11 States Sue Trump Administration's Energy Department After Weeks of No Movement On Efficiency Standards (go.com) 219
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: New York, California and nine other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its failure to finalize energy-use limits for portable air conditioners and other products. The new standards would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save businesses and consumers billions of dollars, and conserve enough energy to power more than 19 million households for a year, but the U.S. Department of Energy has not met a requirement to publish them by now, according to attorneys general who filed the lawsuit (PDF) against the DOE in federal court in San Francisco. That means the standards are not legally enforceable. The other states in the lawsuit are: Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Maryland. The City of New York is also a plaintiff. The energy efficiency standards at issue in the lawsuit also cover walk-in coolers and freezers, air compressors, commercial packaged boilers and uninterruptible power supplies. There is currently no federal energy standard for air compressors, uninterruptible power supplies or portable air conditioners, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the DOE to publish the new standards as final rules.
Useless (Score:3, Insightful)
Good. The existing program is useless [slashdot.org]. Maybe they can do something more useful with the money, time and effort than try and have the Federal government dictate what energy use standards should be.
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Exactly. Why don't the manufactures set their own standards? Even the states suing the federal government have the power to set the standards for any units sold in their state.
These lawsuits are nothing more than politically motivated attack on the current administration. And like all the other politically driven attacks aimed at the current administration they are willing to harm anyone or anything they have to in order to win their political power. If they succeed in getting rid of Trump they best be read
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Why don't the manufactures set their own standards?
Yeah, because that's worked so well for the software industry.
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is more a matter of whether the companies making the buying decisions are exercising good judgement. Some brands (like Trane) typically last a lot longer than others, and cost more. Many companies also offer a variety of different efficiencies on similar models, and the more efficient ones cost more. You don't see Trane going out of business because they offer a superior but more expensive product.
Government forcing the purchase of a particular type of product is just usurpation, and the moral philosop
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So you are saying that the race to the bottom is a win for everyone? The race to the bottom is the reason why we have Walmart and worthless crap from China.
You misunderstood the GP. You need to reread the post again. What GP said is that if there is no regulation, the cheaper products could ruin the market of more efficient (and expensive) one because they are cheaper. Majority of consumers don't think about a long term and that's the problem...
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That is where choice comes in. Your desire to remove that choice from the market is extremely anti-poor / middle class.
If you can afford the bigger more efficient unit, awesome. Do your research or pay a pro to do the research and get that expensive unit.
Most people that can afford higher cost versions of items are not buying AC units at Walmart.
For some people (myself being one of them) buying an AC that will work for 3-4 years is an option. Buying one that will last for 10-15 years is not. Not having
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"You're free to do what you want."
... for a year? (Score:2)
So it saves enough energy to run 19 million households for a year... And then what happens? These fucking reporters don't know the difference between power and energy. This is fucking high school physics...
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Yeah bad journalism. Journalists should stick to "households powered per year". FWIW this is over a 30 year product lifecycle, so it's 600kish households baseline, or about 0.5% of households in the country. That's actually fairly significant.
Of course relying on "households powered per year" means eventually we'll have powered more households than we have, since the majority of energy consumption is transportation and industrial.
Consider the Sec't of Energy (Score:4, Informative)
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Because Texas has its own power grid and does not sell energy on the open market which would require federal regulation. So yea, from this states perspective, what does the DoE do?
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Manages the entire US nuclear weapons stockpile. Which doesn't seem like something you just want to get rid of on a whim without bothering to check first.
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I thought Hillary did that for us with the Russian Uranium sale.
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You thought wrong, I'm guessing you are used to that though.
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So it changes from getting rid of the DoE to moving the things the DoE does to other government departments. Achieving nothing.
Being selective about what to keep requires knowing what the department actually does, the lack of which is the entire point.
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Yea, kinda like training your H1B replacements, huh.
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Re:Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)
Combine this problem with the dilemma to business of 50 different state standards across countless different product characteristics and the damage that does to economies of scale...
There are good reasons for product standards. The commercial sector tends to address the ones that collectively are good for profits (often via operational efficiencies of standardization, mass production and compatibility). They don't tend to address the ones that are collectively good for purely social reasons, like the environment, product safety, public health, etc. - especially when any subset acting alone lose the market... That's where government plays a good role!
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Profit for everyone, why legislate? (Score:2)
Ok, I see "save businesses and consumers billions of dollars", so everybody wins, nobody loses, right? So why exactly does this need to be legislated? If the business making the product saves billions, the consumers save billions, why do you have to enforce this profit making by all with laws? Even if the manufacturer doesn't save billions, why wouldn't consumers choose to buy the product that will net cost less? Or is it "it will save consumers billions, but cost them few more billions?".
Re:Profit for everyone, why legislate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Answers to your questions:
1) To prevent Fraud. It's a regulation on what you have to do to say "Energy Efficient". If you don't regulate, than some businesses will reduce power by 1% and say "Buy our 'Green' product." and paint their 1% lower item greeen. The reason to legislate is to stop businesses from lying and claiming things like "No reasonable person would think VitaminWater TM had vitamins in it."
2) To ensure uniformity. Don't want 5 different businesses using made up terms like "Green", "Lite", "Low Power", "Energy GOOD", and what not, forcing the consumer to research what each thing does.
3) Because despite what libertarians think, the government has a better success rate than business. The problem is that governments failures are public and stick around way too long (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Veterans Healthcare - note all three are MILITARY failures),, while the business failures tend to fade away like New Coke, Colgate TV dinners, and the Delorean (all of which died in less than 4 years)
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If it really saved money to the manufacturer, why would the manufacturer cheat? You need to legislate that they have to save money? And if it saved money to the consumers, why would consumers buy a more expensive product? There are laws in place preventing false advertising, so no need for more laws there And as far as legislating the definition of terms, sure, no problem there but how far do you go? You'll tell me I cannot paint the air conditioner green and call it green because someone somewhere may thin
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Manufacturers cheat for several reason, one of which is some are as crazy as you, so they would rather violate the spirit of regulations if they can't be punished for it, even if ti costs them money. Others are simply too stupid to do what's best, or thought they came up with a better plan. But most importantly, without a FEDERAL REGULATION, they would have to spend their own money to research what would be cheating. They don't want to do that, especially as the Fed has already done it once, no need for
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Because a large cohort of "businesspeople" are complete sleazeballs.
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Ans sleazeballs don't like saving money so you have to force them?
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If being efficient is cheaper, the successful businesses will trend towards that.
This premise is wrong, and considering it is the linchpin of all your arguments, there's no use listening to you.
No one got hired (Score:3)
Re:Good to know (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Good to know (Score:5, Informative)
The new ones with "automatic" spouts leak all over the fucking place... The regular old kind are much better.
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Then I happened to see a demo of similar products. If you put the spout into the gas tank opening before you engage the release, it doesn't spill and it shuts off when you let go of the release, so no drip. I like it way better then the old ones. I just had to learn how to use it.
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I have some with newer spouts that seal up automatically. I had a hell of a time pouring with them, it made a mess and got everywhere. Then I happened to see a demo of similar products. If you put the spout into the gas tank opening before you engage the release, it doesn't spill and it shuts off when you let go of the release, so no drip. I like it way better then the old ones. I just had to learn how to use it.
Try doing that on a small 2-cycle engine where the "engage and release" mechanism doesn't get triggered by the tank of the 2-cycle so you have to manually hold it open if you want to put gas into the 2-cycle engine.
Or accessing the tank of a normal engine with the short 3" spout on a 5g can. Sure the engage and release mechanism works well, but you can't reach the tank with short spout.
Honestly, all this crap on redesigning them to have (a) short spouts and (b) improper fluid flow since the air and fl
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Looks like they might have been recalled. I'll have to check; https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2... [cpsc.gov]
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Yep. I just unscrew the spout and use a funnel. Can be a bit hard to see into the tank to avoid overflow but you get used to it quickly. Way better than trying get those stupid spouts to actually cut on and off correctly without leaking all over the place through the sides of the anti-spill mechanisms.
Oh, but one kid got burned from spilling gas...
A real bad guy once wrote “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as worki
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It's OK, the mines are Italian :-).
LOL - but so true.
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You must be fucked off Obama took all your guns too.
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nah, he stole all their bullets...at least that was the conspiracy "theory" floating about 1 or 2 years before the election. I wonder what he did with them all...
Re: Good to know (Score:2)
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Well, it isn't like there wasn't a lack of effort on his and his administration's part to do just that....
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You, sir, have fallen into the Chasm of Sar.
Re:Good to know (Score:5, Informative)
But of course the senior author on this paper was involved in a pretty big scandal [theonion.com] so maybe we shouldn't take the results too seriously. But at least he responded to the allegations [go.com].
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Second, OP was essentially saying, "regulation ruins things," and I provided a counter-example which, although specific to certain types of devices, maybe -- just maybe -- applies to other devices, too.
Do you think there's something magical about refrigeration systems that makes them the one thing in the universe that behaves backwards to the "regulation ruins things" concept?
The Prisoner's Dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, because energy doesn't cross state lines.
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Yes, because energy doesn't cross state lines.
You do realize that in the USA most Energy Efficiency standards are done to CA Regulations as CA has the strictest regulations of all 50 states; things that don't meet CA regulations typically have a label saying "not for sale in CA". So yes, States with stricter standards can make it happen for the others or even just within their own borders.
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Only?
And I don't know if you've ever visited Galveston, but if you go there, you can watch an endless parade of tanker ships carrying oil out to sea. I doubt they're sailing to Dallas.
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The mNority of those tankers are heading to Europe where oil is better sold
The keystone Pipeline? Yes the tar oil from Canada sucks for American useage but is great for Europe. Every drop is to go to Europe.
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I live in Texas. Right in the energy corridor. And I'm pretty sure you'd need someone to tell you how to tie your shoes in the morning if it's not in the Bible.
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Wow. For someone who lives in Texas and they do not know this AND in the energy corridor? Here [slate.com] BTW, I have lived in Texas all my life. And please leave God out of this, he did have the decency to create you [/sarcasm] (I am agnostic).
The whole discussion was about publishing efficiency requirements for appliance sold to the public. Pretty sure that applies to power (electricity) consumption, not power sources (oil/gas/coal) which are commodities that could create electricity. Plus all this tankers are
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It's also not a given that one state will let them skip their regulatory review if they are building to the standards of a stricter state.
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No industry wants 50+ regulations to follow. They're always lobbying for superseding regulations at the highest possible level. Shitty regulations if possible, the less the better. However, the important part is there is only one Federal agency to lobby or take over.
And yet that's already the case as CA has some of the strictest regulations, so most all manufacturers build to the CA standards when it comes to the environment, or they run two lines - one for CA and one for the rest of the USA.
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They're suing to make the Department of Energy do what it is legally required to do. If you don't like it, by all means contact your legislator about amending or repealing the relevant legislation which requires them to do this.
Oh, yeah, and good luck getting Congress to pass legislation at the moment.
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They're suing to make the Department of Energy do what it is legally required to do.
I read they're suing claiming the delay to publishing the regulation is a violation of some "Anti-backsliding" rule.... in other words, seeking to revise the regulation in progress is equivalent to Lowering the required bar for efficiency
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Oh, did it pass in the Senate?
Re:Wait, they're suing for MORE regulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just bone-headed. If you want to manufacture a new energy-efficient whatzit, go right ahead. No one's stopping you.
In the past, before we had standardised units of measure, the size of a foot, for example, would be different from city to city, and the same for everything else, which meant that there would be constant problems with claims about short measure etc. Both traders and customers wanted to have standardised measures, so they could feel confident that they knew what they were buying. Same now - I don't think this is the government telling manufacturers how to produce their goods, it is about defining a standard scale, so everybody knows how different brands compare. This makes it possible to compete on objective value of the goods rather than perhaps lies.
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Can you tell us where in the "alinsky playbook" that strategy exists?
Here's a PDF of the entire Rules for Radicals. Please enlighten us.
https://chisineu.files.wordpre... [wordpress.com]
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Re:Maybe if the Senate Dems hadn't dragged their f (Score:5, Insightful)
Hilarious. The GOP controls the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and has a Supreme Court stacked in their favor... Yet all they can do is blame the Democrats. How about using your party's monopoly of government to actually accomplish something, instead of whining all the time?
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Looks like there are a similar number of Ds and Rs on there...
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Re:Hey states! Do it yourself! (Score:5, Informative)
If there's one thing I've learned in my 25 years in the software business, it's that common standards are better than mutually incompatible competing "standards".
It really doesn't matter who does it, as long as it happens.
I know, it's hard to RTFA, but let's be clear on what's happening here.
The DoE is legally required to have published the standards by now. It hasn't done so. This is not "pass[ing] laws from the bench". This enforcing laws already passed by the legislature.
If you don't like this, campaign to get the law changed. Be angry all you like, but be angry at the right target.
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My high school history textbook doesn't have to interoperate with yours, either, but for some reason most publishers are only producing ones that satisfy the needs of Texas politicians as opposed to actual history education.
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Yeah, but if the company has to make one AC unit for my state, and a slightly different one for your state, that will surely make them cheaper, right? Asshole.
They don't have to do that now, so why should it change? Oh yeah, because we need to create more bureaucratic red tape.
Re:and yet... (Score:4, Interesting)
The antidote for corruption and abuse of the legislative system is anti-corruption enforcement. Not anarchy.
Of course if we had it, Trump would have been in jail decades ago, so I'm not holding my breath for any progress there.
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The antidote for corruption and abuse of the legislative system is anti-corruption enforcement. Not anarchy.
Not that I advocate for anarchy, but I find your stark cognitive-dissonance absolutely breathtaking in expecting the government, the one that you, yourself, said was corrupt and the legislative system abused, to actually enforce the laws (that they're already breaking!) on themselves!!
Bravo, sir! A stunning display!
Strat
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expecting the government, the one that you, yourself, said was corrupt and the legislative system abused, to actually enforce the laws
I know we live in a culture of disposable crap, but with structures as big as government, it is more effective to fix the broken machine than suffer the process of replacing it.
Also, it has happened before. Witness the Civil Service Reform Act.
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...it is more effective to fix the broken machine than suffer the process of replacing it.
The problem is that too much auxiliary crap has been hooked into the machine, to the point that the original core is barely if at all visible and the machine tasked to purposes the machine was never designed for, and all this crap has taken on a life of it's own and infects any parts not already suborned.
You'll never fix the machine, hell you'll never be actually able to get to the actual machine to do *anything* meaningful, until you un-crap-ify it first. It's much easier, faster, and takes less effort to
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I'd have bigger problems to worry about under a small weak government. Like having my life savings stolen by all the criminals.
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I'd have bigger problems to worry about under a small weak government. Like having my life savings stolen by all the criminals.
No, you would not. Stop with the absolutism. Not every part of government gets equal resources and funding nor identical increases/decreases in them. If anything, being able to devote more resources to effective enforcement due to reductions in government spending in other areas plus a reduction in duplicative bureaucracy and the red-tape they engender would mean *more* criminals are caught quicker, and with lower overall costs.
Now, that program to fund studies that put shrimp on tiny treadmills? Yeah, we c
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Stop with the absolutism.
Stop with the psychological projection.
Personally I think a couple of grand [npr.org] to fill in some missing variables on the behavior of a food species is probably a good buy.
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The GSM network that most countries use doesn't count?
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You want efficiency standards on consumer items? Publish and enforce them yourself.
Let's say your a small company, doing will in the local scene and want to expand to neighboring states. It's not so fun to learn that they would have different standards which make your product illegal. It works a lot better for common markets to have the same standards.
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Let's say your a small company, doing will in the local scene and want to expand to neighboring states. It's not so fun to learn that they would have different standards which make your product illegal. It works a lot better for common markets to have the same standards.
Nothing stops the States from forming some sort of commission in order to harmonize standards between each other where needed. The Feds could even provide various resources, guidance, experts, and data to help.
On average, the more local the law/regulation is, the more efficient, low-impact, and cost-effective it is, and so more people will be inclined to participate, raising compliance and therefor better-fulfilling the initial goals of the law/regulation.
Strat
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Energy efficiency standards are an interstate problem, because pollution is an interstate problem. Money may flow into the state with the least regulation, but pollution will certainly seep out.
Also, slavery was not eliminated by letting the states do what they want, actually a very strong central government had to do that.
What modern civilizations were you studying?
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I've seen the danger of an overly powerful central government ... The cities are handing over their authority to a central government ...
I've seen the danger of an overly powerful central government ... The neighborhoods are handing over their authority to a central government ...
I'm not necessarily trying to disagree with this logic, but I've always been curious why Americans think that the state level should be the ones with the power? Why is the fed worse? And if we agree that the fed is worse, then why is the city level not better? What's special about the state level, beyond purely "because America did it that way so 'Murca!"?
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Publish and enforce them yourself.
Nothing bad has ever come from having 11 different set of standards each applying to a very small portion of the population.
But sure you could do that, then maybe you'll look to what your colleagues across the Atlantic did. They determined that it was madness and all formed a union of sorts in Europe.
You could have the same. You could form a Union. A Union of States ... In America! Imagine that, the "United States of America".
Re:Nonexistent Standards Equals (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. DOE standards updates are required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and Energy Policy Acts
42 USCS 6201.
42 USCS 13456.
42 USCS 16103.
42 USCS 6322.
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Wrong. DOE standards updates are required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and Energy Policy Acts
And?
What recourse do the courts have if the Executive Branch simply ignores/stonewalls them? Remember, the Executive Branch enforces laws, not the Judicial Branch.
There *is* precedent set by Andrew Jackson:
"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." -- Andrew Jackson on Worcester v. Georgia
That's not even taking into account law/decision-flouting and stonewalling by relatively-recent past administrations.
Strat
Re:Nonexistent Standards Equals (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. The whole "checks and balances" plan kind of falls flat when Congress is more interested in covering the president's ass than being an independent branch as the constitution intended.
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No "And". Just that people post wrong shit on the internet, and other people trust some random idiot on the Internet because "hey, nobody would be stupid enough to think state AGs know whether or not the law they are suing under is in effect unless it was one of those bizarre but-true-things, right?" And that's how we end up with large swaths of the country living in alternative realities.
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After all, he claims that never has there been an administration that has gotten so much done. So much. Except for this.
Easy answer: We don't think the regulation is good and therefore are abandoning it. It will never be published.
You can't force the Executive to create a regulation. The Judiciary does *not* have that power. Congress does by making a statutory regulation in the form of Law. Judiciary can only say that the regulation is not within the Executive's ability to perform (it's illegal) for whatever reason. That is the separation of powers.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if some liberal activist judge decided t
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Well, then let's just whittle down their responsibilities and powers to JUST the nuclear oversight.
And to re-enforce this move, maybe rename them back to the Atomic Energy Commission and just leave them at that.