From DrudgeReport -- Panic: Administration Halts EPA Smog Regulation

Link here.

To say this is "interesting" is an understatement.

Now, if we can just put the Louisiana folks back to work.

Finally:

President Barack Obama on Friday sacked a controversial proposed regulation tightening health-based standards for smog, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposal, in part because of the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

This may be the first bit of good news on the regulatory front that I have seen in some time.

By the way, what was EPA proposing?

The EPA under Obama proposed in January 2010 a range for the concentration of ground-level ozone allowed in the air — from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's about equal to a single tennis ball in an Olympic-size swimming pool full of tennis balls.

I can't make this stuff up.

Other headlines regarding the economy today:

Unemployment among blacks highest in 27 years. The smog rules would have done away with jobs that would have worsened the unemployment rate, and perhaps disproportionately among minorities.

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.
Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.

The proposed smog rules would have resulted in rolling blackouts.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, operator of the state's power grid, said in a report today that a new federal environmental regulation would reduce generating capacity and put the grid "at increasing risk of emergency events," including rotating power outages.

The Jan. 1 implementation date for the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, designed to curb air pollution from power plants, leaves ERCOT with "an extremely truncated period" in which to assess the impact of the rule and "no realistic opportunity to take steps that could even partially offset the substantial losses of available operating capacity," it said.

This simply suggests folks making decisions are in over their heads.