A recent EPA study estimated that just one law — the Clean Air Act — prevented 230,000 deaths, 3.2 million lost school days, and 13 million lost work days a year in 2010. The benefits of this act, including savings in medical expenses and increased worker productivity, are 30 times greater than its cost of implementation, and the benefits of regulation, more generally, also have been shown to exceed costs [PDF].

The right-wing noise machine has mastered the art of repeating a few key nonsensical messages over and over again until some people actually believe them.  It has much in common with the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, who repeat the pigs’ perversion of the original principles:  “Four legs good, two legs better!” or “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

And so in the Orwellian world of the right-wing, the word “rich” is out and “job creators” is in.  There simply are no more rich people in the Tea Party fantasyland.  Of course, no jobs are being created, and the rich are simply sitting on their billions, accumulating a staggeringly disproportionate amount of the wealth to shame the Gilded Age — the richest “400 people have more wealth than half of the more than 100 million U.S. households,” Politifact was grudgingly forced to agree that Michael Moore’s statement was correct.  So one would have to be a sheep to keep calling them job creators.

Oh, but wait, say the sheep,  the reason the job creators aren’t creating jobs is because of the “job-destroying EPA,” a phrase repeated as often as “job creator” is.  In a sane world — I know, I know, another counterfactual, but bear with me — everyone would call it the “life-saving EPA.”  But that would require a president with coherent principles and messaging skills to lead the way, as opposed to one who caved on the life-saving ozone rule — even though a National Bureau of Economic Research study found “robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a significant impact on productivity:  a 10 ppb decrease in ozone concentrations increases worker productivity by 4.2 percent.”

In the interest of continuing to set the record straight, what follows is a post by Elizabeth A. Stanton, a senior economist with the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, via TripleCrisis (and Grist).

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Boston Globe reporter Donovan Slack reports today that Mitt Romney’s top energy advisor also works for a lobbying firm that counts coal giant Peabody Energy as a top client.

Former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) has emerged as a key player in Romney’s policy circle, and is featured in Romney’s jobs plan writing about the importance of the coal industry. As Slack reports, Talent simultaneously maintains a lucrative career at a firm that represents Peabody, one of the largest coal companies in the world:

What the former Missouri senator’s essay does not mention is that the Washington lobbying and communications firm he leads as co-chairman, Mercury Public Affairs, counts among its clients Peabody Energy, a St. Louis-based company that is one the largest coal producers in the world.

Peabody Energy has paid Talent’s firm an average of $125,000 every year for the past five years to help represent its interests in Washington. The energy company also retains other firms, spending an average of $2 million each year on lobbying, records show.

As ThinkProgress Green’s Brad Johnson noted back in May, Romney has sought energy advice from other polluter lobbyists. One of them, Jeffrey Holmstead, has worked as a registered lobbyist for Duke Energy, Southern Company, and other fossil fuel giants.

Romney’s current energy policy includes polluter friendly ideas like “amending the Clean Air Act to exclude regulation of carbon and opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil production.”

A Texas power company is suing the Environmental Protection Agency to block a clean-air rule that it claims will force it to shut down decades-old power plants and close coal mines, killing 500 jobs. EFH Luminant is fighting the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which calls for substantial reductions in smog and acid rain pollution by Texas sources beginning in January 2012:

Dallas-based Luminant has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to remove Texas from a new Environmental Protection rule due to go into effect early next year that the company says will force it to idle two power plants and end mining operations at three lignite mines, including one in Central Texas.

In reality, the two units being idled — Monticello 1 & 2 — were part of a bad deal made by Luminant in 2007. Plummeting natural gas prices and increased electricity production from wind have made the coal plants “almost worthless.” The plants purchased in 2007, including the Monticello units, are now worth about $1 billion but carry $10 billion in debt.

As the population of Texas booms and its temperatures rise, the threat from air pollutants like NO2 and SO2 grows. Millions of Texans — especially children and senior citizens — are at risk from Luminant’s outdated coal plants. The level of pollution from the units violated the Clean Air Act well before the new rule was slated to go into effect. A 2009 State of the Market analysis by ERCOT, the Texas electric commission, found that coal power was becoming a “marginal fuel” in the region:

As significant additional wind, coal and potentially nuclear resources are added to the ERCOT region and transmission constraints that serve to limit existing wind production are alleviated, it is likely that the frequency of coal as the marginal fuel will increase in the coming years.

A 2010 Brattle Group analysis similarly found that the coal plants cannot compete financially with natural gas power.

EFH/Luminant is attempting to make the Environmental Protection Agency the scapegoat for consequences of their poor business decisions. They want people to believe that Americans have to choose between their health and their jobs, but it’s just a crass shifting of blame.