CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

When private enterprise built the first railroad in China in the 19th century, the Chinese mandarinate sent out work crews to tear up the tracks.

So things went in the Middle Kingdom for approximately 1500 years. Emperors and dynasties came and went but the day-to-day affairs were administered by a self-perpetuating class of intellectuals intent on stopping anything that might resemble economic progress.

It might be worth studying a little Chinese history these days because American affairs are now being run by a Washington mandarinate that dances to its own tune and has very fixed ideas of what the world should be like — namely that industrial activity is something toward which we should be very suspicious if not downright hostile.

The latest directive from this mandarinate is the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulatory rulemaking on coal plants. Now I know that the EPA hates coal and is doing everything it can to wipe it off the face of the earth. That much is given. What is remarkable is how the agency’s latest salvo erases all the progress that has been made in improving government regulations over the last thirty years.....

That no one will build new plants with carbon capture-and-storage is assured because the technology is still completely hypothetical. There has never been a full-fledged CCS coal plant built anywhere in the world and there have been several notable failures.....