For the first time ever, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared a naturally-occurring substance a danger to human health. That's right, the EPA has declared carbon dioxide a health hazard today, paving the way for new regulation of emissions from power plants, factories, cars and trucks and other sources.

As the crew over at HotAir.com point out, the EPA and the Obama administration threatened to do this when their cap-and-trade bill first began to stall on Capitol Hill. The determination of CO2 as a pollutant — which is patently ridiculous on its face — will have broad repercussions for U.S. businesses and the economy. In essence it allows the White House to bypass Congress and begin dictating to producers on carbon-emission reductions. Ed Morrissey goes on to point out:

Don’t kid yourself into thinking the EPA doesn’t understand the scope of its power. By classifying CO2 and methane (among other so-called greenhouse gases, it can inject itself into just about every industry in the US. Energy production will be its primary target, but the EPA has also gone after coal mining on the basis of the Clean Water Act; it will certainly not be shy about using this new authority to kill coal mining altogether. It will also impact agriculture, especially dairies and cattle ranching, as well as transportation. The entire manufacturing sector will have to answer for its output.

This really is the worst of all outcomes. The EPA process can be restrained by Congress, but it will take positive action for that to happen — and in most cases, would take the assent of Barack Obama. About the only way Congress could stop the EPA’s effort to seize control of production without Obama would be to defund the agency, or at least its regulatory efforts. That certainly won’t happen with the current Congress.

In essence this ruling gives EPA effective control of the economy. What does that mean? Will Yeatman provides a brief summary here, and why you should be appalled. More simply, it allows the EPA to intrude into every aspect of American life and Charles Krauthammer believes that the EPA move may bring a "Revolution on the Administrations Hands"

The bottom line is that the ruling will damage the US economy and force jobs to be moved to countries without such strict environmental standards.

"This action poses a threat to every American family and business if it leads to regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act," said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the national trade lobby. "The Clean Air Act was meant to control traditional air pollution, not greenhouse gases that come from every vehicle, home, factory and farm in America," he said.

The global warming elitists landed in Copenhagen today in their 140 private jets and took their 1,200 limos to their luxury hotels.

As the NY Post reports, in this hotbed of homogeneity, where global warming is a sacred assumption for the faithful, 15,000 people will come together from 192 countries to pray for two weeks over what can be done to save the Earth from certain doom.

In the process, some 40,000 tons of carbon will be spent getting this crowd together and keeping them in comfort. That is the daily amount of carbon dioxide produced by 30 of the world's smaller countries, according to UN statistics. The beauty of the greens hypocrisy is that it truly knows no bounds:

The Obama administration and its allies in Congress want the federal government to expand its role in subsidizing health care. We are told that this expansion will restrain rising health care costs. But an OMB report yesterday that the government made $98 billion in improper payments last year -- $55 billion of which came from Medicare and Medicaid -- ought to raise suspicions about that claim.

According to Reuters, OMB Director Peter Orszag told reporters that the embarrassing figures from Medicare and Medicaid demonstrate the need for health care reform. I would concur if “reform” meant reducing the government’s role in health care. However, he means the opposite, which raises the question of how giving more money to an already waste-prone and bureaucratic federal health system can possibly make sense for the economy.

The administration has promised to cut down on improper payments with the aid of a new executive order. According to the Associated Press:

Under the executive order, every federal agency would have to maintain a Web site that tracks improper payments, error rates and outstanding payments. If an agency doesn't meet targets for reducing error rates for two years in a row, the agency director and responsible official will have to directly report to OMB to explain the delinquency and new actions they will take.

It goes without saying that these results would be completely unacceptable in the private sector, as they should be in government, especially at a time of record deficits… Unfortunately, these numbers may still be just the tip of the iceberg since they don't even include estimates for several major programs, including the Medicare prescription drug plan.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that the two major government health programs are currently losing a combined $50 billion annually to such payments. But that estimate probably low-balls the actual losses. Harvard’s Malcolm Sparrow, a top specialist in health care fraud, estimates that 20 percent of federal health program budgets are consumed by improper payments, which would be a staggering $150 billion a year for Medicare and Medicaid.

See this essay for more on fraud and abuse in government programs.

Written by Tad DeHaven at the Cato Institute.

This morning the good people at the Reason Foundation's Hit & Run Blog posted the following graph and post. The bottom line: Trillions of dollars in projected federal budget deficits over the next decade threaten long-term economic stability and complicate the president’s spending plans.

The following chart illustrates this point. Based on Congressional Budget Office data, it represents the interest the government paid on the federal debt as a percentage of GDP between 1962 and today and the projected debt service payments up until 2082. The projections are illustrated under the current CBO baseline and under the CBO alternative, more realistic, scenario. For comparison, the graph also shows CBO’s projections for the cost of Medicare and Social Security as a percentage of GDP. Notice that under either of CBO’s scenarios, the net interest payments, or the costs of the debt, rival the cost of two of our nation’s most expensive social programs.

This chart comes from Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy, writing in The American. More here.

Start clipping coupons now my friends!

Needless to say, if President Obama is serious about the economy, he should start by tackling the debt and its cost before he thinks of adding yet more money to the deficit for job programs.

Exit Note: And Don't Forget THIS ARTICLE from the NYTimes... that's right, the NYTimes.

It is rumored that ancient Japanese custom gave us the infamous three monkeys which embody the proverbial principle "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

In the western world the phrase is often used to refer to those who deal with impropriety by looking the other way, refusing to acknowledge it, or feigning ignorance. Amidst the greatest scientific scandal of a generation - Climategate - the American media continues to embody the very essence of this proverb.

According to a report Wednesday morning by the Media Research Center, "none of the broadcast network weekday morning and evening news shows addressed Climate-Gate or the incriminating Jones development. ... This marked 12 days since the information was first uncovered that they have ignored this global scandal."

The Business & Media Institute had just as much trouble finding the networks' Climategate coverage.

"An examination of morning and evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC since Nov. 20 yielded zero mentions of the scandal, even in the Nov. 25 reports about Obama going to Copenhagen to discuss the need for emissions reductions," the Institute reported Wednesday.

And while network news broadcasts continue to ignore a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up — they've even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Centeral:

Stewart describes leaked emails from Britain's University of East Anglia, including one referring to a researcher's "trick" to "hide the decline" in some temperature readings in recent decades.

"It's just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique — recalibrating data – in order to trick you," Stewart said sarcastically.

Senator Barbara Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has come up with a catchy new name for Climategate... ready?

According to Babs, "climategate" should be called "email-theft-gate." Oh how very very clever of you Senator!

Boxer said that the recently released e-mails at the center of the "climategate" scandal, should be treated as a crime. Just in case you've been under a rock or watching MSNBC, the emails were hacked from England's University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), the premier climate data gathering center that the IPCC and EPA use as a guide.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting. "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."The e-mails, from scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained through hacking.

"We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not," Boxer said. "Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.

The reality of course is that focusing on the hacked emails is just a tactic used to take the real focus off of the actual problem - manipulated data and lies about man made climate change.

Note to Babs: Your beloved Global Warming "scientists" also admitted to throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. Guess that's not a problem for you huh?

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is lashing out at President Obama for claiming the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan.

In a rare break in his public silence since leaving the Pentagon, Rumsfeld rejected the claim as a "bald misstatement" and "disservice" that cannot go unanswered.