Texas, which leads U.S. in job creation, blocks EPA's attempt to reorder the economy through greenhouse gas permitting

The state's slogan is "Don't mess with Texas." But the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing just that, and at stake is whether the Obama administration can impose its global-warming agenda without a vote of Congress.

President Obama's EPA is already well down the path to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, something the act was not designed to do. It has a problem, however, because shoehorning greenhouse gases into that 40-year-old law would force churches, schools, warehouses, commercial kitchens and other sources to obtain costly and time-consuming permits. It would grind the economy to a halt, and the likely backlash would doom the whole scheme.

The EPA, determined to move forward anyway, is attempting to rewrite the Clean Air Act administratively via a "tailoring rule," which would reduce the number of regulated sources. The problem with that approach? It's illegal. The EPA has no authority to rewrite the law. To pull it off, the EPA needs every state with a State Implementation Plan to rewrite all of its statutory thresholds as well.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan W. Shaw saw the tailoring rule for what it really is: a massive power grab and centralization of authority. They are fighting back, writing to the EPA:

"In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency's recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations - regulations that are plainly contrary to U.S. laws. ... To encourage acquiescence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency. On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions."

Texas leaders are doing what Congress so far has been unable to do (a Senate vote to stop the EPA's global-warming power grab got just 47 votes on June 10): take on the EPA. Good thing, because Texas would be hit especially hard by these regulations.

Federalist principles have allowed Texas to become the strongest state in the union. The Lone Star State leads the nation in job creation, is the top state for business relocation and has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and is the top state for wind generation. President Obama said he wants to double U.S. exports in five years; he could look to Texas, as we are the top exporting state in the country. The Obama administration could learn a lot from Texas.

Instead, it is attempting to ride roughshod over Texas, and it goes beyond the greenhouse-gas issue.

Massive minority and gender hiring rules buried in finance bill

Buried deep in the bowels of the massive financial-regulation bill the Senate passed Thursday are massive race- and gender-employment provisions that will cost countless millions to enforce and appear to duplicate other civil-rights initiatives already in place.

More importantly, all private financial institutions doing business with the federal government will be affected by them, sources tell Newsmax.

Opponents say the provision was put in the bill to help garner political support for its passage. They object that it was inserted with almost no discussion or debate, and call it a "power grab."

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as chief of staff for former President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, tells Newsmax that the rules represent a "dramatic change in employment legislation."

Four members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently penned a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and several other leading senators, objecting to the new fair-employment regime in the Dodd-Frank legislation now headed to the president's desk.

"The likelihood that it will in fact promote discrimination is overwhelming," the letter states.

Section 342 of the bill calls for an "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion" to be established in each of 29 federal bureaus and offices.

The regulations appear to go beyond ensuring that discrimination in hiring decisions does not occur. Instead, they require assurance of "fair inclusion." Furchtgott-Roth says it will pressure companies to find and hire minorities even if one hasn't applied for a specific job.

The bill's affirmative action provisions — some suggest they are de facto quotas — would apply not only to the 29 federal agencies but also to all "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants, and providers of legal services" who do business with them.

Moreover, the law also applies to those firms' sub-contractors "as applicable."

EPA pursuing an historic bureaucratic power grab

No longer content to live within the confines of the legislation which defines its mission, EPA has embarked on an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab by reinterpreting the rules, redefining its mission and its authority.

In forty short years, EPA has morphed from an agency with a well-defined, popular and worthy mission to one whose bureaucratic ambitions are not limited to controlling and cleaning up the environment. The goal of this regulatory octopus is the control of the entire industrialized economy of our country.