We knew there was something not being told about the story when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce started tweeting the following link (and others like it) to an article at the Rightwing website The Daily Caller this morning...

The second tweet above linked to the U.S. Chamber's blog site "Chamber Post," and their article, penned by the appropriately-named Sean Hackbarth, headlined simply "EPA Regulation Kills 500 Jobs."

The Daily Caller story by Matthew Boyle that started it is headlined "EPA regulation forces closure of Texas energy facilities, eliminates 500 jobs," and goes on to describe how poor Texas-based coal plant owner Luminant is unable to meet a "new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators to make 'dramatic reductions' in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012."

"The company said it has been trying to meet the new standards, but won't be able to do so without closing down several facilities and eliminating 500 jobs," reports The Daily Caller's very very Luminant-friendly Boyle, without bothering to offer any other side to the issue. (What? Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller is even less "fair and balanced" than Fox "News"?! Say it ain't so! But more on that, and on Boyle, below.)

"Meeting this unrealistic deadline," says Luminant CEO David Campbell without rebuttal in Boyle's article, "also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs."

Really? Those burdensome EPA regulations --- darn all that clean air and water anyway! --- that's what's forcing poor Luminant to lay off 500 workers during this horrible downturn in the economy?!? Really?! Why, Barack Obama should be ashamed of himself!

Since The Daily Caller and Boyle and the far-right Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce didn't find it necessary to offer any other side of the story --- and since we suspected there was one --- The BRAD BLOG touched based with Ilan Levin, Associate Director at the Austin-based, non-partisan, non-profit advocacy group Environmental Integrity Project, to get his response to this news, and to find out if maybe Luminant and their operatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their tools at The Daily Caller weren't telling us the full story in their propaganda today.

And surprise! There is another side to the story! But, as Boyle conceded to us in a rather remarkable conversation, he just wasn't able to report it, no matter how hard he tried...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Texas is roasting! (and Rick Perry is still denying); 2011 disasters are getting expensive; Climate science is vindicated --- again; PLUS: Obama calls for infrastructure jobs - again - but undercuts clean air rules ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Regulator says Murdoch oil shale company must fix faulty wells; Bachmann dodges question on whether God uses weather to send messages; China challenges U.S. supremacy in shale gas; Oil exploration under Arctic ice could cause 'uncontrollable' natural disaster; If you eat strawberries, you should know about Methyl Iodide; Iran’s 1st nuclear power plant goes into operation; New microbe can clean up uranium; Solar power innovator Solyndra files for bankruptcy; NSFW: Don Cheadle is Captain Planet; Fukushima’s long link to a dark nuclear past ... PLUS: Scientist: “The Murdoch media empire has cost humanity perhaps one or two decades in battle against climate change ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Bracing for Irene; Hey, how's your infrastructure? Earthquakes and now hurricanes test the East Coast; Fukushima Exclusion Zone to become permanent; Hundreds more tar sands protesters arrested at the White House; PLUS: Did Fox "News" just accidentally acknowledge human-caused climate change?!?! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Hockey Stick' climate scientist vindicated again; India & China spar over water; TX record-breaking drought getting 'worse by the day'; BP Oil Spill Fund has paid out $5B; 'Green Scissors' proposal to cut billions oil subsidies; EPA to creates mini-Civilian Conservation Corps for Great Lakes; Van Jones slams misleading NYT article on green jobs; "The Intermittency of Fossil Fuels"; Shell plugs North Sea pipeline spill; Shell’s shoddy safety record in the UK; GOP bashes Obama Admin for refusing to promote oil shale; Since 9/11, Koch Industries has fought tougher rules on chemical plants; National Review twisted in knots over GOP science denial; US natural gas reserve estimates cut by 80% ... PLUS: Climate cycles are driving wars: When El Nino warmth hits, tropical conflicts double: study...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: BREAKING: East Coast Earthquake!; Inhofe's 'Hoax' - Hot and Hotter: more record-breaking heat around the world in a record-breaking year; Civil disobedience at the White House over dirty oil pipeline; PLUS: GOP cat fight erupts as Republican candidates spar over science ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fox News compounds inanity over inane 'aliens will kill us over climate change' study; Fukushima zone may be declared uninhabitable; Australia passes CO2 offset laws, carbon pricing next; Vietnam’s rice bowl threatened by rising seas; No ‘train wreck’ from EPA utility rules: report; EPA to review regulations for 'unjustified burdens'; Canadian gov't bypasses public's right to know about fracking; Is nat-gas fracking industry sucking PA's creeks dry?; Ford, Toyota team up on hybrid trucks; Hurricane Irene could boost insurance industry; ConocoPhillips finds 9 new leaks in huge China oil spill; Just Say No to Arctic drilling; Human excrement to blame for coral decline; Fall of Tripoli won't result in cheaper gas; Army Corps: Budget cuts will slow levee rebuilding; Environmental violations found at tribal schools ... PLUS: 'Hockey Stick' scientist vindicated again: Federal auditors find no evidence to support 'Climategate' accusations ...

See ThinkProgress for more detail on this, but I just wanted to flag this moment as I find it exceedingly creepy, and suspect this is more often than not the way these things happen. The quick handshake, wink, nod and walk away --- Bank of America, in the form of a top national executive, pledges the corporation's fealty to a Presidential candidate.

No need to discuss what the quid pro quo will be. No need for Perry to even acknowledge it out loud. It's just a 5 second investment by BofA almost certain to pay off should Perry be victorious. Really creepy...

But, ya know, what's the big deal? As Gov. Rick Perry's current main competitor for the GOP Presidential nomination, Gov. Mitt Romney explained recently, "Corporations are people, my friend."

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme weather in 2011 breaking records for record-breaking; Civil disobedience coming to the White House over Canada's Keystone XL pipeline; PLUS: TX Gov. Rick Perry thinks he knows more about climate science than climate scientists do...and the GOP candidates' attacks on the EPA may be costly ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Every farmer in the world will be affected by climate change'; Wal-Mart Going 100% Renewable - in Canada; Op-ed: No to Arctic Drilling; Koch Brothers Fund Bogus Study Bashing Offshore Wind in New Jersey; Melting Arctic sea ice drives walruses onto land; Famine-struck Somalia faces cholera outbreak; EPA's Planned Phaseout of Harmful Refrigerant Hits Snag; Human Excrement to Blame for Coral Decline; Obama administration moves against ANWR oil drilling; Public's ideas for BP oil spill restoration projects; Otters are back in England; U.S. bans Syrian oil imports; Myth: smaller, fuel-efficient cars increase traffic deaths; Army Corps re-calibrating ’500-Year Flood’ standard; Fukushima's meltdown: reactors were doomed to fail" ... PLUS: Living beyond our means: How our indulgent economic and environmental models threaten future generations ...

Via AP...

You "think" wrong, Governor.

At the same time, officials currently estimate that the record heat and record drought that Texas is now facing --- just as the scientists Perry "thinks" he knows better than had long ago predicted --- will cost the state more than $20 billion in record losses to crops, livestock and more. That price tag could rise, as today's remarkable predictions from the National Weather Service report there is "no end in sight" for the crisis in Texas at this time.

Money spent to help avert the worsening crisis that Texas is already facing is a bad idea, according to what Perry "thinks". Even if what he "thinks" runs counter to, as the AP story accurately notes, the actually-informed opinions of "an overwhelming majority of scientists that pollution released from the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the planet."

On the other hand, money spent by Perry in support of the 100% evidence-free "theory" that there is a giant invisible bearded floating man in the sky who should be worshipped by his constituents on complete "faith", is apparently no problem.

It's remarkable how many GOP officials and sycophants seem to know more about climate science --- and the extraordinary body of data meticulously gathered by thousands of climate scientists, in dozens of disciplines, over many decades --- than actual climate scientists do.

For those who may be dumb enough to agree with the remarkably dumb Perry, just one question: If you get cancer, will you be going to see an Oncologist for diagnosis and treatment? Or will you go find out what the Governor of Texas or Rush Limbaugh or the U.S. Chamber of Commerice or the Koch Brothers "think" about your cancer instead?

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama plays the infrastructure card; Perry jumps in; Huntsman refers to EPA as 'terrorists', while all of the GOP candidates positions on science and global warming are difficult to swallow; the Summer of Records continues; PLUS: Arctic ice melting 4 times faster than predicted ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): DoE panel calls for more study on natural gas fracking; After North Sea oil spill, Shell to drill in Arctic; New GMO corn for gas, not food; Battle over new coal depot in WA; China to double solar capacity by year end; Coast Guard: Arctic oil spill response capability lacking; Record-breaking electric car gets 1000 miles on one charge; CNN FAIL on Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining; Coping With Change: can humans adapt again?; "The (Polar) Bear Facts," checked; Massive protest shuts down Chinese chemical plant; Federal judge throws out Obama drilling rules ... PLUS: Monsanto's Roundup herbicide research shows plant, soil problems ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Obama in Holland --- Holland, MI, that is --- pushing back against Republicans with investment in jobs & clean energy... while Republicans fight harder for Big Dirty Oil; Not enough praying? Record TX heat wave still breaking even more records; Japan, five months after disaster; PLUS: Goo-B-Gone: mysterious Cheeto blob blankets an Alaskan town ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Arctic Death Spiral: Sea Ice Passes De Facto Tipping Point; Joe Bastardi Pulls a Charlie Sheen on Fox News, Pushing “Utter Nonsense”; Sen. Sanders: Tar Sands Pipeline "Will Keep America Addicted to Oil"; New Deal: Charge your elec. car with home solar; Utilities, not residents, will gain from smart metering; Why the meat industry sells salmonella; Hot river shuts Tennessee nuke plant for 2nd time; Enviros call on Super Committee to energy subsidies & tax breaks; US fracking advisory group has abundant ties to energy industry; Gas Fracking panel finds serious environmental risks; US Launches Eco-Network; BP to return to MI for clean-up; "Remember, Nature always bats last" ... PLUS: How to profit from climate change, resource wars, and ecological mayhem ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tempers boil over as town runs out of water while drought deepens in TX; Devastating famine spreads in East Africa; New rules for heavy trucks; Japanese officials withheld radiation information from residents; PLUS: Al Gore calls 'BULLSH**T!' --- literally --- on the Climate Change Denial industry ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fracking: groundwater contamination documented by EPA in 1987; Koch's ALEC Conf touts 'The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment'; Australia's new carbon tax will boost jobs, revenues: study; China shuts down 583 lead-acid battery plants; U.S. invests in more solar power; TN nuke plant shut down due to hot river; Japan withheld radiation data, leaving evacuees in peril; 'Brave' Fukushima workers expect to 'die within weeks'; Israel to build $423m desalination plant; Consumers get a break on gas prices; St. Louis to pay $5B to repair sewers; Last of the Lobstermen: Chasing a vanishing treasure... PLUS: BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ FAKES test in order to criticize electric cars...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Debt ceiling theatre is over --- for now --- with clean energy & environment the biggest losers; It's official: Record heat wave makes for a record July; Don doesn't do Dallas (Tropical Storm Don, that is); PLUS: The most anti-environment Congress ever... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Star Polar Bear Scientist in the Dog House; Conservative, white men more likely to be climate change sceptics: study; EPA delays smog rule for fourth time; CBO: Clean Energy Standards Are an Affordable Way to Cut Carbon Emissions; Protesters Continue To Block Mountaintop Removal At Coal River; More reasons to switch to LED light bulbs; Issa to investigate Obama's fuel economy deal; Not looking good: Climate Trends and Global Crop Production; GOP presidential campaign town halls become oil lobbyist theater; World is building low-carbon global economy without the United States; Beware these household energy-saving myths ... PLUS: Gee, why are climate scientists so perturbed? ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another record heatwave for the Midwest (now with crop failure!); "Carmageddon" becomes "Cartopia"; Australia launches nationwide carbon tax --- World doesn't end; PLUS: Dim bulbs (and Fox "News") fight to build a bridge to the 19th century ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): $485B a yr: What extreme weather costs US; Sea levels could rise for centuries to come; Lufthansa begins world's first regular biofuel passenger flights; Phosphate: A resource critical to farming, now starting to run low; U.S. Could Drop Screening For Deadly Strain of E. Coli; GOP Denies Global Warming as Polar Bear Cubs Die in Melting Arctic Ice; Study: Changes to ocean expected to damage shellfish around world; Europe Opens First Electric Car Battery Switching Station; Heatstroke deaths quadruple in Japan; Analysis: A severe EV battery oversupply on the horizon; Volvo, Jaguar testing flywheels as potential substitute for batteries in EVs; New Climate Study Models Potential for Rapid Onset of Catastrophic Climate Changes ... PLUS: More Americans now employed in "green" jobs than oil or gas jobs ...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Republicans in state after state across the country today, Memorial Day 2011, are remembering those who fought and died to protect our democracy by celebrating recent victories in their renewed effort to remove the right to vote for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of legal American voters.

It's been just days since we filed "GOP Voter Suppression Shifts Into High Gear in State After State as 'Tea Party' Shell Game Exposed" on May 23, detailing new GOP-passed polling place Photo ID restrictions in states like SC and FL, but since then we can report that Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed a bill legalizing polling place photo ID restrictions in TX and Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a photo ID restriction bill in WI.

Both of them, as opponents have documented over and over again, will serve to do little more than to disenfranchise far more legal (largely Democratic-leaning) voters than those who will be kept from fraudulently impersonating other voters at the polling place, which, as even most proponents admit when forced, happens almost never --- if it all.

Thankfully in at least one instance since our last report, Gov. Mark Dayton (D) of MN vetoed a photo ID measure passed by Republicans in his state. So there is one case, at least, where the memories of our fallen soldiers might be appropriately honored this weekend, as one governor has remembered to protect the very thing that so many of them died for.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the enactment of Indiana's photo ID law in Crawford vs. Marion County Election Bd. (2008), both the new WI photo ID law, which may cost WI taxpayers $7 million to implement, and both the SC and TX photo ID laws, which do not even recognize student photo IDs, may be subject to significant legal challenges...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"I don’t want everybody to vote," Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, said while addressing a right-wing Christian audience in 1980. "[O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down," he added after he denigrated those who seek "good government" through maximum, informed voter participation as people who suffer from the "goo goo syndrome."

Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While most Americans may think of the poll tax and literacy tests as forms of voter suppression associated the Jim Crow South, the confirmation hearings of the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist included sworn testimony from former U.S. Attorney James Brosnahan and others reflecting that, as an early 60's GOP activist, Renquist intimidated African-American and Hispanic voters in AZ by challenging their ability to read.

1965's Voting Rights Act outlawed both the poll tax and literacy tests. In more recent times, pursuant to a 1987 federal court consent decree, and a subsequent provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993, another GOP suppression tactic, "caging lists," was banned, though as documented by the BBC's Greg Palast, the Bush administration-led Plutocrats didn't let a little matter like illegality get in the way of their use.

21st Century voter suppression operates under cover. Or it had, until the new wave of legislation being passed by GOP legislatures across the country began hitting its stride. Until FL's then-governor Charlie Crist overturned it, for example, the state banned convicted felons from voting even years after they'd been released from prison. In Armed Madhouse, Palast asserts that prior to the 2000 Presidential election, FL's then Sec. of State Katherine Harris, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of candidate George W. Bush, purged 94,000 "felons" from the state's computerized voter rolls, though the only "crime" at least 91,000 were guilty of was "being Black, Democrat or both."

Over much of the past decade, voter suppression efforts have been bolstered by bogus "voter fraud" claims leveled at groups like ACORN, who aided in the registration of those who might be likely to vote against the GOP (minorities and the working class); "non-partisan" GOP astroturf groups like the phony American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) created after the 2004 election solely to create and spread false propaganda about a Democratic "voter fraud" epidemic; laws meant to increase the legal risk to real non-partisan organizations for assisting in registration; draconian polling place "photo ID" restriction laws, and in a reduction of opportunities for early voting.

With the tide of GOP victories at the ballot box last November, those efforts have now been ramped up and are now front and center in some 30 state legislatures across the country...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The Mighty Mississippi crests in Memphis (but Graceland is spared!); Record drought dries out Texas (the Governor's prayers are not answered); What The Frack? - Flammable drinking water near natural gas wells; Japan scraps nuclear plans; Florida nixes high speed rail, other states rejoice; PLUS: Guess who leads the world in clean energy? (hint: it ain't us) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How to profit from the coming eco-pocalypse; Green energy can wean off subsidies; Right-Wing media freak out over nonexistent mileage tax; Study: climate change impacts on SF; Arctic meltdown accelerates; Ambitious renewable energy goals and war-zone realities; US Military: global dominance through solar panels; Republican claims credit for oil price tumble; the Truth about rising gasoline prices; Obama: Clean energy delivers the ‘jobs of the future’; Robot sorts trash for recycling; Self-cleaning, smog-eating buildings; Greening America’s schools ... PLUS: Scaling UP: Renewables Could Meet Most of Energy Needs by 2050 ...