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EPA - EXTREMELY PERNICIOUS AGENCY

Pernicious

Pernicious: Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way.

Safe to say, no one anticipated what the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] would grow into when it was created in 1970. Its first year budget of 1 billion dollars including set up costs was substantial. After some 40 years,the budgets total in excess of 266 billion dollars, all paid for by the taxpayer. In that time, the agency has gone more than quadrupled its employees, going from, 4,000 to 17,000.

That is what bureaucracies do: metastasize. In the private sector, one who does the job for less than the budgeted amount is rewarded. In the government, incentives are all the wrong way. To get ahead, one must increase budget and personnel. I witnessed first hand people in the Department of Justice, 6 weeks before the end of the fiscal year, frantically looking for projects to fund lest they go before Congress with surplus money. How could they then ask for more?

I was reminded by an unlikely source.of another factor in the equation. In a recent trip to Greece, our guide was lamenting about Greece's terrible economic situation. She complained that they had added jobs but they were "government jobs" which she complained "produce nothing."

While producing nothing, the EPA accomplished a mind-boggling feat. From January 2009, when President Obama took office, to mid-2014, the EPA issued 2,827 new final regulations, taking up 24,915 pages in the Federal Register, totaling an estimated 24,915,000 words, about 19 times as many pages and 38 times as many words as the Gutenbeg Bible and 5,484 times as many words as the U.S. Constitution, needless to say, without the wisdom of either of those two works. The Wall Street Journal concluded the EPA "turned a regulatory fire hose on U.S. business."

Ramirez ingeniously captured the thought.

Congressional Abdication

We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing our elected representatives to neglect their constitutional duties. Christopher Demuth Sr., former president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) :

“Congress itself, despite its complaints about executive and judicial poaching, has been giving up its constitutional powers voluntarily and proactively for decades. Since the early 1970s, Congress has delegated broad lawmaking authority to a proliferating array of regulatory agencies, from EPA and OSHA in the early years to numerous executive councils, boards, and bureaus under Obamacare and Dodd-Frank in 2010. In the new dispensation, members of Congress vote bravely for clean air, affordable health care, and sound finance, while leaving the real policy decisions to executive agencies. In recent years, Congress has even handed off its constitutional crown jewels—its exclusive powers, assigned in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, to determine federal taxing and spending. ”

The EPA was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress.

United States Environmental Protection Agency - Wikipedia

The problem with the EPA and with other regulatory agencies is that Congress's abdication of its responsibility has resulted in non-elected political appointees making "regulations" which substantially affect our rights and which could not be passed legislatively.

Ramirez on point again:

Climate Change

The EPA's growth ambitions received a huge boost with "climate change."

Remember, in the 1970s, we were warned about "global cooling" and told that meteorologists were

"almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." The author of the Newsweek article now refutes the conclusion but states "It was accurate at the time."

When facts demonstrated that the global cooling predictions were false, we were told the problem was "global warming": the ice caps would melt causing floods throughout the world. Again the predictions proved false.

Then the term became "climate change" - that would fit whatever weather we were having.

Some claimed the term was to insulate the global warming adherents from ridicule whenever wintry weather occurred. "Climate change" was more "politically palatable."

Some make a distinction: global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect. https://pmm.nasa.gov/education/articles/whats-name-global-warming-vs-climate-change

But the theme became "climate change" where any eventuality was "proof" it was occurring. The EPA flourished. And Obama's presidency saw the EPA regulation explosion mentioned above.

"No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change."

Note the current President's words well: climate change is the greatest threat.

Not Islamic terrorism in our own country, nor Isis, nor Iran financing killer groups throughout the Mideast, nor the unprecedented $19 billion in debt [Obama has increased the debt by an amount greater than the total debt of all 43 presidents before him], nor lack of jobs, nor unchecked illegal immigration, et cetera, et cetera.

Obama could not attend the unity march in Paris last year to protest the deadly attack on the satiric newspaper by Islamic terrorists. Many other heads of state did, including those of France, Great Britain, Germany, and Israel. http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/11/politics/obama-kerry-paris/

But this year he was front and center in Paris for a climate change conference [at a cost to the taxpayers of$4 million.] His claim before he went -

What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.

Really, this will slow down terrorists?

The Left will brook no dissent from the view that climate change is our biggest threat. There was discussion that denial should be a crime!

Is Climate Change a Material Threat?

The Administration, the EPA, and other climate change proponents claim there is no question- the answer is an emphatic "Yes" and that 97% of the world's scientists agree.

But is that true?

Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists” say no such thing. There are multiple relevant questions: (1) Has the earth generally warmed since 1800? (An overwhelming majority of scientists assent to this.) (2) Has that warming been caused primarily by human activity? And, if (1) and (2), is anthropogenic global warming a problem so significant that we ought to take action?...

A 2012 poll of American Meteorological Society members also reported a diversity of opinion... And according to a study of 1,868 scientists working in climate-related fields, conducted just this year by the PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, three in ten respondents said that less than half of global warming since 1951 could be attributed to human activity, or that they did not know.

And:

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem...The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists ... revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

And:

...the Environmental Protection Agency’s reason for being, for wanting to steadily expand its budget and personnel, for seeking to regulate our farms, factories, homes and energy supplies, for trying to drive entire industries into bankruptcy – is its assertion that humans are causing catastrophic climate change, thereby endangering human health and welfare. The claims do not withstand scrutiny.

Let us not forget Al Gore's failed predictions.

According to EPA estimates, full achievement of the president’s climate goals will cost more than $73 billion in annual burdens to alleviate less than two-tenths of one degree of warming.

The founder of the The Weather Channel, John Coleman [no relation that I know of], decries the scare talk and wants science as the measure. He describes himself as a skeptic of man-made global warming and believes politics has taken over the issues.

The environmentalists, bureaucrats and politicians who make up the U.N.’s climate panel recruit scientists to research the climate issue. And they place only those who will produce the desired results. Money, politics and ideology have replaced science....The Paris climate agreement is all about empowering the U.N. and has nothing to do with the climate.

EPA's Other Abuses

A high level EPA employee admitted spending most of his work day watching porn and downloading it into folders. He was not fired. Rather he received several performance awards of cash and time off hours. Another employee sexually harassed at least 16 women. He was promoted even though management knew of his history. He retired with full pension benefits.

Government Executive Magazine exposed other egregious mismanagement. Numerous employees were on leave with full pay and benefits for incidents of insubordination, disruptive behavior, falsifying documents, and threatening colleagues. Even worse, an employee jailed on a felony drug charge and another who admitted to knowingly having sex with a minor were off work for months but receiving their salaries while the EPA decided their status.

The magazine reported that the Inspector General for the EPA notified top Administrator, Gina McCarthy, in 2014, that there were more people on long term paid leave than could be justified.

Now, ready for some bureaucrat arrogance?

The Obama administration is introducing a last-minute barrage of costly environmental regulation pronouncements that Republicans have vowed to repeal as soon as possible after Donald Trump’s January 20 presidential inauguration...The recent outpouring adds to the more than 600 major regulations -- those estimated to cost more than $100 million each -- during its tenure.

The same Gina McCarthy, still top EPA Administrator, the day after the Trump election, wrote the EPA employees:

As I've mentioned to you before, we're running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama's presidency...Thank you for taking that run with me. I'm looking forward to all the progress that still lies ahead. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-regulations-231820

In other words, disregard the decision of the American voters. So much for Obama's promise of a smooth transition.

Conclusion

Lisa Benson always hits the mark:

And Branco caps it off:

Isn't it time to invoke the NETWORK mantra:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

With the welcome results of the November elections, we have the opportunity.

Let's make the most of it.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Ronald Reagan [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]


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