It looks like the EPA will be the agency hardest hit by the Trump sledgehammer. For eight years, President Obama used the agency as his de facto enforcer of environmental policies he couldn’t pass in Congress even when it was controlled by his own party. If Obama was the climate-change bully, then the EPA was his toady, issuing one regulation after another aimed at imaginary polluters who were allegedly causing global warming. Jobs were lost, companies were bankrupted, and an untold amount of economic growth was stymied out of fear of reprisals from this rogue agency. The courts halted many of the EPAs most overreaching and unlawful policies initiated by Obama — such as the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Rule, two regulations aimed at farmers and coal producers. Unsurprisingly, people in these sectors voted heavily for Trump.
Trump officials and Congress are ready to make major changes in the EPA. A leaked memo written by Trump’s EPA transition team details how the new administration wants to tackle shoddy science at the agency. The memo asserts that the EPA should not be funding scientific research, and it must make any data publicly available for independent scientists to review. It also said that the agency must eliminate conflicts of interest and bias from the science advisory process.
The administration also put a freeze on most contracts and grants, pending further review by incoming staff. A good chunk of the EPA’s $8.3 billion budget is spent on grants to universities and units of government; its 2017 budget for state- and tribal-assistant grants was nearly $3.3 billion. The agency also has nearly $6.4 billion in outstanding contractual obligations to dozens of companies across the country, dating back to 2001. These will get much-needed scrutiny over the next several months, and Milloy insists it’s a necessary step.
More: The Howling
Damn good for him!
These jackboot thugs should be quaking in their boot.
Now they’re gonna have to get some real jobs, like flipping burger at McDonald or baristas at Starbucks!
Oh, and five other items I forgot:
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“When did you stop beating your wife?”
“When she started listening to me.”
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“I am a sinner who does not expect forgiveness.
But I am not a government official.”
~Francis Wollcott
Deadwood S2, E 10
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“Knowledge is always finite. Ignorance infinite.”
~ Theodore Darlymple
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“[This is] nonsense with an aura of smug penetrated only by a superlative vacuousness.”
~ Diana West
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At some time you have to decide whether to drive down the road or become road kill.
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The EPA is too powerful with too little democratic oversight. It can destroy thousands of jobs and the public has no say in it.
Trump needs to permanently pull the EPA’s teeth by passing legislation that would make it more accountable to congress, with less power to act unilaterally.
It’s not just about AGW. EPA has needed a strong hand on its backside for many years. Its abominable handling of household radon exposures in the early 1990s was just one of a host of that agency’s excesses.
Let’s hope that Trump, with the help of Jeff Sessions, will also end the practice of regulating through court-settlement, while simultaneously funding the environmental groups through court-cost awards.
Environmental groups have been, for years, engaged in wink-wink-nod lawfare with the EPA. All too often, when the agency does not have clear authority to impose new regulations, environmental groups file lawsuits and the EPA quickly caves, then passes new rules based on a consent agreement even though there is no actual legislation in place to authorize the rules. To make it worse, EPA agrees to pay court costs and attorneys’ fees for the environmental groups. The attorneys’ fees are particularly egregious, since they have been awarded as though all attorneys’ efforts were original work, when in fact most of it was cut and paste copying from previous successful lawsuits. It’s been back-door regulation, without legislative authority, done with the full cooperation of EPA staff and a complicit Department of Justice (who should have mounted a vigorous defense against the lawsuits).
I’m convinced that progressives need to understand the part of the 3rd law of motion that is commonly known as “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. The action: politicization and weaponzing of agencies like the EPA. The reaction: increasing resentment by voters and a reduction in credibility makes them a symbol as the enemy and a big target. Now their “enemies” have the keys to the trove of data and their careers. The EPA and other government climate science agency employees better not have unjustifiably altered the data, hidden contrary data or teamed up with environmental activists and progressive politicians by funding climate denier witchunts.
For a lighter, satitical view of climate science I dug up my favorite Iowahawk blog entry: Iowahawk Geographic: The Secret Life of Climate Researchers.
“The never-before seen security tapes obtained by Burge provide a rare glimpse into the inner working of the climate research hive and its amazing guano production. In this sequence, we see one group of researchers entering the hive each carrying a datum they have retrieved from a distant climate measuring station. This is the cause of much excitement among their colleagues, who buzz around in a grant-writing frenzy.
But there’s a problem: as the worker researchers attempt to store each raw datum into the neat honeycomb hockey stick structure provided by the hive’s Alpha Grantwriter, they discover that few will fit. The infrared shows them growing cool with fear. This signals the climate researcher’s instinctive behavior to begin viciously beating, rolling and normalizing the data into submission …
But life is not always so easy inside the hive of the climate researcher. Occasionally the sanctity of the hive is breached by a predator from the species Methodica Skeptica Scientifica, who threatens the hive with demands to see their raw data.
In this rare footage, the invading skeptic is repelled by a swarm of drones before he can reach the entombed data. He makes another attempt, but the Alpha Grantwriter has called in reinforcements from the grantgiver hive and the New York Times.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/11/iowahawk-geographic-the-secret-life-of-climate-researchers.html
No wonder the public is STILL hearing about the FRAUDULENT nonsense of “global warming” … the false narrative is being funded by US taxpayers to the tune of $ 8.3 BILLION annually !!!
Now lets talk about how much $$$ the “deniers” are getting paid to preach REAL, PROVEABLE science ? *crickets* Yeah, all the “BIG OIL” $$$$ … what a JOKE. The REAL scientists are being outspent by a factor of 10,000
Yeah, we can live without another “scientist” publishing “studies” (read: baseless statistical projections) about how “global warming” will reduce the natural range of the Honeybadger …
You are absolutly correct, but the normal process will not stop the corrupt “Friendly Vs. Friendly” Court precedents set on/by the 9th circuit..Failure to defend is corrupt. The only solution is the elimination of the 9th circuit, or each of those cases will have to go to the Supreme Court.. The lawsuits will be a windfall for 9th circuit lawyers & clog the courts
Fixing the EPA is a classic XYZ process
X-Eliminate 9th circuit..vacates those precedents for AZ, NM, Nevada, Alaska and other Sates. It breaks the Border States away from California with regard to “Illegal Alien” federal adjudication.. A Texas, AZ, CA divide will provide diversity of Opinion & practice
Y- The DOJ must vigorously defend all EPA lawsuits such that collusion does not set Corrupt precedents
Z- The law society MUST punish/control obvious collusion by Lawyers & Courts (Congressional teeth)
JMHO
Z.1 … STOP taxpayer funding of private Eco-law firms to SUE both government and business over failure to comply with Environmental Regulations. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer … YOU are actually FUNDING the law firms hired to SUE YOU !!! At least that’s the game in California.
They actually need to jail people. A lot of people. It looks to me like the EPA is just the Clinton Foundation for spreading government cash to friends of Soros. Maybe even executions are in order.
Personally, I’d just like to see all of the data released. The raw data, the adjusted data and any contrary data collecting dust. Then the justification and explanation for all the adjustments of historical data and alternatives for homogenaization and bias/error correction from skeptics. Then look into the funding arrangements for environmental activists. Jail time, if applicable, would be like step 210.
Of course, the eco-leftist termites working for the EPA … and virtually every other US Government agency … have no interest in “showing their work” to the American people
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2014/07/24/mark-levin-takes-obama-epa-to-task-in-court/
THEY know what is best for US … and HOW DARE we demand to see their work. So they simply REFUSED to provide the TRUTH. Obama facilitated this is surely as he facilitated HER private server to HIDE from the American people. God knows what other devices and techniques these termites use against US
You cannot reform a leviathan agency as corrupt and large as the EPA. You can only abolish it. The states all have their own environmental agencies so rationalize the end of the EPA as eliminating redundancy. It was one of Nixon’s worst creations. Green theocracy is where modern Marxists ply their trade and there is no greater threat to freedom than the global CAGW-rationalized control of energy and thus control of people.
Once US industries, farms, forestry, etc are rid of the noose of nonsensical environmental regulations, Canada is really f*****. Old Donald ain’t going to have to worry about imposing any tax at the Border to get and keep the edge.
You go, Jamie!
No department is in need of total (ok,…95%) destruction like the EPA and what it has become.
http://www.independentsentinel.com/epa-is-leading-the-way-to-a-police-state-and-this-is-how/
agency fiat regulation bypassing congress is an abomination long past shelf life.
it looked like a good idea in the name of expediency, but succumbed to human frailties ( big surprise, eh?)
there is one constant wisdom however, and that is “do not throw out the baby with the bath water.”
cutting them (epa) off at the knees will remind them that wisdom is a force to be reckoned with 🙂
You cannot reform a leviathan agency as corrupt and large as the EPA. You can only abolish it” John C
Nancy Pelosi said that same thing about the ACA (Obama care) and Medicare…The Democrats have destroyed Medicare and stolen all the trillions by embedding the ACA into Medicare & Medicaid (they are now ONE) Trump can not separate them.. staffing & budgets… This will make Bernie Madoff’s swindle look like kinder-garden. The high crimes and betrayal by both Democrats & Republicans may destroy America..Leadership folks belong in Jail
Keep Nancy talking..(She tells a lie & then invokes forgiveness from POPE).. The Nut-Bar brags how they have achieved communist policy… interesting stuff… Into the streets & mob violence..Kill– Kill..Pope–Pope
DaveK,
My first attempt at replying to your comment disappeared, so we’ll try again.
Thank you for articulating so well, what I was struggling to put into a coherent posting.
The legal strategy of the environmental groups, with the tacit consent of the EPA, has also been used to close and deny access to Public Lands throughout the Western United States.
The same tactic has been used with the Bureau Of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife / National Park Service. In the case of the U.S. Forest Service, that organization had already been “infiltrated” by agenda driven environmentalists. The “planting” of endangered lynx fur in Washington State to justify “closing” Public Land is just one example of the hidden agenda buried in Washington DC regulatory agencies.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=7242
Hopefully Trump and Congress will remove those eco-tyrants in Washington DC from the tax-payer’s employ.
“You cannot reform a leviathan agency as corrupt and large as the EPA. You can only abolish it.”
Exactly! The other comments suggest tinkering for sorts with the EPA, but the only way to clean it up is to destroy it as another leftist government will just revive it and recreate the monster.
A parasite is never so violently contorted as when it’s being plucked from its host.