[It] was remarkable to read the scorching indictment of a federal environmental agency and two of its scientists last week by Judge Oliver W. Wanger. (See also Washington Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold’s detailed look at the case on Page 30.) The case concerns how the government should manage California water supplies and at the same time seek to preserve the delta smelt, an allegedly endangered species of minnow-like fish.
[…]
Wanger was angered by testimony from the two scientists, Frederick V. Feyrer and Jennifer M. Norris, that he said was “false,” “contradictory” and “misleading.” He accused the Interior Department of “bad faith” in providing the two scientists as experts, and claimed their testimony was “an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting not only what is not the best science, it’s not science.”
I know. You’re as shocked as I am.
Hopefully this is a start in the western worlds to put people back into the balance.
So do the financially and emotionally injured farmers get tonsue the EPA for punitive damages? That would stop the insanity.
I don’t know Knacker. It will be a tough haul. After reading the article, I think that the false science and global warming crowd are so imbedded in the system after a forty year infiltration that it would take as long to get them out and restore some sanity.
Refreshing to read but odd to consider he’s the same judge who diverted 65% of the water in the first place. He points to the NEPA law having two parts. The first has long been neglected and calls for balancing human use with the environment. He announced his retirement in the same month he took this strong position. Different excerpts from same sources
First the left-wing crusaders took over the social sciences and journalism. Now they’ve infested the hard sciences too. It’s beyond sad.
Robert W……Climate science is not,nor has ever been a “hard” science.it ranks up there with Bachelor of Assinine(BA),women’s studies,and journalism.
Robert W……Climate science is not,nor has ever been a “hard” science.it ranks up there with Bachelor of Assinine(BA),women’s studies,and journalism.
You’re as shocked as I am.
Well, I’m shocked that a judge was able to recognize the difference between truth and fabrication. I’d be even more astonished if a lawyer had been able to recognize it.
Let’s finish this sentence:
Taxpayers should be wondering whether other government scientists have given impeachable testimony on behalf of questionable federal environmental policies…
…on both sides of the Canada/US border.
Taxpayers should be wondering why the Interior Department or whoever is in charge of it let the US and Canadian Midwest be flooded this spring by not lowering water levels in Mississippi basin reservoirs. The clown circus which made that decision ought to be getting a perp-walk parade in front of national television.
As to the California smelt thing, they put a whole bunch of really big farm operations into receivership. Surely there will be some serious consequences for that.
Possibly after the lynch mob gets done burning down the State capital in Sacramento. Not saying that would be a good thing, just saying its getting more and more likely every day.
When the illegals are moving back to Mexico to find jobs, and they are, you know you have a problem.
I haven’t looked for the Frost Report yet, but the excised section highlighted by Clarice piques my interest. Lying about a two inch fish closed California’s Central Valley farming community.
I’m sensing a pattern here.
Ken said “I think that the false science and global warming crowd are so imbedded in the system after a forty year infiltration…”
I have a friend of mine who’s a public school teacher. He now admits that the whole global warming thing is a fraud. He tells me that it’s still in his curriculum though.
G.K. Chesterton once said something like, “the only sin remaining is killing a cockroach.” That says it all about the environmental whack jobs
Wanger wrote of Norris: “I find her testimony to be that of a zealot. … The suggestion by Dr. Norris that the failure to implement [her plan], that that’s going to end the delta smelt’s existence on the face of our planet is false, it is outrageous, it is contradicted by her own testimony.”
I ask the obvious. Who in the AGW Enviro does not meet or exceed this same state of delusion as Dr Norris. They are immune from justice because of a scientific opinion. This is why Science should not be introduced without the probability that the Court may find the lawyers & scientists in contempt.
It is IMHO the serious delusional individuals that flock to today’s Inviro initiatives. But how, and by whom, were all these clones created? Drug induced, individuals with Low self-Esteem, fools that have no individual souls?
We now live in a Post scientific World run by politics not logic. Emotion rather than reason. One can only conclude this is done on purpose by the left who has wormed theirway into all our institutions with fantasies. If not sabotage to destroy North American industry. That they give China a pass for any industrial abomination speaks of this groups agenda.
That with Obama’s relentless drive to out source jobs & stop any industrial activity in America.
The Socialists are like those folks who cut body parts off for the-pity of other. Only in this case its pure undiluted malice.
This reminds me of an “expert witness” being found in contempt by a man in a black dress….with the comment:
“In principle, I can not very your ‘expert opinion’ to that of a credentialed astrophysicist testifying that, contrary to common knowledge, that the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.”
In other words, these two credentialed ‘experts’ testimony was so blantly false that it contradicted common sense and common knowledge.
My common sense comment, if the diversion of the water to the central valley was endangering this minnow….how did this fagile minnow survive the 60-70 years long diversion….?
It is pure irony that the pantheism of environmentalism has been responsible for a situation as “unsustainable” as the current US Leviathan. Given that in order to survive on this planet you can only either live off the land or live off those that live off the land and included in the later are the regulators, bureaucrats and their scientists destroying the abilities of the former. IOW, the proof of a good parasite is that it never kills its host.
In our political (thoroughly politicized) economy, instead of being subject to a market recognizing economic rent (the inherent economic productive capacity) of land and resources, we rely increasingly on collective and or political and emotional mush epitomized by the example of this post. The agricultural users of the water could certainly afford to pay more for its diversion than the non-existent Smelt fishermen. If the Smelt are indeed becoming extinct from such diversions, the green foundations awash in cash (are free to and) can certainly afford to keep the Smelt in artificial habitat, or purchase such.
what does it matter ? the epa is beyond any judicial rulings…they simply ignore them and the judge is told not to make any more…this is a bit long, but terrifying…especially when you consider that the liebrals came very close to establishing an identical process here, and I’m not totally sure they didn’t succeed…..
EPA to property owner: ‘Your land is our land’
$40 million in fines pending over plan to build new home
Posted: September 23, 2011
9:50 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WND
Just imagine. You want to build a home, so you buy a $23,000 piece of land in a residential subdivision in your hometown and get started. The government then tells you to stop, threatens you with $40 million in fines and is not kidding.
That’s the case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, with briefs being filed today by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a Priest Lake, Idaho, family, Chantell and Mike Sackett.
Attorney Damien Schiff, who will be arguing before the high court in the case, said it’s simply a case of a government run amok, and it poses a potential threat to perhaps not every landowner across the nation, but untold millions.
“Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws”
The Sacketts, Schiff said, “bought property, and the government in effect has ordered them to treat the property like a public park.”
“The EPA has not paid them a dime for that privilege,” he said. “The regime we have operating now allows the EPA to take property without having to pay for it, or giving the owners the right to their day in court.””
The case developed when the Sacketts bought a .63-acre parcel of land for $23,000 in a subdivision in their hometown of Priest Lake, Idaho. The land is 500 feet from a lake, had a city water and sewer tap assigned, had no running or standing water and was in the middle of other developed properties.
The couple obtained all of the needed permits for their project and started work. Suddenly, the Environmental Protection Agency showed up on the building site, demanded that the work stop and issued a “compliance order” that the couple remove the fill they had brought in, restore the land to its native condition, plant trees every 10 feet, fence it off and let it sit for three years.
Then they would, for costs estimated at roughly a quarter of a million dollars, be allowed to “request” permission from the government to build on their own land.
Or else, warned the agency, there is the possibility of fines of $37,500 per day – with the total now surpassing $40 million.
Chantell reported she was told by the EPA that if “you’re buying a piece of property you should know if it’s in wetlands.”
“I started to do research. I said, ‘So how do I find this piece of property in the wetlands [registry]’? And she said, ‘Here’s the coordinates.’ When I actually pulled up the coordinates, it’s not there.”
No matter, said the government. Do what we want.
So the Sacketts went to court, only to be told the courts can’t address a decision like this, as it’s an administrative decision. The couple would have to meet the demands of the “compliance order” and pay the $250,000 to apply for a building permit, then challenge the eventual decision.
Or they could expose themselves to $37,500 per day in fines by refusing to cooperate.
The “taking” of their private property without due process now is the focus on the high court’s hearings.
The brief explains that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that “no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But the Clean Water Act gives the EPA authority to issue compliance orders, then fine defendants who are “in violation.”
“Any citizen engaged in a range of activities may run afoul of the act,” the brief explains. “The Clean Water Act’s reach is extremely broad, requiring a permit for the discharge of ‘pollutants’ from a ‘point source’ into the ‘waters of the United States,’ which phrase has been interpreted by regulation to include ‘wetlands.'”
The regulations, the brief contends, had been defined so broadly by the EPA that they have pertained to “land that appears to be totally dry.”
“If the EPA has completed an analysis and made a determination that the property contains jurisdictional ‘wetlands,’ the citizen has no right to judicial review of that analysis. If the citizen hires professionals to conduct a ‘wetlands’ determination, EPA is not obligated to accept it. Despite any evidence, professional opinions, or agency advice the citizen obtains, EPA may still impose sanctions by a compliance order if it has ‘any information’ that” it wants to use to call it wetlands, the brief explains.
Further, the “compliance order” also demands that the private property owners give the EPA full access not only to the lands but to their private records about what is done to the land.
“Given that the order is not based on probable cause, it withdraws the Sacketts’ constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches by requiring them to grant access to ‘all records and documentation related to the conditions at the site and the restoration activities conducted pursuant to this order.'”
The EPA ordered the planting of specific trees and shrubs and then demanded that the land “be fenced for the first three growing seasons.”
“Monitoring of vegetation on the restored site for survival and ground coverage shall be performed in October 2008, June 2009, October 2009, and October 2010,” it ordered.
“The very existence of the order, subjecting the property to a federal mandate, prohibiting the intended, authorized use, and requiring expensive remedial actions, substantially reduces the value of the property and limits the Sacketts’ ability to [use] it,” the brief said.
“Although there has been no judicial decision to establish EPA’s jurisdiction and authority to impose these deprivations, the compliance order threatens the Sackets with various ‘sanctions.'”
The couple’s eventual lawsuit claimed the EPA does not have jurisdiction and the order violates their due process and other constitutional rights.
“The second claim turns on the basic principle that, before a person can be deprived of liberty or property, he is entitled to a full and fair hearing ‘at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner,'” the brief argues. “The third claim is based on the related principle that a person cannot be punished for conduct that violates an ‘impermissibly vague’ law.”
The district court rejected their case, as did the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The court created a constitutional problem by reading the Clean Water Act to preclude judicial review of the compliance order,” said the brief. “The court acknowledged both that the Clean Water Act’s express language does not mandate the interpretation it ultimately adopted … and that courts should avoid statutory interpretations that raise serious constitutional questions,” the brief said.
“The court never considered whether contrary inferences might support the conclusion that Congress did intend for individuals like the Sacketts to obtain review under the EPA. Similarly, the court never considered whether the nature of the compliance order itself supports review.”
Additionally, it’s an order issued without probable cause and “the process that produces the order is entirely secret, with no notice given to property owners like the Sacketts.”
“In sum, the compliance order has deprived the Sacketts of the only economically viable use of their property permitted under local law, deprived them of their right to exclude unwanted persons from their property, and deprived them of their right to be free from unreasonable searches of their property and effects. The Sacketts have never received any review, let alone meaningful review, of the compliance order,” the brief argued.
Schiff earlier told WND the significant property rights and due process issues need to be resolved.
“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?” he said.
“We’re very encouraged that the Supreme Court has recognized how important our case is,” said Mike Sackett in a statement released earlier by the foundation. “We are standing up against an agency that seems to have unlimited resources and few if any limits on what it can do to property owners. We’re standing up for everyone’s right to go to court when the government hands you a raw deal – or takes over your hard-earned property. Thank goodness PLF has been helping us, and now PLF will be making our case in the nation’s highest court.”
Schiff told WND earlier that there is “no question that the power the EPA is claiming it has under the Clean Water Act is significant.”
“Even if you have a good basis to think the EPA is wrong, the EPA won’t let you get into the courthouse,” he said. “They are able to shut the courthouse door by issuing compliance orders that are not judicially reviewable.”
That puts a landowner in the impossible situation of either complying with the order with its potential cost of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars or facing that same penalty in fines.
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.
EPA officials have declined WND requests for comment. They referred WND to a Department of Justice office, which did not respond.
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.
John Chittick:
I have a better idea. All those now-unemployed farmers in the Central Valley should buy fishing licenses, and go up and fish all the smelt they can. I hear fish meal makes an excellent fertilizer.
Also, there must be some carnivorous fish that would find the smelt very tasty. Dumping a few thousand of those in the bay might help.
Herman Cain is right. The EPA should be disbanded.
sasquatch nailed it – an approximately 60 year experiment was conducted by diverting water to agriculture, and the fish survived. What the science is indicating, is that this is a tough critter, and on that science, and using the EPA’s own criteria, the delta smelt should be delisted. And those EPA zealots ( ” scientists ” should be banned from Federal employment, and receipt of Federal grants.
Aneroxia fashion dress:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Iu0cg9oIfo8/TTlM7ZCu9_I/AAAAAAAAG0w/HWOdxAAEbV0/s1600/I%2BBeat%2BAnorexia.jpg#I%20beat%20anorexia%20
This is sick
http://www.pharmas.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/anorexic.jpg
hollyween custom
http://halloweenshirts.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Ladies-Skeleton-Hoodie-Sweatshirt-Pink-Adult-300×300.jpg
bak to Washington:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/photos/snapshots-week-of-june-3-1307133161-slideshow/front-slide-photo-1316730426.html#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Fsnapshots-week-of-june-3-1307133161-slideshow%252Fobama-meets-with-world-leaders-at-the-united-nations-photo-1316713819.html
The liberals and EPA liars along with Obamabots and Marxist zealots permeate the entire structure of the United States and in Canada , if not by the same margin, close to it.
We sure do have our work cut out for us.
The Conservative majority win is a start but as we see everywhere, these destructive types continue their lies and controlling devices to move us back into line.
Call it ‘Suzukism’ in Canada if you will and Obamism in the US. Same thing: The debasement and enslavement of human beings for the global elite who know better how everyone should live and will insist we all follow along or be destroyed.
While they watch from their “marble boats” from on high, not realizing the irony of trying to float their salvation from that very marble boat.
The GOP debates have irritated me all along because they are not discussing what they SHOULD be discussing and are wasting time when they should be ‘pouring on the coal’to see to it they take the reins of power from these miscreants and criminals against mankind to do what is necessary to return our culture to sanity.
meanwhile…gore and suzuki see their dreams realized at last
Uganda: Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children, Evict Over 20,000 People From Their Land In The Name Of Global Warming…
(NY Times) — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner.
People here remember it quite differently.
“I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.”
Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.
“They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”
According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.
But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.
The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.
Gore and Suzuki’s dream is to see that happen -here-.