Chevron Doctrine is Activist Insanity

By Rich Kozlovich

The Chevron Deference became doctrine as a result of a SCOTUS decision in the 1984 Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. case, "that the courts should defer to the agencies interpretations of ambiguous or unclear statute that Congress delegated to the agency to administer". After all, these agencies decisions are based on the views "experts"! 

Well,  that's now being challenged, and rightly so, and for good reason.

I'm a retired 40 year veteran of the structural pest control industry.  An exterminator!  And for many years I had the privilege of being heavily involved in my industry's affairs defending the use of pesticides, and fertilizers.   

One of the biggest scams ever pushed by the EPA to justify banning pesticides was the claims regarding pesticides and Endocrine Disruption (ED), which are more correctly termed hormonally active agents, (HAA), "substances that possess hormone-like activity."

In  May 20, 2016  Julianna LeMieux posted this article entitled,  How Do You Regulate Something That You Don’t Understand?, saying:

The debate about endocrine disruption is intense, in large part because the research is inconclusive. In turn, there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding how to regulate  the use of supposedly endocrine disrupting chemicals.  Endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs) are defined as having the potential to alter one or more functions of the endocrine system and cause negative effects in an organism, and/or its babies.  A new publication entitled “Scientific Issues Relevant to Setting Regulatory Criteria to Identify Endocrine Disrupting Substances in the European Union” is the latest in a long line of reports, studies and recommendations opining on the best way to identify what defines an EDC and how to deal with them.

The real problem with these "studies" are the world is full of naturally occurring endocrine disruptors, especially in the food we eat.  In his book The Really Inconvenient Truths Iain Murray states:

"Laboratory experiments have shown that there are so-called "endocrine disruptors" present in forty-three different foods common in the human diet, including corn, garlic, pineapple, potatoes, and wheat. Most amusingly, soybean, that product so beloved by liberal environmentalists, is a particularly potent source of phytoestrogens".....

"it appears that on average human beings consume just over 100 micrograms of estrogen equivalents a day from natural sources. Compare that to the amount of industrial chemical amount of 2.5 micrograms.".........

"As it turns out phytoestrogens are actually much more potent than the chemicals that act like estrogens. Our friend DDT, for instance, has a relative potency to natural estrogen of 0.000001, meaning it takes one million molecules to have the same impact of one molecule of real estrogen."

If that's the case, and it is, how can you determine if manufactured chemicals have any impact at all?  It's simple, you create mythological science.

The fact is all this got started by a piece of falsified science from Steven F. Arnold of the Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research who along with his gang published a study in June of 1996:

"claiming that combinations of pesticides and PCBs were up to 1,000 times more potent as endocrine disruptors than the individual chemicals alone." 

As a result the EPA managed to include into the Food Quality Protection Act an ED requirement, resulting in the loss of pesticides used effectively and safely for decades.  Then came the consequences of time.  Which is the great leveler of truth, and it turned out this study that  Carol Browner - head of EPA at the time - declared: 

"The new study is the strongest evidence to date that combinations of estrogenic chemicals may be potent enough to significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, birth defects and other major health concerns." She went on to say: "I was astounded by the findings. Dr. Lynn Goldman, EPA pesticide chief, claimed "I just can't remember a time where I've seen data so persuasive … The results are very clean looking".  

The results were astounding?  Really?  The data persuasive and clean looking?  Really?  If that was so, then why was it no one was capable of duplicating those results, anywhere in the world.  Because according the journal Science, Arnold was found to have:

"committed scientific misconduct by intentionally falsifying the research results published in the journal Science and by providing falsified and fabricated materials to investigating officials" ...[and]......"there is no original data or other corroborating evidence to support the research results and conclusions reported in the Science paper as a whole."

So, why is this important now?  Because the FQPA is still on the books, and the ED requirement remains as part of FQPA, and even after it was known to be junk science, there was a short term push at EPA to once again make ED claims against pesticides.  

This is more evidence these bureaucratic "experts" are not experts at all, and in point of fact, they're activists, and particularly environmental activists, who have no idea what they're talking about more times than not, and they don't care, and really don't care about the negative consequences of their insane decisions. 

The same was true of Colony Collapse Disorder.  I shared this article, Presidential Pollinator Protection: Myths, Facts and Hyperbole, with a prominent EPA official who shared it with his colleagues, and that was the last time we heard much from the EPA about saving the honey bees from extinction as a result of the use of pesticides. Did my article have anything to do with that?  I have no idea, but they could never say they weren't told!  

But the question that really needs answered is why is it an autodidact bugman knew all this and these bureaucrat experts didn't?  And if they don't know the facts, and don't truthfully understand what they're regulating, how can the courts justify continuing to defer to these agencies under the Chevron Doctrine?   These agency regulations are in effect laws Congress never saw and never voted on!

Chevron needs to be sent onto the ash heap of history, and the Congress needs to start doing the job they were hired to do.  While we're at it, they need to dump the EPA, and my now passed friend Dr. Jay Lehr, who was one of the founders of EPA put together a five year plan to do just that, because according to Jay, the EPA hasn't done anything worthwhile since 1980.  

To tell the truth, I'm betting that's true of the rest of the almost 450 agencies of the federal government.

Replacing the Environmental Protection Agency

July 15, 2014 By Jay Lehr, Ph.D.

The national EPA must be systematically dismantled and replaced by a Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental protection agencies.

The national EPA must be systematically dismantled and replaced by a Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental protection agencies. Those agencies in nearly all cases long ago took over primary responsibility for the implementation of environmental laws passed by Congress (or simply handed down by EPA as fiat rulings without congressional vote or oversight).

In 1968, when I was serving as the head of a groundwater professional society, it became obvious to me and a handful of others that the United States did not have any serious focus on potential problems with the quality of its air, drinking water, and surface water, and that the nation suffered from waste disposal problems and contamination from mining and agriculture. I held the nation's first Ph.D. in groundwater hydrology, which gave me insight to understand the problems. I was asked by the director of the Bureau of Water Hygiene in the U.S. Department of Health to serve on a panel to study the potential to expand the bureau's oversight into a full environmental protection organization.

Collectively, we spoke before dozens of congressional committees in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, drawing attention to mounting environmental pollution problems. We called for the establishment of a national Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in 1971 we succeeded.

I was appointed to a variety of the new agency's advisory councils and over the next 10 years I helped write a significant number of legislative bills that were to make up a true safety net for our environment. They included the Water Pollution Control Act (later renamed the Clean Water Act), Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (which, surprisingly, covered deep mines as well), Clean Air Act, Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Fungicide Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (which we now know as Superfund).

These acts worked well in protecting the environment and the health of our citizens, with the exception of Superfund, which proved to be too overreaching and wreaked havoc with U.S. business as companies operating within the law were fined countless dollars and required to pay huge sums after the fact for clean-up of waste disposal that had been within the law at the time of the activity.

Liberal Activists Take Over EPA

Beginning around 1981, liberal activist groups recognized EPA could be used to advance their political agenda by regulating virtually all human activities regardless of their impact on the environment. Politicians recognized they could win votes by posing as protectors of the public health and wildlife. Industries saw a way to use regulations to handicap competitors or help themselves to public subsidies. Since that time, not a single environmental law or regulation has been passed that benefitted either the environment or society.

The takeover of EPA and all of its activities by liberal activists was slow and methodical over the past 30 years. Today, EPA is all but a wholly owned subsidiary of liberal activist groups. Its rules account for about half of the nearly $2 trillion a year cost of complying with all national regulations in the U.S.  President Barack Obama is using it to circumvent Congress to impose regulations on the energy sector that will cause prices to "skyrocket." It is a rogue agency, the topic of books with titles like Regulators Gone Wild and Out of Bounds, Out of Control.

For more than 20 years, I have worked to expose this story to the public, beginning with my 1991 book Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, on which 50 environmental scientists collaborated to describe the manner in which their own fields had been hijacked and distorted to allow fear-mongering of an unconscionable nature. Other authors have discovered and have been working to expose this as well. Besides the three already cited, see:

Ron Arnold, Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, 2007.

Wilfred Beckerman, Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered, 1996.

Larry Bell, Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, 2011.

James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Cancer Scam: Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics, 1998.

Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell, Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left, 2012.

Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History, 2013.

Jeff Gillman and Eric Heberlig, How the Government Got In Your Backyard, 2011.

Indur M. Goklany, The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment, 2001.

Geoffrey C. Kabat, Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology, 2008.

Wallace Kaufman, No Turning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking, 1994.

Aynsley Kellow, Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science, 2007.

S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, Environmental Cancer A Political Disease? 1999.

Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, 1990.

A.W. Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, 2010.

Daniel T. Oliver, Animal Rights: The Inhumane Crusade, 1999.

James M. Sheehan, Global Greens: Inside the International Environmental Establishment, 1998.

Julian Simon, Hoodwinking the Nation, 1999.

It is possible, one supposes, that some of these authors (and I could list many more books like these) are mistaken, that the environmental movement hasn't abandoned science and isn't now just a tool of the far left for imposing its anti-human, anti-energy, and anti-capitalism agenda on America. But all of them? I don't think so. You can go back and check the historical record yourself: the names, dates, and important episodes of the left's take-over of the environmental movement, and then of EPA, are reported similarly in many of these books. 

Replace, Don't Try to Fix, EPA

It is tempting to imagine EPA can be "fixed," that its abuse of power and pursuit of political agendas without regard to their effect on the environment could be stopped if only the right people were appointed to run it, or perhaps if Congress passed laws requiring better science or more cost-benefit analysis. This is wrong. As Fred L. Smith, Jr., wrote back in 1992,

[T]he serious failures of environmental regulation ... do not occur randomly or, for that matter, as a result of bad management (although this may occasionally be the case). Rather, they stem from deep-rooted institutional and political incentives that systematically bias the EPA's decisions. Better science and risk assessment procedures, public participation, and civic education, in and of themselves, do little to counteract these biases, and may exacerbate them.

Incremental reform of EPA is simply not an option. As James V. DeLong wrote in 2002,

It should surprise no one that 25 years of talk about regulatory reform has achieved little. The vague language of the federal environmental statutes and the corresponding massive delegation of authority to EPA to make law, enforce law, and adjudicate violations concentrate tremendous power in the hands of the agency, breeding insensitivity, zealotry, and abuse. Experience has shown that regulatory agencies will tend to expand until checked, and the potential for regulatory expansion at the EPA, unbounded as it is by congressional language, is vast.

For these reasons, I have come to believe the national EPA must be systematically dismantled and replaced by a Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental protection agencies. Those agencies in nearly all cases long ago took over primary responsibility for the implementation of environmental laws passed by Congress (or simply handed down by EPA as fiat rulings without congressional vote or oversight).

When national EPA was established in 1971, the federal government had no choice but to oversee implementation of the initial seven safety net laws. Soon thereafter, however, every state established an independent agency that filed for and was granted primary control of the implementation of the existing laws. With only rare exceptions, the states are now fully in control of the regulatory program.

States have a comparative advantage over the national government in responding to environmental problems because of the major role they play in the "construction and protection of urban infrastructure, regulation of land use, enforcement of building codes, and, certainly not least, natural disaster response."  The federalist system adopted when EPA was created recognized this reality and still looks pretty good on paper, but state agencies are continually harassed to ensure no one evades the heavy hand of hundreds of new regulations passed over the past three decades.

The initial laws I helped write have become increasingly more draconian, yet they have not benefitted our environment or the health of our citizens. Instead, they suppress our economy and the right of our citizens to make an honest living. It seems to me, and to others, that this is actually the intention of those in EPA and in Congress who want to see government power expanded without regard to whether it is needed to protect the environment or public health.

With 30 years of experience, these 50 state environmental agencies are ready to take over management of the nation's environment. Only the EPA research laboratories should be left in place at the national level to answer additional scientific questions, and even these laboratories must be substantially reorganized, freed from the grip of insiders who use them to justify new regulations rather than genuinely study the science.  Increasingly, the federal laboratories should be exposed to competition from state-funded research efforts to keep them honest.

Eighty percent of what is now national EPA's budget could be eliminated, and the remaining 20 percent could be used to run the research labs and administer the Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental agencies. A relatively small administrative structure would be needed to allow the states to refine existing environmental laws in a manner more suitable to the primary requirement of protecting our environment without thwarting national progress in industry and the development of our natural resources and energy supplies.

Five-Year Phase-Out

National EPA could be phased out over five years, with a one-year preparation period followed by a four-year program in which 25 percent of the agency's activities would be passed to the Committee of the Whole each year. The Committee of the Whole would be made up of representatives from each state from each significant area of concern. The committee would be divided into subcommittees, reflecting how EPA is set up, though many programs and offices within EPA may be eliminated at the will of the states. For instance, offices whose primary purpose is oversight of the state agencies no longer would be necessary.

The Committee of the Whole would determine which regulations are actually mandated in law by Congress and which were established by EPA without congressional approval. Rules written clearly into legislation would be recommended for continuance or would be included in a request that Congress consider ending them because the Committee of the Whole deems them unnecessary in their current form. Regulations not supported by writings within legislation would be considered by the applicable subcommittees and the whole committee for alteration or repeal by a two-thirds vote of the Committee of the Whole.

Until the Committee of the Whole acted on each individual regulation, all regulations would remain in force. Many regulations would give states latitude to act, and others would be required of all states by a two-thirds vote of the Committee of the Whole. Each state would be funded sufficiently to increase its staff to include people whose primary jobs would be to serve on subcommittees of the Committee of the Whole overseeing the issues previously overseen by the current EPA.

This phase-out of national EPA could be done in an orderly manner within five years. Oversight of the existing EPA research labs eventually would be ceded to a subcommittee of the whole.

Organizing the Committee

When one considers how national EPA was established, along with the growth of the state agencies, this plan is actually a logical endpoint that could have begun 30 years ago. The specific details of the five-year transfer from the Washington, DC-based EPA and its 10 regional offices would be carried out as follows.

The federal budget for environmental protection would be reduced from $8.2 billion to $2 billion. Staffing would be reduced from more than 15,000 to 300, and those 300 would serve in the new national EPA headquarters to be located centrally in Topeka, Kansas, to allow the closest contact with the individual states and reduce travel costs from the states to the central headquarters of the Committee of the Whole. The 300 individuals working there would consist of six delegate-employees from each of the 50 states. The personnel currently working at EPA's more-than-two-dozen research centers would remain in place until the Committee of the Whole chooses to make changes.

National EPA is currently divided into the following 14 offices:

Office of the Administrator
American Indian Environmental Office
Office of International and Tribal Affairs
Office of Policy
Office of Administration and Resources Management
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
Office of Air and Radiation
Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention
Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response
Office of Water
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Office of General Counsel
Office of Environmental Information
Office of Research and Development

In the first year of transition, all national EPA employees would be informed of the five-year transition period, allowing them ample time to seek other employment opportunities. Additionally, during year one the two offices relating to Indian issues American Indian Environmental Office and Office of International and Tribal Affairs would be transferred to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which should welcome this responsibility along with about half of the monies budgeted for them at EPA. During the first year, all 300 employees relocating from the 50 states (six each) would begin work in the new Topeka, Kansas, offices established early in year one.

A chairman of the Committee of the Whole would be elected by the 300 delegate-employees to a three-year term early in the transition. The delegate-employees would be assigned to subcommittees corresponding to the offices that currently exist in Washington, DC.

During year two, all activities of the Offices of Policy, Administration and Resources Management, and Enforcement and Compliance Assurance would be transferred to Topeka from Washington, DC and the regional offices.

In year three, all activities of the Offices of Air and Radiation and Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention would be transferred to Topeka. In year four, the responsibilities of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and Office of Water would move to Topeka. In the final year, the Offices of the Chief Financial Officer, General Counsel, Environmental Information, and the Office of the Administrator would have their responsibilities moved to Topeka.

During each year of transition, members of the Topeka staff would be assigned for periods of time to the Washington, DC offices and the regional offices to study the activities of the existing units. It is quite likely that as the office responsibilities are transferred to Topeka, the Committee of the Whole will choose to eliminate some of them entirely.

If some DC offices experience an early excessive attrition of employees relocating before the phase-out of their offices, an earlier transfer of responsibility to Topeka may be required.

As monies are freed up in the transition from 15,000 federal employees to 300, each state would be allocated $20 million to enhance its new independent responsibilities and replace the six employees transferred to Topeka. In addition to that use of $1 billion (50 x $20 million), it is anticipated the management of the Topeka offices and the continuation of the research and development program at the national level would require a second billion dollars, allowing the permanent reduction of an $8.2 billion annual federal outlay for environmental protection to a total of $2 billion.

Rescuing Federalism, Saving the Environment

Not only would this transition save large sums of money, but the efficiency and quality of environmental protection would be enhanced by placing power and responsibility in the hands of the individual states. It is, after all, well-known that government close to the location of the governed is best for all. Most states will enthusiastically embrace this plan, as their opposition to EPA's "regulatory train wreck" grows and since it gives them the autonomy and authority they were promised when EPA was first created and the funding to carry it out.

The Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental agencies would meet the needs of the nation more effectively and more efficiently than the national EPA. Fifty state environmental protection agencies with more than 30 years of experience have the talent to do the job without the oversight of 15,000 federal employees. They are less vulnerable to lobbying and intimidation by national politicians, activists, and special-interest groups than are their counterparts in Washington, DC. Being located in Topeka, Kansas, they will be far away from the beltway culture that corrupts public servants who come to the nation's capital with even the best of intentions.

It made sense for there to be a single national agency given authority to enforce the nation's new environmental protection laws in the first decade of the 1970s. But by the end of that decade, the lion's share of benefits from that noble experiment were already achieved and the states could have been, and should have been, allowed to play their intended role in implementing the new programs. Authority should have remained in the hands of the states, where innovation would be rewarded and accountability to local voters and taxpayers was more likely to be preserved. But as is the nature of all bureaucracies, national EPA grew vastly larger than any of its founders and architects intended. It was coopted by various interest groups, and today it stands in the way of environmental protection and is a threat to individual liberty and commerce.

It's time for the national EPA to go. The path forward is now clear and simple: A five-year transition from a federal government bureaucracy to a Committee of the Whole composed of the 50 state environmental protection agencies.

To those who say this would fail to adequately protect the public's health or the environment, I urge you to reflect on the poor job currently being done by EPA, and then to meet some of the men and women staffing state EPA offices and see for yourself the sophistication, commitment, and resources they have to do the job. You will not remain doubters for long. And to those who like this plan but think it is utopian or impossible, I can tell you as someone who was there at the beginning of EPA, who helped write the laws and advised its founders, that this can be done quickly and efficiently.

All that is missing is the political will.

Notes:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/08/12/patrick-j-michaels/state-funded-science-its-worse-you-think.

http://www.alec.org/initiatives/epas-regulatory-train-wreck/. ALEC has produced three reports so far as part of this initiative: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Assault on State Sovereignty (2013), Economy Derailed: State-by-State Impacts of the EPA Regulatory Train Wreck (2012), and EPA's Regulatory Train Wreck: Strategies for State Legislators (2011). All are available on the ALEC website.

 

Rein in EPA’s Authority Over Wetlands, Idaho Couple Urges Supreme Court

By Matthew Vadum October 3, 2022  

The attorney for an Idaho couple that has been battling federal officials for years over the right to develop their own property asked the Supreme Court on Oct. 3 to rein in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate wetlands.

Chantell and Mike Sackett had started building a new home in Priest Lake, Idaho, when the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers suddenly ordered them to stop all work. The two government agencies said they needed a federal permit and threatened more than $30,000 in daily fines. The EPA had determined years before that their parcel of land contained wetlands. The Sacketts say their lot lacks a surface water connection to any stream, creek, lake, or other water body, and it shouldn’t be subject to federal regulation and permitting.

Even though water is not usually visible on their land, the government claims, based on aerial photography, the lot is home to a fen wetland. Fens are “peat-forming wetlands that rely on groundwater input and require thousands of years to develop and cannot easily be restored once destroyed,” according to a USDA Forest Service report. Fens are “hotspots of biodiversity” and “figure prominently in nearly all scenarios of CO2-induced global change because they are a major sink for atmospheric carbon,” the report claims............To Read More...

My Take - It boggles the mind this is still going on, which I've been following for all these years.  No matter how many times the Sacketts win, they lose to petty tyrannical bureaucrats, giving ever more reason for the elimination of the EPA, and seriously curtailing the activities of all the rest.

I think everyone needs to see the background of this story, here's my Sackett file.  Starting with my commentary, while out of order, it's filled with a lot of background on this: 

The Sacketts: You Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution

By Rich Kozlovich

I've been watching this for some time and I lost sight of it in the last couple of years as I thought it was resovled a few years ago.  Wrong!  I'm now shocked the Trump administration didn't fix this, but the fact is Trump came into office without a trusted group of followers, including the Republicans, who actually worked to undermine him in support of the Deep State.  He even left former Obama people in their jobs, and I think some for his whole administration. I have to believe that will change after 2024.   At any rate, here's the story going back ten years, much of what's appearing here is from Wikipedia at the end lending more background.  ..................

Amendment to block EPA WOTUS rule blocked in House, as SCOTUS decision looms

There is no creature more vicious than a thwarted bureaucrat

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. July 6th, 2022 Environment 22 Comments

Concerned that a Biden administration plan to resuscitate an Obama-era rule that would impose federal zoning across millions of acres of private land, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced an amendment in the U.S. House that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from going ahead with the scheme pending the outcome of a landmark case before the Supreme Court.  At issue is the federal government’s powers under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) to regulate “waters of the United States” (WOTUS). The CWA grants EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers power to regulate “navigable waters of the United States,” initially understood, but not specifically stated, to include rivers, bays, lakes, and other bodies of water that are navigable. However, the lack of clarity in the statute has led federal regulators, often working with environmental groups, to extend the CWA’s jurisdiction to include drainage ditches, farm ponds, and ephemeral bodies of water that are in no way “navigable.”............

KNIGHT: Taming the EPA monster 

Supreme Court ruling strikes a blow in ongoing battle    

By Robert Knight - - Friday, March 23, 2012

Slowly, inexorably, the monster is being driven back to its lair. Its days of terrorizing villagers may soon be over. I wish I were talking about the federal government, but it’s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), better known as the Environmental Protection-or-else Agency. At one time, it was a harmless little back-alley operation that stumbled upon a secret growth formula, downed the whole vat and began wreaking havoc. You won’t find this account on the EPA’s official website, but you will find ample evidence of the monster’s ambitions to control the world, such as its quest for “environmental justice.” On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped the monster right across the chops in Sackett v. EPA. An Idaho couple, Chantell and Mike Sackett, were building a home but fell victim to an EPA compliance order in 2005. Their building permit was revoked.......To Read More...

Years after Supreme Court win, Sacketts lose fight with EPA 

Ariel Wittenberg, E&E News reporter Greenwire: Wednesday, April 3, 2019

After winning the right to challenge EPA enforcement orders in a major 2011 Supreme Court ruling, Michael and Chantell Sackett have lost their case. A U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho judge ruled that the wetlands the couple are accused of illegally filling were indeed protected by the Clean Water Act.  "The Court finds the EPA's determination was not arbitrary or capricious and is supported by the record," Reagan appointee Judge Edward Lodge wrote in a ruling on summary judgment last week. Tony Francois, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation representing the Sacketts, indicated his clients would appeal the case.................

Out of Control: Part III -  A Victory over the Ideological and Tyrannical Thugs at the EPA

March 22, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

 

For another example, let’s look at a case involving the thugs at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This Reason TV video provides the background................

 

Sackett versus the EPA: There is more!   Today the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case brought by an Idaho couple represented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. It is a great victory for landowners facing the wrath of the EPA. Wyoming Liberty Group's Steve Klein's article was a refreshing change from the dozen or so articles I read or skimmed in the liberty-media and elsewhere in the days after the SCOTUS decision was announced. I even posted a comment – in general praising Steve's work – though it has not (as of Saturday the 24th at 1800 hours MT) been screened and posted. Perhaps they thought that I was being too critical of Steve's article. To read more..... 

 

Let's This End The Week With This! 

 

By Rich Kozlovich

In past weeks I posted a link to a video that was uplifting. This week is going to be different. This will outrage you!

Sackett v. EPA Still Awaiting SCOTUS Decision

In January, the Supreme Court heard the arguments for Sackett v. EPA, the case of an Idaho couple being persecuted for trying to build a home on a small plot of property the Environmental Protection Agency deemed "protected wetlands." The case is still under review and the Sacketts are waiting for a decision, but Reason followed up with a great vid breaking down the entire enviro-busybody boondoggle...................

 Owners of land taken over by feds getting day in court Supremes to review EPA decision it controls residential parcel in Idaho
"With this case, the Supreme Court confronts important issues for property rights and due process. When the government seizes control of your land, and you disagree with the justification, shouldn't you be allowed your day in court? Just as important, should EPA be a law unto itself, without meaningful accountability to the courts and the Constitution?"……..

And it's not just the Sacketts' land that could be subject to such orders. The foundation arguments suggest that private property across the nation could be at risk. The legal team noted that between 1980 and 2001, the EPA issued up to 3,000 compliance orders every year across the nation. "The reality of the Sacketts' situation is that they have been unambiguously commanded by their government not to complete their home-building project, to take expensive measures to undo the improvements that they have made to their land, and to maintain their land essentially as a public park until the property is 'restored' to the satisfaction of the EPA. They have been threatened with frightening penalties if they do not immediately obey; but they have been refused the prompt hearing they should have received as a matter of right in any court," Pacific Legal argued. .............

The EPA Shows Again That It's an Affront to Common Sense

by Henry I. Miller and Jeff StierNational Review Online November 23, 2016

For decades, in administrations Democratic and Republican alike, the Environmental Protection Agency has been a paragon of waste, fraud, and abuse, a corrupt taxpayer-funded Evil Empire. "Science" there is just a tool to be manipulated in order to advance radical anti-technology and anti-industry agendas, even if it means distorting the intent of statutes and affronting common sense.

The EPA is the prototype of agencies that, driven largely by politics, spend more and more to address smaller and smaller risks. In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17. For example, the agency's restrictions on the disposal of land that contains certain wastes prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year — about three cases every five years — and avoid $20 million in property damage, at an annual cost of $194 to $219 million.

In his excellent book Breaking the Vicious Circle, written shortly before he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer cited another, similar example of expensive, non-cost-effective regulation by the EPA: a ban on asbestos pipe, shingles, coating, and paper, which the most optimistic estimates suggested would prevent seven or eight premature deaths over 13 years — at a cost of approximately a quarter of a billion dollars. Breyer, appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton, observed that such a vast expenditure would cause more deaths than it would prevent from the asbestos exposure, simply by reducing the resources available for other public amenities......To Read More...

It's Time to Abolish the USEPA!

A Wake-Up Call For U.S. Farmers: The EPA Is Trying To PutYou Out of Business, 

By Dr. Henry I. Miller 12/03/2014

The Environmental Protection Agency is arguably the worst regulatory agency in the history of the world. But perhaps I understate.  EPA has long been highly politicized, disdainful of science, relentlessly incompetent and corrupt. The agency is a miasma populated by the most radical, disaffected and anti-industry discards from other agencies, who collude secretly (C) and sometimes illegally with environmental extremists. An analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute has estimated that the annual cost of compliance with EPA regulations is more than a third of a trillion dollars......

Is it time to get rid of the EPA? By Dr. Henry Miller
Policy by policy and decision by decision, Jackson and her colleagues (along with their counterparts at other regulatory agencies) have decimated the nation’s competitiveness, ability to innovate and capacity to create wealth. A recent analysis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute estimated that the annual cost of compliance with EPA regulations alone is more than a third of a trillion dollars.....

EPA's Secret And Costly 'Sue And Settle' Collusion With Environmental Organizations, By Larry Bell 2/17/2013

“Sue and Settle “ practices, sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits”, are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein court-ordered “consent decrees” are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft together in advance behind closed doors. Then, rather than allowing the entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by agreeing to move forward with the requested action they and the litigants both want.

EPA's New Overseer Of'Scientific Integrity': The Blind Leading The Blind, By Dr. Henry Miller 12/04/2013
If you needed to hire a person to head the financial integrity division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, how about someone who had held that position in Bernie Madoff’s investment firm? In effect, that’s what EPA has done by choosing Francesca Grifo as its “scientific integrity official.”.... EPA’s science is shoddy, and its scientists and administrators routinely manipulate it to fit their radical policy agendas. Moreover, transparency is less important in government regulation than the content of decisions. Putting it another way, transparency is desirable, but arriving at the right decisions about public health and environmental protection is what is paramount.   The EPA has long been intellectually, scientifically and ethically bankrupt. Francesca Grifo will fit right in.....

Replacing the Environmental Protection Agency, By Dr. Jay Lehr
Of all the regulatory deadweight on the economy, the Environmental Protection Agency is almost certainly the heaviest of the federal government’s intrusions. If voters should hand control of the White House and Congress to the GOP in 2016, structural reform ought to be the heart of the program to rescue America from the disasters Obama and the Democrats have wrought. Part of that structural reform should be replacement of the EPA with a more effective and economical institutional arrangement.  The Heartland Institute has put forth a plan to do exactly that.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a rogue agency that has long outlived its effectiveness and should be dismantled and replaced.  Here is Dr. Jay Lehr’s five year phase out plan.  Dr. Lehr was one of the founders of the USEPA and now says it hasn’t done anything worthwhile since 1980.  It’s time to get rid of it.

Just a Thought or Two!

By Rich Kozlovich

For some time I have said that the EPA is out of control and the only way to fix it is to abolish it. Everyone says that will never happen!   Even those prominent in opposing the junk science promoted by the EPA!  Well, my answer is always the same. The Soviet Union collapsed almost overnight and no one saw that coming. The EPA is small potatoes compared to the USSR.

I received an interesting e-mail from my friend Dave Deitz with quotes by experts that were.......REALLY wrong. I will run a few a day.

·         "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."-- Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

·         "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."- - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

·         "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

·         "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

·         "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Abolish the EPA!

Continuing Saga: EPA and Unlawful Human Testing

North Carolina Medical Board Opens Investigation of Another EPA Doc

We were notified yesterday by the North Carolina Medical Board that it has opened an investigation (at our request) into another North Carolina-licensed physician involved in EPA’s illegal human testing.

EPA comments on human testing lawsuit; Claims UNC is ‘independent’; Records show otherwise

In response to yesterday’s Washington Times report by Kerry Picket (“Lawsuit filed against EPA over pollution experiments on humans“), the EPA e-mailed Picket:

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Blockbuster: EPA sued in federal court for conducting illegal human experiments

By Steve Milloy

Details at EPAHumanTesting.com!  (Posted below)

EPA sued in federal court over illegal human testing

Posted on September 24, 2012

Washington, DC – (Sep. 24) JunkScience.com announced today that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been sued in federal court for conducting illegal life- and health-threatening scientific experiments on human subjects.

Based on information uncovered by JunkScience.com publisher and public health consultant Steve Milloy through the Freedom of Information Act, the nonprofit American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center (ATI) sued EPA in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Among other things, the lawsuit asks for:

• EPA to be barred from conducting illegal life-and health-threatening experiments;
• a formal investigation of EPA’s human experiments; and for
• regulations based on the illegal experiments to be suspended pending an investigation.

“EPA has broken every law and violated every standard established since World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments for the protection of human subjects in scientific experiments,” said Milloy. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” Milloy added.

Based on thousands of pages of documents, many obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit alleges that EPA intentionally exposed at least dozens of unhealthy human study subjects to concentrated and elevated levels of air pollutants that EPA has determined are lethal, highly toxic and/or carcinogenic, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and diesel exhaust.

Many of the study subjects were health-impaired – that is, suffering from asthma or metabolic syndrome. Many were elderly, possibly as old as 75 years. “The purpose of the experiments,” noted Milloy, “was often simply to see what would happen when health-impaired people inhaled highly toxic substances.”
The experiments, which have been conducted with the assistance of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, are ongoing.

At least one study subject — a 58-year old obese woman with personal and family histories of heart disease — was hospitalized on an emergency basis as a result of the EPA experiments, according to the EPA researchers involved.

In addition to the fundamentally illegal nature of intentionally exposing human subjects to life- and health-threatening substances, none of the study subjects were informed by EPA that, according to the EPA’s own scientific assessments, the experiments could have killed them within hours of their breathing the PM2.5 or diesel exhaust. None of the study subjects were told that EPA also believes PM2.5 and diesel exhaust to be cancer-causing. EPA failed to halt the experiments or amend its consent documents after the 58-year old woman was hospitalized.

“EPA has repeatedly determined and stated that there is no safe exposure to PM2.5 or diesel exhaust,” said Milloy. “EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified to Congress in September 2011 that “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to you dying sooner than you should,” and that 25% of all deaths in the U.S. are caused by particulate matter.

“In the context of rules established after scientific horrors of World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments,” Milloy noted, “the notion that EPA would pipe high levels of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust into the lungs of unhealthy people to see what would happen is simply appalling.”
The lawsuit and documents exposing the EPA’s illegal experimentation may be found at the dedicated website, EPAHumanTesting.com.

JunkScience.com is published by Steven J. Milloy, Inc., an environmental and public health consulting firm. Mr. Milloy is a biostatistician and attorney who has been a leader in the fight against the misuse and abuse of science for more than 20 years.
Related Reading:

• Complaint in American Tradition Institute v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. District Court, Easter District of Virginia No. 1:12-cv-1066)
• Statement of ATI attorney lead counsel, David Schnare
• Guided tour of EPAHumanTesting.com

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Why is the EPA Out of Control?

By Rich Kozlovich

This link is listed in one of the posts below. However, after re-reading it I have come to the conclusion that this article is so powerful that I think it must stand alone.

Above all we need to ask this question; why does the EPA seem out of control? To understand that we must understand this comment in the article:

“House organizations—including the regulatory side of the White House Office ofn Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, or the Office of Science and Technology Policy—that should have been able to affect policy outcomes.  

The policymakers in the agencies knew that they could outlast and outmaneuver their political bosses. They were bent on creating new bureaucratic regulatory empires—with or without scientific justification—and create them they did. They were abetted by a handful of know-nothing congressional ideologues (both members and staffers) and, perhaps most important of all, by several powerful agribusiness companies that regarded excessive, expansive regulation as a convenient market-entry barrier to competitors.  

The media’s consistently lending exaggerated credibility and ink to the alarmist claims of anti-biotech activists provided further cover. (Keith Schneider, then the New York Times’ national environmental affairs reporter, was a serial offender.) The resulting stultifying regulation has inhibited research and development, particularly in public institutions, ever since.”

So why is the EPA, and all the other regulatory agencies, out of control? Because they are errantly ensconced in their positions by policy makers whose policies were in harmony with environmental activists! Their goal was bigger than mere regulations. Their goal was to fill the agencies with activists that would be there for thirty years.

The answer? Eliminate them and redo the foundational legislation that created them. Most importantly, pass new legislation that eliminates “standing” by private individuals and forbid the courts from reviewing the legislation in any form. For those who aren’t aware…..the Constitution gives the Congress the right to determine the jurisdiction of federal courts. All that it takes is guts.

Please enjoy this insightful commentary! I did!

The Use and Abuse of Science in Policymaking. 

The regulation of biotechnology provides a cautionary tale of politicized science.

By Henry I. Miller (PDF, 822K)

 

 

Booming Toilets!

By Rich Kozlovich

I came across an article linked on Steve Milloy’s site, Junkscience.com about toilets, entitled, Toilet system recalled due to explosion danger.  The article went on to say:

“Each time Stan Auerbach sits on his toilet, he worries it might explode."It's a little scary," said Auerbach, 78, of Delaware County. Auerbach has two toilets in his Garnet Valley home, and they're both outfitted with a powerful high-pressure Flushmate III system. In June, the Flushmate III was declared a "laceration risk." The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall notice for more than 2.3 million of the water-conservation devices after learning that 304 units had blown up. The explosions shattered the commodes, caused home flooding, and, in some cases, sent porcelain shrapnel flying."

This whole thing came about as a result of one EPA bureaucrat, that one lobbyist I know called ‘Toiletman’, who had an absolute passion for ….toilets….and how much water they used. I guess this was to be his claim to fame for ‘saving’ the planet.  After all, when all the big stuff is taken care of you have to find new 'crises' or you aren't needed and might have to go out and find a real job.  Now that is a 'real' crisis.  Especially for the poor businessman who hired him.

I would like to point out that we have perfectly good system that worked, really, really well on a really, really, really cheap power source - gravity!  Low pressure gravity at that.  Here's how it works.  If there is water in the tank and there is somewhere for the water to flow; it will work.

Wow...how simple can that be?  Apparently that was the problem. It was simple and it worked. Fertile ground for bureaucrats.

And of course it was sold as a consumer issue. Let's look at the tremendous cost to the consumer. The EPA estimates a family of four can save an average of $2,000 in water bills over the lifetime of the toilets. Over a life time mind you.....two thousand over a life time….wow…..two thousand over a life time…for a family of four…...there goes my retirement plan….down toilet.

Oh wait! It just dawned on me that we are only a family of two, and have been for some time. Does that save my retirement?

Then again, I did just have a thought. What if we fired all the EPA loonies?

How much less taxes would those four people in that mythical family save over a life time? I just had another thought. If we fire all these loonies and dump their loony regulations how much could I save over a lifetime then?

Especially when you consider that the cost of all these regulations runs around 1.75 trillion dollars a year, how much could that mythical family save if we cut those regulations in half….over a life time?  I would be willing to bet it would be just a tiny bit more than two thousand dollars. 

Then there is the Socialist Party in Sweden which was (maybe still is) pushing a proposal that will require men to sit down to pee.That’s going to be embarassing on the golf courses up there.   There was that loony rock star, Sheryl Crow, who wanted to make sure no one used more than one sheet of toilet paper to wipe….in order to ‘save’ the planet. And Bill Gates wants to make toilets waterless.

I just don’t understand why these lefties are so hot about toilets and what people do there.

Oh wait, I know.

We could all go back to outhouses, and chamber pots which will be dumped into containers that the ‘honeydipper’ will come along and pick up everyday (that is why they have alleys behind all the houses in the old cities by the way) but first I want to make sure this is a workable solution. Only the state of California will be required to do this...and wherever Toiletman, Bill Gates and Sheryl Crow live.

After five years we can then evaluate the outcome. So to speak.

EPA is to the Environmental Movement as Sinn Finn is to the IRA.

By Rich Kozlovich

I came across a great article by Rick Manning entitled, "What is the EPA hiding?" that I thought should be shared as a separate posting. In this article he states:

"The Environmental Protection Agency has been a lightning rod for controversy during the Obama Administration as they have pushed the applications of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to their limits in seeking to control all land use across the nation. One area that hasn’t received as much scrutiny…..is the Agency’s escalation of sue and settle cases to change the law through federal court decree operating hand in hand with radical environmentalist groups that are willing participants in the scam.

Numerous media reports have focused upon the revolving door between the EPA and various environmentalist groups with hundreds officials reportedly moving back and forth between environmental agencies and those that lobby them.....And it is these very relationships that are at the heart of the sue and settle controversy enveloping the Obama Administration. Here is how it works:

An organization sues the EPA demanding that they apply the law in a new, expanded way that increases the agency’s jurisdiction. The EPA, rather than defending the actual law, enters into a contractual relationship known as a consent decree with the party who filed the original lawsuit. A judge signs the consent decree without review, since the two disputing parties are in “agreement.” And the EPA suddenly has expanded powers to wield its enforcement cudgel against people and job creators who were previously outside their grasp.

Shockingly, U.S. taxpayers are then required, under federal law, to pay off the attorneys of the organization which engaged in this power grab"

For those who don’t remember Sinn Fein they were a political party formed in 1905 in an effort to secure Irish independence. Later they became known as the legal arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was formed as a military solution to bring about independence, including conducting guerrilla warfare, and are now considered a terrorist organization.

Is it a stretch to link the EPA with Sinn Fein? In reality there are differences, but in practical terms the answer is no. The green movement has been responsible for more death and dystopia than the IRA could have ever imposed on Ireland and England, and the EPA has been the legal arm that gave it money, support, permission and encouragement. As an afterthought; perhaps it isn't fair to compare the EPA to Sinn Finn.

The EPA is worse.


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Observations From the Back Row

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De Omnibus Dubitandum

The EPA an out of control monster
Government arrogance and pious hypocrisy reaches a new high when the sinister Environmental Protection Agency strikes out to save the children. The official position on the EPA website has one singing the Amerika version of "Don’t cry for me Argentina". EPA Proposes First Carbon Pollution Standard for Future Power Plants.

"Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies – and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow. We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids."

What is missing from this statement is that regular citizens are under direct assault from their utility companies that force "so called" Green electric generation into the mix. Soon people will be living like beggars in order to pay the overpriced schemes that impoverish the population.



The EPA with Easter Egg on Its Face
Marita Noon
During the three-day Supreme Court review of Obamacare, Justice Anthony Kennedy created news with his statement that the government has a “heavy burden of justification” to prove its case. All of America is watching and waiting for the expected June decision from the Supreme Court. The question remians: Did the Obama administration overstep its authority with its landmark healthcare legislation? But, at least in one case, we do not have to wait for a decision that the Obama administration has “overstepped its authority”—a federal judge has already handed down that decision. In this case, healthcare is not at the center of the debate; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is. The agency have been issuing regulations and finalizing rules with no “burden of justification.”

Big Green Wants a Repeal of Industrial Revolution (Part 1)
Marita Noon
Environmentalists would have everyone believe that oil, gas, and coal—all fossil fuels—are at the base of much of the world’s ills. Nuclear is no better. They even oppose hydropower, wind energy, and commercial solar. Yet, they claim the high ground and position themselves as the moral authority. What would the world look like if they were setting truly setting energy policy rather than merely influencing it? An in-depth study of environmental groups’ energy-related goals as posted on their websites’ shows that there is not an energy project they like. In short, they want to “kill,” “block,” and “deny.” The only thing they want to expand is moratoriums. If environmentalists are in charge, expect these changes to American life:

The Environmental Extremists (Part 2)
Marita Noon
So who are all these evil-appearing “environmentalists?” Should all Birkenstock wearers be suspect? What about the lady at the grocery store with the canvas sack for her purchases? There is a difference between those of us who care for the earth, want to use it wisely, and believe in recycling—and those who are in decision-making positions, setting policy and/or funding the programs. We are talking about something bigger, something organized, and something with plans greater than saving polar bears or spotted owls; something with plans to fundamentally transform the United States. There are hundreds of these groups influencing policy in America….. Columnist George Will states: “Today’s green left is the old red left revised. The left exists to enlarge the state’s supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective good. Hence the left’s hostility to markets. And to automobiles—people going wherever they want whenever they want. … The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything—carbon. Environmentalism is, as Lawson (author of An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming) writes, an unlimited ‘license to intrude.’ ‘Eco-fundamentalism,’ which is ‘the quasi-religion of green alarmism’ promises ‘global salvationism.’”

Green is Taking Us for a Ride (Part 3)
Marita Noon
The environmental movement has used “green schemes”—campaigns that changed an industry or damaged the economy for naught. Three specific schemes, with a long history available, offer a glimpse of the environmentalist’s modus operandi. It is hard to imagine a bigger failure—or a greater success. If you strive for open and honest government policy that is straight forward about its goals, the twenty-year spotted owl experiment failed. If you believe the end justifies the means, regardless of the cost in life or livelihood, then it represents a great success.

The PETA Principle
By Fred Gielow
April 15, 2006
The mainstream media, and the rest of the Left, seem to have a love affair with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and other animal-rights groups. Whenever there's a PETA campaign, or announcement, or any save-the-animal demonstration, the press covers it with enthusiasm and fawning support. Look closely, however, and very often you'll find that animal-rights advocates are – underneath their disguise – nut cases, loonies, and extremists, wildly out of step with traditional American values. But, don't take my word for it. Listen to what these animal kooks themselves say: "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth." PETA statement "I don't believe human beings have the "right to life." That's a supremacist perversion. A rat is a pig, is a dog, is a boy." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA co-founder and national director

Environmentalism secrets
By Fred Gielow
April 1, 2006
If you think environmentalism is all about saving the Earth, protecting the whales, stopping pollution, and the like, here's some news. It's not! Listen to what environmental advocates themselves have to say:
• "I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism." - Judi Bari, Earth First! member.
• "No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits... [C]limate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister.

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What Do They Think? Really!

By Rich Kozlovich

There are two issues that caused the current financial crisis. The collapes of the housing market and ....green! The housing market collapse was as a direct result of Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Greed by bankers and investors played a major role in this financial mess, but none of that could have happened without the CRA and the federal government approving the whole ugly mess. But that is only money. Green is far more than mere money. Green impacts the economy in more ways than investments ever will. Green is an insidious psuedo-pagan religious philosophy that eats away the entrails of the capitalist system. So I marvel at the positions some people take on what I consider to be a base issue of ultimate importance. Environmentalism! There is a difference between concern for the environment and environmentalism. One is normal and the other is insanity.

I have taken the liberty of organizing a few articles that outline their positions now, the position yesterday, their positions in the past, and who knows what their postions may be tomorrow. I just can't believe how people can use so many words to say nothing. Actually there is an informal logical fallacy that expains this. It is called the "if-by-whiskey fallacy". "An if-by-whiskey argument implemented through doublespeak appears to affirm both sides of an issue, and agrees with whichever side the listener supports, in effect, taking a position without taking a position. A similar idiom is "all things to all people", which is often used as a negative term in politics." It goes like this;

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

At any rate, I thought it might be useful to explore this issue. You will notice that there are many more links on Romney than the others and there is a reason for that. He is like a rubber ball on this issue; he bounces everywhere; therefore there are so many more articles dealing with him. Some of the others postions on environmentalism could be outlined in one article with two paragraphs and that would be all you would need to know their stand. That isn't typical! They are listed alphabetically and I hope chronologically. Also some of the articles linked are from green sites so be prepared.

Michele Bachmann; Herman Cain; Newt Gingrich; Ron Paul; Rick Perry; Rick Santorum.
Republican candidates (most of them anyway) unloaded on the EPA and green policies at an Iowa event over the weekend.

Michele Bachmann's environmental record
The latest Republican to seek the presidency has a clear environmental record.

Herman Cain on Environment and Energy Herman Cain is a conservative Republican candidate running to be president of the United States. AAEA will be covering the environmental and energy positions of all of the presidential candidates. AAEA stands ready to provide information on energy and environmental issues whenever Mr. Cain contacts us. He has established a Presidential Exploratory Committee. On energy, he advocates maximizing use of America's natural resources and pursuing renewable fuel

Herman Cain - Energy and the Environment
Herman Cain is a strong supporter of utilizing all available energy sources. He supports wind, solar, and nuclear energy. Mr. Cain also supports expanded drilling in all areas, including offshore and in ANWR. Mr Cain does not believe in man-made global warming. He has stated that there has been no proven that global warming is a crisis. He opposed the cap-and-trade legislation, calling it nothing more that a tax scheme.

Environment, Energy Policies for Herman Cain Based on Private Sector
Republican candidate Herman Cain's policy on energy and the environment shares a similar theme as his views on other policy issues. Primarily, less government and more private sector is the way to achieve energy independence. In the spirit of smaller government, Cain has not had much of a stance on environmental issues, other than how particular legislation is burdensome on the economy and consumers.

Ron Paul's environmental record
Ron Paul has been a vocal figure in American politics since 1977, and he has developed a lengthy record on energy and environmental policy.

Rick Perry makes a good energy plan sound bad
The biggest problem with the energy plan that Rick Perry released recently is Rick Perry himself. Like a desperate used-car salesman, he is making such outlandish claims for it that his customers might walk out before taking a good look. That, however, would be a pity, because the plan is actually better than any proposed by any president in recent memory.

Perry slashed environmental enforcement in Texas
Gov. Rick Perry likes to say the best way to promote economic growth is to reduce regulation. When it comes to the environment, Perry has made Texas one of the most industry-friendly states in the nation. Perry has cut funding for clean air programs and sued the Environmental Protection Agency to avoid enforcing laws to make the air cleaner. As part of his Republican presidential campaign, he routinely blasts the White House for tightening environmental standards.

Romney hit for hypocrisy on green energy venture capitalism
It took less time than we thought.

Romney: We need an environment for jobs
A good op-ed title that isn’t followed by thoughts worthy of it.

Obama EPA air chief was Romney’s ‘green quarterback’
“Mitt Romney remains silent as Gina McCarthy, his “green quarterback” during his days in the Massachusetts Governor’s Mansion, steers President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency toward new regulations on energy,” reports Matthew Boyle.

IBD: Romney advised by Obama science czar
“The GOP front-runner for 2012 sought advice on global warming and carbon emissions from the president’s current science czar — an advocate of de-developing America and population control.”

Romney vague, confused on environment, EPA
Why is it that Republicans can’t seem to wrap their brains around their tongues when it comes to the environment?

Romney and Obama: Carbon Copies
Check out the new Rick Perry ad which includes an audio clip and photo of Mitt Romney saying about a Massachusetts coal plant, “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant, that plant kills people.”

Romney in 2003: Coal plant ‘kills people’
If you had a problem with RomneyCare, check out Romney’s previous comments on coal.

Gingrich Explains Why He Did Global Warming Ad With Pelosi
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recently did a global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi that was sponsored by Nobel Laureate Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection (embedded right). Obviously, he has taken a lot of heat -- no pun intended -- from conservatives for not only staking out a seemingly unconservative position on this controversial issue, but doing so in such a high-profile way with the likes of Pelosi and Gore.

Gingrich’s Great Global Warming Flip-Flop: From Cap-And-Trade To Drill-Baby-Drill
Newt Gingrich really doesn’t like it when Barack Obama takes his advice. It’s not just true of intervention with Libya — it’s also the case with fighting global warming pollution. In short, Newt was for carbon cap and trade, until Obama became president:

Gingrich Campaign Spin on Global Warming PSA with Nancy Pelosi: It Wasn’t a Love-Fest, it Was a Debate
This week Newt Gingrich formally announced he’s running for president in 2012. However, when it comes to getting the conservative base on board, the campaign’s spin on his much talked about 2008 PSA with Nancy Pelosi will — not unlike trying to get Al Gore off the ground in an ultralight — never fly.

Newt Gingrich: Abolish the EPA
Appearing in the key presidential campaign state of Iowa, potential Republican candidate Newt Gingrich called for the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Newt Gingrich's environmental scorecard
Newt Gingrich may be controversial, but he's also outspoken. (So at least you know where he stands.)

Rick Santorum's environmental record
The Pennsylvania Republican is a solid pick for social conservatives, but what are his views when it comes to environmental policy?

And finally……I thought you just may be interested…..

Condoleeza Rice laments Bush rejection of Kyoto
But rejecting Kyoto was one of the few things W. did right.

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