Mr_Reasonable]

none of the possible colors of stone are going to be a perfect match. i’m just saying thomas is darker than lincoln so maybe use a darker stone that’s all. how tf is that racist? that’s some of that woke people stuff calling everyone racist

[origami]

Nothing brother never mind.

[Mr_Reasonable]

what’s your take on his wife being in that cult?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring

[origami]

So, that unpleasantness aside, let’s do a little excercice. I won’t make a whole cycle out of it, I just want to make a quick point.

How does a communist arrive at a position?

@Mr Reasonable

you against clean air?

Now, this person didn’t and wasn’t interested in reading the syllabus. It’s, on the whole, relatively short and simply written. He doesn’t and isn’t interested in knowing anything about the case or the situation. Yet he has an opinion, a clear one. The only possible way, knowing nothing about the situation, for him to have this opinion is for him to have gotten it from someone that does know the details of the situation. For any given thing, the question is not “what is happening,” but “what am I supposed to think?” And, of course, they have their trusted sources for that information.

We will even hazard a step forward, and make this distinction: a communist chooses a side, and his positions are a consequence of it. For any given opinion, he will think first “what is the communist opinion,” then seek a trusted communist source, and adopt the opinion. A conservative develops a position, and his side is a consequence of it. For any given opinion, he will think first “what is happening here,” do some research on the situation itself, and adopt an opinion. Only then will a conservative seek what opinions exist out there and, when no diverging opinion presents any new evidence, consider himself to be on the side of the people who express opinions that coincide with his own.

Communism can only work this way because the very basic thesis of communism is already nonsensical. From the very beginning, the very first postulations, it requires trust in the emittor before and to the exclusion of actual study and research. Maybe people with abandonment issues, I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist.