DOGE, and The Fourth Branch, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich,  Tags: Part I, Part II

 

There a lot of kickback over the DOGE engineers being called ‘creepy 22-year-olds’, but one thing is clear.  They're brilliant!  We now know the  levels of corruption, mismanagement, and even potential treason being perpetrated by these agencies is massive, far beyond what the so-called "conspiracy theorist" were claiming, and some Democrats are demanding the Democrats in the Senate put cabinet nominees on hold until they end what they're doing........saving America.   Well, that didn't work, and the Senate Democrats looked like complete fools.  I have to wonder when I watch their disgraceful behavior just how stupid can their constituents be?

Musk's DOGE team of clearly brilliant very young people (who have no connections with those corrupting the system) are just getting started and in less than two weeks have exposed such waste and fraud it's mind boggling....... again..... this was in less than two weeks!  What will they be able to do over this next two years?   

As for those who are benefiting from the all that waste, fraud, corruption, and unnecessary, and often vile government spending they're giving Trump, Musk and his team a lot of kickback.  From this point on the position every conservative should take is to assume anyone standing against these efforts are corrupt, treasonous, and to be ignored, at least until charges are brought against them, since all this exposure may put them at risk of criminal prosecution.

Entirely too many times in the past these efforts have totally failed, and the reason why is it was aways being driven by politicians, who are always malleable.   This is the best hope for bringing our system of expenditures, a seriously flawed system under control that's been abused and totally controlled by an incompetent, corrupt, and ineffectual bureaucracy.  If this fails, America fails, it really is that simple.   Thanks to Donald Trump "the entire federal leviathan is undergoing a full MRI scan".  

I recently saw this comment on a American Thinker article:

Memo to all DEI related employees, personnel, contractors and subcontractors as well as any and other persons, departments and businesses affiliated there to:  It has been determined that you have outlived your usefulness to the organization. Effective immediately, unless and until a position becomes available for which you may be qualified, you are herewith terminated. You will receive separation compensation equal to your current pay grade and health benefits for a period not to exceed ninety days.We wish you much luck as you are most assuredly and desperately going to need it.

The only thing about that I didn't like is I didn't say it.   The federal bureaucracy is massive and expensive, spending unsustainable amounts of money for which they can't account, and that includes the Pentagon failing it's  7th audit in a row, unable to account for their spending in their $824 billion dollar budget.

They're out of control, and about 80% of them are unnecessary.  Trump gets that and has made it clear the treasonous behavior from the bureaucracy during his first administration will be exposed and acted on this time. 

The CIA interfered in the 2020 election colluding with the with Biden campaign over the Hunter Biden laptop, and it's believed that would have made a major difference, and they intended to do the same for the 2024 election.  (more here)  There are a lot of Disturbing Questions about the Intelligence Community, and why is the US Intel Community, Promoting Cross-Dressing?  Is it any wonder John Daniel Davidson says the Most Serious National Security Threat Isn’t Russian Nukes In Space, It’s Intelligence Agencies In Washington, with their scare mongering and illegal surveillance of America citizens.

The Department of Justice has done everything it can to overturn the rule of law with corrupt judges even over turning what was always considered sacrosanct in American jurisprudence, attorney client privilege.

This became DOJ's standard operating procedure:  corrupt lawfare, intimidation, and coercion, destroying the justice system’s integrity.  

That's going come to an end now as the President has a mandate to drain these "cesspools of legal corruption nationwide, and we're already seeing the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, in action.   Beege Welborn says he's gonna have to get a nitro prescription or something saying his heart can't take much more. Why? 

He says  Bondi was confirmed at 12:00, sworn in by Clearance Thomas at 12:30, and unleashed hell at 12:40.  No President has ever done so much in such a short time frame, or ever done it over a very wide range, and he's picked people who are on board with his views and came armed to the teeth to act on his vision. She's going to take a  "legal scalpel and cut out the cancer at the DOJ.

Matthew G. Andersson asks do we have two legal systems, two governments, two countries? Yes, we did, and he says these who defiled American justice have no intention of going quietly into the night:

The Democrat party is committed to corrupting that legal system to block and subvert the will of the American people and their chosen government. That has a new form: the DNC has established and financed its “Democracy Forward” program, announced in the New York Times (“Democrats Draw Up an Entirely New Anti-Trump Battle Plan”). Their fantasy appears to be a subversive “second” government. This DNC program has hired eight hundred lawyers, with more to come, creating a “lawfare army” and taking this operation from the White House, to DNC controlled governorships.

They just have no idea who they're dealing with.  Trump is past caring, and he will be going all out to crush them, and he's going to win.  

This ends Part III, but I have huge files on all this, especially the FBI, so more parts will follow.

The FTC Takes Its Turn To Feel The Regulator's Exhilaration

April 25, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

 It’s hard to imagine any job more excruciatingly dull than that of the Washington regulator. You beaver away for months on end generating 300 or 500 page documents justifying the latest the latest agency finaglings, all of which text needs to be cleared with scores of co-participants via endless meetings and by repeated circulation of marked-up drafts that draw hundreds of inconsistent edits from self-important functionaries. Ugh!

But then, into this miasma of infinite boredom, from time to time, there intrudes a frisson of great excitement. This happens when the agency decides to seize control and transform a large swath of the economy by its own edict. New people have arrived with a mission to save the world. Ancient statutes are re-analyzed, and vast new powers magically uncovered. The transformative edict goes out. The sense of exhilaration is overwhelming. Finally the evil corporate interests will be brought to heel. Wow, are we important people here! So what if we weren’t elected and have no legislative powers under the Constitution? This project is way too important to yield to such minor quibbles. And anyway, who’s going to stop us?

During the Biden years, most of this regulatory exhilaration has been reserved for the environmental bureaucracies that have been ordering up the transformation of the energy economy. But other bureaucracies are not about to let themselves get relegated to boring irrelevancy. They have a compelling institutional need to seize the moment.

The latest agency to make its grab for the excitement of the limelight is the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). On Tuesday the FTC announced the issuance of a Final Rule to ban what is known as “non-compete” agreements throughout the economy. According to the FTC’s Rule document (which is 570 pages long), the Rule takes effect in 120 days, which would mean August. The Rule does not just ban non-compete agreements going forward, but also purports to make existing non-compete agreements unenforceable, except for those involving a handful of the most senior executives.

Non-compete agreements have been a fixture of the American corporate world for many decades, undoubtedly well more than a century for at least some of them. They are agreements between employer and employee under which the employee agrees not to work for a competitor of the employer upon departure from employment. They come in near infinite variations of terms and conditions, on such things as how long the non-compete restriction persists, whether it only persists as long as the employer is paying severance, the geographic scope of the restriction, and many other things.

Prior to now, non-compete agreements have been heavily regulated, but only at the state level. The large majority of the states allow non-competes in many to most circumstances, but universally there are severe limits on what is allowed. Although many states have statutes regulating some or many aspects of non-competes, most of the rules have been developed via the common law, that is, via case by case adjudication in courts of the reasonableness of different sorts of non-compete agreements in different circumstances. 

This is one of the areas that I practiced in during my legal career, and I know a lot about it. No two states have identical rules, but there are many common themes that run through the approaches taken by the different states. For example, all states that allow non-competes at all place limits of “reasonableness” on the length of non-competes that will be allowed, with maximum allowable periods ranging from as short as a few months to as long as three years in special circumstances (and even unlimited time periods in the case of non-competes associated with sale of a business). 

Shorter allowed periods are the rule for lower-level employees, while longer allowed periods often apply to higher-level employees, particularly when there is compensation that is specifically tied to the non-compete. Some states follow the “blue pencil” rule, where a court that finds a non-compete unreasonable will modify it to be reasonable; while other states follow the rule that any non-compete found unreasonable will be stricken entirely, thus incentivizing employers not to overreach.

A handful of states by statute have disallowed non-competes in all or almost all circumstances. California has had such a rule since 1872 (in other words, it’s not just part of the current progressive craziness). Other states that mostly ban all non-competes include Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

So here we have a detailed body of state law, developed over a period of a century and more, with careful consideration by thousands of state legislators and judges of rules appropriate to infinitely varied factual circumstances. And now today, the FTC has decided to step in with its big foot and just outlaw all of it at the federal level.

So what has changed suddenly to make this a matter of urgent federal interest? Perhaps there might be a new statute enacted by Congress?

Not at all. The FTC claims to find its authority for the new Rule in Section 5 of the FTC Act. That statute was enacted in 1914, the time when the agency was created during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Indeed the creation of the FTC was a signature achievement of Wilson in his effort to “modernize” the federal government to enable replacement of the constitutional balance-of-powers order with rule by “expert” bureaucracies. The wording of the statute has not changed in the intervening 110 years. Here is the relevant text of Section 5:

Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

Has anything happened in the last 110 years to make non-competes any more “unfair” than they were back in 1914? Of course not. Indeed, up until now Section 5 has been thought to relate to the FTC’s mission as an enforcer of anti-trust law, rather than granting it infinite authority to micro-manage anything that might be “unfair” in the entire economy. But the current Democratic FTC commissioners, and particularly the Chair (Lina Khan), do not like non-competes and think that they can get away with this gigantic power grab. They claim to rely on some “new research” that, they say, shows that non-competes harm employees throughout the economy, even those not subject to them. Sure. Really, what they want is that regulator’s exhilaration. And they are not going to be denied.

The FTC’s action is on absurdly shaky legal ground. Yesterday — one day after the FTC’s announcement of its Final Rule — business groups including the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable had already filed lawsuits to have the Rule overturned. I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court will allow this kind of naked power grab by a regulatory agency, purportedly under a 110 year old statute that doesn’t mention anything about the entire area of law suddenly being pre-empted. 

But while we wait a few years for the case to reach that forum, there are tens of thousands of businesses that have negotiated and paid for non-competes that are suddenly illegal, at least for now; and the FTC will have the sadistic fun of watching those businesses squirm. It can be so much fun to be a regulator. When the Rule gets overturned a few years from now, no FTC commissioner or other employee involved in this gambit will face any consequences.

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, the environmental regulators are out showing the pipsqueak FTC who the real big fish are in this pond. Just today, EPA finalized a rule requiring coal power plants to cut emissions by 90% by 2039 or else close. That could only conceivably be done with carbon capture technology that does not exist today in any form that can be deployed economically. And yesterday, the White House announced a national goal to cut emissions from freight shipping down to zero by 2050. Electrify all trucks, freight trains, and ocean shipping — nothing to it! It’s complete fantasy, but oh what exhilaration you can feel as a regulator announcing such edicts.

The Federal Government Is an Ever-Growing, Out-of-Control Monster

Jeff Davidson  Nov 12, 2023

Believe it or not, the federal debt during the time of President Ronald Reagan was $1 trillion. By 2020, it had grown to $30 trillion. Then, in less than three years, Joe Biden has increased the debt by another $2.5 trillion. Our total debt is now more than 75 times that of 1920. As the government grows irrevocably, our individual liberties suffer. More legislation and regulation, and more of everything, hampers the ability of citizens to live their lives freely. The far-Left Biden Administration is well aware of this.............Unimaginably, a staggering 500 federal agencies currently operate with almost no oversight. They procure items that our nation cannot afford, launch studies that are marginal at best, and manipulate the government in ways that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen. .................... 

What about the debt on these expenditures and the rising federal deficit itself? Accumulating debt costs money, and federal debt interest is paid to countries such as China and Japan. Since Biden was installed, the nation's annual interest on our accumulated debt now stands at $663 billion, projected to rise to $745 billion in 2024 and $1.4 trillion in 2033. This is not mere fiscal irresponsibility; it is insanity. .......... we are approaching one federal employee for every 100 citizens as if anybody in the 50 states ever needed such bureaucracy. And those figures do not include government contractors........To Read More...

• The FBI -- the Dog That Turned on Its Master - January 12, 2024 By John Green - Feedback is a fundamental principle of control theory. All systems, regardless of whether they’re technical or social, require negative feedback to maintain predictability and stability. System actions which deviate from those desired must trigger a response which counteracts (rather than reinforces) the deviation. When an automobile begins to accelerate, the cruise control applies negative feedback by reducing the throttle to maintain control. Were it to do otherwise, the car’s behavior would be unpredictable or even catastrophic...............In 2023, Director Christopher Wray was called before Congress to account for his vicious pack of attack dogs prowling the streets with impunity. Wray simply
  
• Lied, as he did with his Seth Rich testimony;
• Obfuscated with “I don’t know” or “part of an ongoing investigation”; or
• Ducked questioning entirely by leaving for vacation.

His behavior was the alpha dog, snarling at his owner, and daring him to take a swing with the rolled-up newspaper. It was a stark demonstration that our “watchdog” has learned that disobedience to its master is of no consequence.

 

‘If You’re a Hammer…’

January 11, 2024 By Paul E. Scates

 

 Decades ago, as a pipefitter and welder in nuclear plant construction, I worked alongside many of the local union’s plumbers (the skill sets overlap).  It’ll probably come as a surprise to most that plumbers actually hold their profession in high regard................So it should come as no surprise to us that people who work in government typically believe their work is important.  The old saying, “The government ought to do something” seems to be the motivating mantra for government workers generally, and boy, are they “doing something.”..................

 

In a recent essay for The American Spectator, I wrote about the “Unconstitutionality Index,” a concept devised by Forbes magazine contributor Clyde Crews, Jr., which revealed that the 2020 Congress passed 177 laws, while unelected federal bureaucrats issued 3,038 rules or regulations.  (I was shocked that Congress had passed so few laws, since they insist on butting into citizens’ everyday lives, but then I found that for the past five decades they’ve been passing legislation at a 503 bills-per-year average, so I guess they’re running out of things to legislate!)

But over 3,000 rules/regulations in one year?  Surely that’s an outlier; I wouldn’t think there would be that many more things left to regulate.  Wrong… bigly (in current parlance).  From 2009 to the end of 2022, federal agencies imposed a total of 49,315 rules and regulations on the American people, averaging 3,522 new rules per year!  It’s apparently not just the ATF or FBI that have run amok.............To Read More....

Appeals court finds CFPB funding unconstitutional

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case brought by a payday lending group against the CFPB's 2017 payday lending rule.

 

By Katy O'Donnel 10/19/2022 

An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism is unconstitutional, in a victory for lenders that have targeted the agency’s structure in a years-long bid to tamp down regulation.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the design of the CFPB violated the Constitution because it receives funding through the Federal Reserve, rather than appropriations legislation passed by Congress. Democrats established the structure when they created the CFPB in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law as a way to shield the bureau from political pressures that could impact its oversight of the finance industry............“Congress’s decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers,” the judges wrote...........The Supreme Court in 2020 ruled that another provision of the agency’s structure — a single director who could only be fired for cause, rather than at will, by the president — violated the Constitution’s separation of powers............To Read More....

People Will Always be People: Why is That So Hard to Get?

By Rich Kozlovich

On August 30, 2022 Craig Bannister posted this piece, Actor James Woods Slams CDC Speech Police: ‘You Nitwits Don’t Have Better Things to Do in the Middle of a Pandemic??!!’.  So what prompted this outburst?

The CDC asked Americans “Are you using #inclusive language” and directed them to a CDC.gov webpage titled, “Preferred Terms for Select Population Groups & Communities.”

All in the middle of the crisis they created.  It’s not surprising he called them nitwits.  Think about these silly little issues facing the nation:

• When you defund the police, crime rises.
• When you spend like crazy, inflation soars.
• When you pay people not to work, unemployment goes up.
• When you open the border, illegal immigration increases.
• When you rely on the Taliban, Afghanistan falls.

And the CDC is worried about the sensitivity of snowflakes?  Some of words the CDC wants shunned, and their CDC-approved substitutes, include:

• Replace “inmate” with “People/Persons who are incarcerated or detained,”
• Replace “Convict/Ex-Convict” with “People who were formerly incarcerated,”
• Replace “Drug-Users” with “Persons who use drugs/people who inject drugs,”
• Replace “Alcoholics” with “Persons with Alcohol use disorder,”
• Replace “Homeless people/The Homeless” with ‘Persons experiencing unstable housing/housing insecurity/persons who are not securely housed,”
• Replace “The poor/Poor people” with “People who self-reported income in the lowest income bracket (if income brackets are defined),”
• Replace “High-risk population” with “People who live/work in setting that put them at increased/higher risk of becoming infected or exposed to hazards,”
• Replace gendered pronouns (He or She) with “they or their”

And now these "nitwits" are asking the justice department to appeal the ruling from a federal judge the masking requirement by the CDC is beyond their constitutional authority. It's time to purge these agencies and eliminate a lot of them. It's either the Constitution is the law that governs the law, or it's the Fourth Branch of government not listed in the Constitution. The bureaucracy.

Agency accused of confiscating property and keeping it

By Bob Unruh August 7, 2021 

The Environmental Protection Agency has been sued for taking over property adjacent to the 2015 Gold King Mine catastrophe in Colorado to stage cleanup equipment and projects, and keeping it, never paying for it or even for renting it.  The case seeks millions of dollars in damages and has been submitted to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of landowner Todd Hennis............

In response to the disaster, Ennis gave verbal permission for the EPA to temporarily use a part of his property, adjacent to mine, "for an emergency staging area for equipment and supplies."  But, "rather than thank Mr. Hennis for his quick cooperation and compensate him for the use of his land, EPA took advantage of him. Without so much as a phone call or email to Mr. Hennis, EPA constructed a $2.3 million dollar water treatment facility on a concrete slab on Hennis’s property. Worse yet, EPA has repeatedly refused—across three presidential administrations—to pay him anything for the privilege," the legal team explained..........

"Adding insult to injury, the government has threatened Mr. Hennis with soul-crushing civil penalties should he attempt to exercise his constitutional rights to exclude EPA from his property. When Mr. Hennis refused to sign an eight-year 'Consent for Access to Property' that would have paid him nothing, EPA issued a civil enforcement action against him. The agency has threatened that he will be subject to penalties of up to $59,017 per day for any period of time during which EPA believes he is not complying with its demands," the NCLA explained...........To Read More...

 

EPA’s Totalitarian Frontal Assault on America

Duggan Flanakin

Biden-Harris Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan is clearly on a mission. He has “bold aspirations, and a long to-do list,” says The Washington Post. But to succeed, the Post acknowledges, he must “help the EPA get its groove back.” As Reagan put it, “We’ve got a lot of work to do, starting with rebuilding staff morale and getting all our staff back to feeling as if they matter, their voices matter.” 

Regan says his job is “to restore the scientific integrity and the utilization of data, of facts, as we move forward, and make some very important decisions.” His second goal is to increase “cooperation” between the EPA and its “subordinate” state environmental agencies. EPA will dictate; states will fall in line. 

A big step toward that goal was extending a Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA, the Environmental Council of the States, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. According to Regan, “EPA is committed to building on the values of transparency, respect, and an open dialogue that are the cornerstone of a successful partnership with the states.” As EPA defines the terms.

An Obama-appointed federal judge just restored the EPA’s use of “secret science” in formulating regulations that businesses and industries must follow just because the EPA says so – with “scientific evidence” that cannot be cross-examined. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris (in Great Falls, Montana) took just hours before vacating the Trump EPA rule that would have ended this Star Chamber style rule. 

For decades, the EPA relied on unreviewable studies to impose draconian restrictions on businesses and industries, and thus on the U.S. economy. Trump wanted to bring true transparency to the process. Opponents claimed the Trump secret science” rule would block the use of critical public health studies kept secret supposedly to protect the identities of trial participants – which of course was not the case. 

As Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained, the “secret science” rule in no way blocked previous “secret” studies; rather, it created tiers in which preference is given to studies with public data. Peer reviewers looking at a study’s raw data did not need to know any of the subject’s names, so no patient confidentiality was at risk. Moreover, in most cases, a review of basic methods, statistics and results is sufficient to determine if they actually support the study’s conclusion. Wheeler also noted: 

“Too often Congress shirks its responsibility and defers important decisions to regulatory agencies. These regulators then invoke science to justify their actions, often without letting the public study the underlying data. Part of transparency is making sure the public knows what the agency bases its decisions on.”

Now the Biden-Harris EPA has revived its old policy based on a failed 2015 (Obama-Biden) rulemaking that twists the Clean Air Act language in an effort to destroy auto racing as a sport in the USA. 

The EPA claims modifying a vehicle previously certified for street driving for use as a competition-only racecar is unlawful even for vehicles that are trailered and never driven on public roads again. This policy seeks to end a 50-year-old American tradition. It has no precedent; even California exempts racing vehicles from regulation. 

Not only does the EPA claim it is illegal to convert a vehicle for racing by modifying its emission system; it claims manufacturing, selling or installing race parts for such vehicles is likewise unlawful. It’s even said enforcement actions against high performance parts – including superchargers, tuners and exhaust systems – will now be a top priority. 

This policy constitutes a direct assault on the nation’s 1,300 racetracks, tens of thousands of participants and vehicle owners, and millions of racing fans nationwide. It is also a death blow to retail sales of racing products, a $2 billion a year industry. The move appears to be part of the Obama-Biden-Harris EPA strategy to rid the planet (or at least the USA) of internal combustion engines by taking away the romance of the racecar. 

To try to thwart this EPA power grab, the Specialty Equipment Market Association has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in a lawsuit filed by Gear Box Z, Inc. challenging the racecar conversion ban. The industry group is also supporting the Recognizing the Protection of Motorsports Act (RPM Act), which reaffirms the legality of converting street vehicles into race-only vehicles and confirms the legitimacy of producing, marketing and installing racing equipment. 

They should prevail. But with today’s courts, do even the most specific laws still matter?

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial says the Biden-Harris EPA has a secret plan to force massive CO2 emissions reductions under the Clean Air Act, using ozone as its vehicle of choice. “Plan B” is the fallback strategy to be implemented once it is clear that even the Democrat-controlled Congress will not enact economy-killing anti-fossil fuel legislation. The ultimate goal is total fossil fuel eradication. 

Under Plan B, EPA will reset the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone to zero – way below natural levels that Mother Nature herself emits! The “science” is based on a questionable 2017 study from Harvard’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health, which claims there is no safe level of ozone in the atmosphere. How do you prosecute Mother Nature? 

Plan B responds to the failure of the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. It reflects former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s blunt admission that it is technically infeasible and even legally questionable to regulate CO2 as a “criteria pollutant” under the Clean Air Act. 

The simple reasons are fundamental. CO2 is what humans and animals exhale. It is what plants inhale to support photosynthesis and produce the oxygen that most life on Planet Earth requires to exist. It does not cause asthma or other diseases. CO2 emissions generated in a locality cannot be measured reliably and certainly cannot be reduced within the 10-year timetable for criteria pollutants. CO2 is not a pollutant. 

Using ozone and the NAAQS to regulate CO2 is reportedly the brainchild of Joe Goffman, whom the Biden-Harris Administration has installed as principal deputy assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Goffman, a chief architect of the Obama era Clean Power Plan, is known as EPA’s “law whisperer.” His specialty is “teaching old laws to do new tricks.” 

Goffman’s plan was jump-started on January 19, 2021, when 16 Democratic state attorneys-general filed a legal challenge to the EPA’s recently reauthorized ozone NAAQS. Their one-paragraph sue-and-settle lawsuit claims the standards are “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious and therefore must be vacated.” 

The Trump EPA in December 2020 had retained the ozone NAAQS at levels set in 2015 by the Obama-Biden Administration. That action marked only the second time since the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted that EPA completed its ozone NAAQS review within the mandatory 5-year timeframe. 

As the Wall Street Journal explains, Democratic AGs, green groups and top Biden environmental regulators intend to impose the Green New Deal on states through backdoor regulations, because they know they can’t get it through the front door of Congress, even this sycophantic Congress. 

Under this nefarious scheme – which could be imposed this year without any “open dialogue” in Congress – every state would be forever out of compliance, JunkScience.com director Steve Milloy emphasizes. It is simply impossible to eliminate natural background levels of ozone. But this action would give EPA effective and arbitrary control over the entire economy, especially fossil fuel use.

Giving unelected bureaucrats and a like-minded political cabal “effective and arbitrary control” over the entire U.S. economy creates a dictatorship of faceless and nameless totalitarians whose diktats the political class can claim they are powerless to upend. This is where America is headed, unless we stop these power-crazed autocrats.

The Drive to Tame the ‘Administrative State’

by Brendan Kirby March 13, 2019

While Senate Democrats and much of the public have spent the past two Supreme Court confirmation battles obsessing over abortion, judicial conservatives quietly have been laying the groundwork for an assault on the “administrative state.” That is the buzz phrase to describe the nameless and faceless bureaucracy responsible for most of the rules that now govern America.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch went out of his way as an appeals court judge to call attention to the issue, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh has given indications that he, too, is willing to re-examine court precedents that have helped grow the power of unelected bureaucrats.

With those two nominees of President Donald Trump now on the nation’s highest court, American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison believes there now is a majority in place to begin reversing 3½ decades of jurisprudence on the issue. And he describes the stakes as nothing less than the future of American democracy.

“There will be a time when the American people realize that they are not actually in charge,” Wallison told a group of conservative lawyers in Mobile, Alabama, recently...........To Read More....

Dismantling America’s Destructive ‘Fourth Branch’ of Government

By David S. D'Amato March 9, 2017

Every American learns in grade school of the three-part structure of the U.S. government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. In The Federalist Papers, No. 47, James Madison, called by many the “father of the Constitution,” remarked the accumulation of these powers in the hands of one party “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The Constitution -- at least, in theory -- forbids any one of the three branches from delegating its powers or duties to another branch.

But the Constitution has effectively been amended, albeit quite outside of the prescribed process. Today, a fourth branch of government, nowhere authorized in the Constitution, has, as legal scholar Philip Hamburger observes, “transformed American government and society” and “become the government’s primary mode of controlling Americans.” ..........The rule thus perverts the constitutional order by allowing the federal government to interpret the meaning of the law for itself, without any material check on its interpretations and, therefore, its power. Such total deference fundamentally undermines the vision of the federal government reflected in the Constitution..............

 Left free to police itself, the federal bureaucracy has naturally arrogated to itself more power and discretion, its regulatory reach stretching into almost every area of life. It has acted in accordance with its nature. The administrative state is at base the embodiment of ruling-class condescension, contemptuous of its benighted wards and their efforts at self-organization.......an undemocratic, illiberal society, suffocated under the rules of faraway bureaucrats accountable to no one....... Read more

My Take - I keep hearing judges deferring to agencies with the excuse - judges aren't scientists.  Well, if they feel unqualified to make the decision that needs to be made they should be deferring these cases to the Congress, and let them hassle it out.  But that's not what judges do.  It's what they're supposed to do but they've now become too self absorbed, too arrogant, foolishly believing their views should be law, not the views of the Congress or the President of the United States, even when the law specifically gives them that authority.  The courts need purged, and these agencies need to be eliminated....now!

Outrage of the Day

______

Gibson Guitar CEO strikes back

Henry Juszkiewicz once again blasts feds 'violent, hostile' raids - Late in the same day that Department of Justice announced they had reached a settlement with Gibson Guitars, in which Gibson acknowledged illegally importing environmentally endangered woods, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz struck a defiant tone as he continued to criticize government actions.

“We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve,” he said in statement released via the company’s @gibsonguitar Twitter account late Monday.

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact (by) a caring human being representing the government,” the statement said. “Instead, the Government used violent and hostile means with the full force of the U.S. Government and several armed law enforcement agencies costing the taxpayers millions of dollars and putting a job creating U.S. manufacture (sic) at risk and at an unfair disadvantage.”……. Gibson must pay a $300,000 penalty within 10 days, but the company won’t face any further sanctions by the federal government as long as it complies with an 18-month criminal enforcement agreement.  In addition, the guitar maker must pay $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation to promote conservation of protected woods used in the manufacture of musical instruments.

What an outrage!  I would like lay some foundation on this subject. I posted this on May 15, 2012.  RK

Congress Looks to Rewrite Act That Led to Gibson Guitar Raid
by Audrey Hudson
Lawmakers are reviewing legislation to amend a century-old law that led to a raid by armed federal agents at the Gibson Guitar Company in August 2011 at its Nashville and Memphis factories and, in a separate case, to the imprisonment of two Americans for importing improperly packaged lobsters,,,,, “How can this possibly be constitutional?” …..Federal agents confiscated a half-million dollars worth of property from Gibson Guitar in the August raid, including guitars and computers. The company did not import banned wood products, but is accused of violating a law in India that requires the wood product be finished by workers in that country before it can be exported. …Abner Schoenwetter and David McNab spent six years in federal prison, accused of violating Honduran fishing regulations. The lobsters they received should have been shipped in plastic, rather than cardboard, boxes…. [this] is a frightening example of over-criminalization. ….U.S. importers have been turned into policemen, who are responsible for knowing a myriad of foreign laws that are simply impossible to keep track of,”

Is this any different than the EPA's attempt to destroy the Sacketts property rights?  Notice the same pattern. It simply costs too much to defend your rights and in turn your rights are in the hands of bureaucrats with unlimited power and money. The Fourth Branch of Government! We have lost our minds and are about to lose everything else!  RK

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..... This ruling handles the surface issue but this goes far deeper than the surface issue. RK

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It Really is About the Basics!

By Rich Kozlovich

As those who work in highly regulated industries can tell you....the bureaucrats are all about the process....not the outcome....and that process is maddening.  The higher you go with any bureaucratic structure; the more maddening it becomes. Why? Because those at the very top are completely unaware about how the businesses they are regulating work.  They have never worked in those businesses; they have never run those businesses; they have never asked what those who actuallly know about those businesses think about their rules and whether they are worthwhile or not.

In the pest control industry we have state regulators that are far more intimate about the details of our work than those at EPA making the rules.  They make rules seem almost irrational.  For example; recently the EPA changed the rules regarding the use of pyrethroids in structural pest control. They are limiting the amount of material and how it is to be applied to a structure in order to make sure there is as little run off as possible.

On the surface that may seem reasonable, except those same regulations allow me to treat a home two feet up and ten feet out from the foundation in a continuous band. And they are worried some small amount of material that will come off the house when it rains! Where is it going to go? Right into the area treated around the house......where I was already allowed to treat up to ten feet away and two feet up from the foundation...in a continuous band.

We have to understand....we have now turned over all authority and power to the Fourth Branch of Government.....the bureaucracy. An unaccountable absolute authority that is filled the people who went to college and into government and believe that government is the be all and end all.   Mussolini stated that "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State", and the world ultimately went to war because of it. Mussolini won! Below are some examples of the folly of big government, big budgets, big taxes and stupid political leaders and their lackeys.

• French Taxing, Italian Regulating, Greek Mooching, and IMF Economic Illiteracy - Daniel J. Mitchell - Every day brings more and more evidence that Obamanomics is failing in Europe. I wrote some “Observations on the European Farce” last week, but the news this morning is even more surreal. Compared to his foolishness on tax policy, Hollande is a genius when it comes to determining what time it is. Let’s start with France, where I endorsed the explicit socialist over the implicit socialist precisely because of a morbid desire to see a nation commit faster economic suicide. Well, Monsieur Hollande isn’t disappointing me. Let’s look at some of his new initiatives, as reported by Tax-News.com.
• Supposedly Bankrupt Greek Government to Reward Pedophiles with Disability Payments (January 2010) - By Dan Mitchell - I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I write about insanely stupid government policies. But I know I get more motivated to fight big government. How can anyone want to give more money and power to politicians, for instance, after reading these comparisons of dumb government policy in the United States and United Kingdom? Or how can anyone think it’s a good idea to expand the public sector after reading these examples of bureaucratic incompetence?
• I Always Suspected Greek Bureaucrats Were Useless Pieces of S**t, but even I’m Surprised to Learn that They’re Actually Collecting the Stuff - February 24, 2012 by Dan Mitchell - I’ve been having fun in recent months by comparing some of the foolish decisions of politicians and bureaucrats in the United States and United Kingdom. Here’s part of what I wrote in early January………But I think I understated the problem. Brainless policy choices are probably the inevitable result of having so many bureaucrats that they resort to asking for stool samples to justify their pointless and empty lives.

The Fourth Branch

By Rich Kozlovich

Paradigms are defined in following manner.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

In short; it is how we look at the world. How we perceive reality. It is the basis of how we judge our actions and the actions of others.

Fully 25 percent of all federal regulations that have been passed involve environmental issues and EPA has only been in existence since 1970. Since that time we have a plethora of regulatory bodies at the state level to meet the minimum federal standards and in some states, like California, they go way beyond federal standards, and the Federal Registry increased from 62,000 pages to 75,000 pages in one three year period. President G.W. Bush passed more federal regulations than any president since Richard Nixon; and Nixon created, among other things, the EPA and OSHA.

Now we have a host of federal and state agencies, along with researchers and their universities imposing their views on society without regard to the impact of their actions. Yet we have to ask; what terrible thing happened to impose these kinds of costs and to give state and federal bureaucrats the authority to overturn the protections under the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure and self-incrimination under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

I did the research and found that this was fought up to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and it was decided that in these cases state and federal bureaucrats, and their regulations, usurp the protections “guaranteed” by the Constitution. What regulation passed by any regulator to make society safer was not already covered under criminal and civil penalties of state or federal law?

Why is it when you ask everyone if they think it is okay that they say, for the most part; yes it is necessary. Environmental paradigms have become everything! It started with Rachel Carson when she wrote Silent Spring in 1962. Her book, which was lauded and continues to be lauded, launched the modern environmental movement. Yet, almost everything she touted in her book was conjecture, prediction or lies.

Her book was never peer reviewed because it didn’t start out as a published book. I started out as excerpted installments in New Yorker magazine. That presentation was so popular the book followed, and when you read her work you can understand why.  She was a magnificent writer. I have been re-reading Silent Spring and I am now amazed at how poor her science was, in spite of the fact that her acolytes praise her as a scientist unendingly.

Her work was not science because it hadn’t been peer reviewed before publication. When it was, after the fact, it was discovered that everything she predicted failed to come true and in at least one case she knowingly and deliberately misrepresented the facts. Her book is full of anecdotal evidence (stories), which may or may not have been true, but there was no way to check it because she didn’t footnote source information for these stories. That isn’t science! She became the Mother Superior of the green movement, but in reality she was the mother of junk science.

Ultimately, this book was the justification for the formation of EPA by Richard Nixon, with the primary purpose of eliminating DDT. Everything you know about DDT is a lie. Yet the regulations and impositions continue! Now we have Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) imposing their will and jumping on the “funding” bandwagon.

In 1790 the fledgling U.S. Federal government passed the Whiskey Tax. The result was that in 1792 they had armed rebellion that President George Washington had to put down with the Federal army. Who were the biggest supporters of this bill? The whiskey distillers in the large cities! Why? Because this would give them the competitive edge they needed over the backwoods farmers who made moonshine, which was easier to transport into the towns than corn was. Far more profitable too!

Apparently having all these government imposed regulators and regulatory agencies aren’t enough to satisfy large industry. We now have regulators for hire who are just like bureaucrats; they need activity to give the impression of accomplishment. And what is the only activity we can expect from a regulator? More regulations! And more regulations and taxes put the largest companies in a position that will allow them to avoid real competition.

 Just as was the case with the Whiskey Act. Large companies and corporation love regulations and taxes. That is why they support all sorts of greenie nonsense because they believe they will profit from it and believe they will still survive, even if it is in some other form. But what about the consequences to society for adopting regulations that will restrict pesticides and pesticides applications to humanities detriment? That is the problem. These people never have to pay the consequences for their actions.

In order to generate some heterodoxy, I have four questions I would like to ask.

1. What terrible event or series of terrible events took place that would justify a SCOTUS decision that would give bureaucrats and government agencies the right to ignore the rights guaranteed under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution against illegal search and seizure and self incrimination?
2. What civil and criminal penalties in state and federal pesticide laws administrated by state and federal agencies were not already covered under criminal and civil law?
3. Have we been lied to regarding the need for all these regulations?
4. Will there ever be enough regulations?

The United States Constitution created three branches of government consisting of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches. The result of all of these regulations is that there are now actually four branches of the United States government; now we have the Bureaucracy.  After the laws are passed these people are the ones who make the rules, they change the rules, they make all the decisions as to how the laws that are passed are to be interpreted; and without consequence. Why? They never have to answer for their actions.

They were not chosen by the people; they went to college, took a test and got hired. Most of them never have done anything except go to school and go into government, which we call “public service”!

How is it that those who create jobs, meet the payrolls and create the economy that we all enjoy aren’t considered public servants, but those who do nothing except undermine those who do are?

Why in the world would we think these people could possibly have any special insights as to how the economy or anything else should work? I find it interesting that in 1900 “government spending at all levels (local, state, and federal) represented 7.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Out of that amount 66 percent occurred at the local and state levels. Local government spent 55 percent, state government spent 11 percent, and the federal government spent the remaining 34 percent.”

Did it occur to anyone to ask; do we really need all these rules and regulations? Did it occur to anyone to ask; what would happen if these bureaucracies were eliminated and these people were fired?

 Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!

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