Obama War on Coal, NLRB Antics, and the Week in Regulations

ENERGY POLICY - IAIN MURRAY

WashingtonTimes.com: War on coal escalates - Obama emissions rules impose real costs with illusory health benefits [1]

Faced with rising gas prices, President Obama recently outlined what he calls an “all-of-the-above” energy policy “that develops every available source of American energy - oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels and more.” You may notice something missing there - coal, America’s most abundant and affordable fuel source. The administration’s “all of the above” strategy is anything but.

LABOR UNIONS - TREY KOVACS & JACK MANN

WashingtonExaminer.com: Will Congress stop NLRB? [2]

Imagine an election in which one candidate may campaign for a year while the other is only allowed to enter the race a week before Election Day. Blindsided, the latter candidate would have no time to organize a team or respond to attacks.

That is precisely what the National Labor Relations Board is trying to accomplish, by imposing an "ambush election" rule on private-sector workplaces. The new rule would give employees as little as 10 days to decide whether or not to unionize.

REGULATION - RYAN YOUNG

Openmarket.org: CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation [3]

• 76 new final rules were published last week, up from 75 the previous week. That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 13 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All in all, 876 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year. If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,563 new rules.

• 2,191 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 19,487 pages. At this pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,577 pages. > See the week in regulation and highlights from final rules published last week on Openmarket.org