The EPA Serves Obama's Anti-American Agenda

EPA's Texas Power Grab

So why is the US Environmental Protection Agency sending federal agents to Texas – to arrest the state’s economy for the “crime” of emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4)? Texas is also challenging EPA over other arbitrary new air pollution standards, but that’s another article.

Cowboys and cowgirls recognize CO2 as the plant-fertilizing “gas of life” and CH4 as natural gas and cow farts.
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But EPA says they are “greenhouse gases” that cause “runaway global warming.” So the ideologues who run this agency are telling Texas to start regulating its power plants and refineries into bankruptcy or oblivion – or EPA goons will take over its air quality programs and economy.
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Ms. Jackson willfully ignores the immense harm that driving up energy prices will have on jobs, state revenues, people’s health and welfare, and even human lives. But her views are supported by scientists like Dr. Richard Alley, Michael Mann’s colleague at Pennsylvania State University, all handsomely paid by EPA and other federal agencies for raising alarms about global warming.
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The alarmists need to get their computer models, scenarios, scare stories and climate cops out of Texas. If they don’t, Governor Perry and his Texas Rangers should arrest them for violating Lone Star rights to energy, jobs, health and the American Dream.

The Key New Year's Resolution: Stop the EPA

EPA has declared that carbon dioxide endangers the health of Americans, and the agency is using this "finding" to justify regulating anything that emits carbon dioxide. As Upton and Phillips note in their piece, many businesses have recovered from their shock at such a naked grab for power and are fighting back in the courts, but EPA is rushing forward with regulations to try and put its radical overlay on America's private sector before the courts can even respond to the claims. President Obama gets no questions on this somewhat complicated subject from his cheerleaders in the White Hous e press corps and so the largest grab for regulatory control unsupported by explicit legislation in our nation's history moves forward.
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The carbon dioxide rules are thus a threat not just to the economy but also to the whole notion of self-government, and are the prime example of where bureaucratized administrative states move when allowed to assert authority unchecked by popularly-elected representatives.
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An agency this radical needs gutting and overhaul, not tweaking, and Administrator Jackson needs to be in front of House committees for days on end, under oath and answering the toughest questions about her views on the agency's plans and legal authorities. Ms. Browner needs a subpoena as well backed up by legal action to compel testimony if she asserts executive privilege as President Obama has radically expanded the Office of the Presidency in an attempt to avoid the sort of balance and oversight on which separation-of-powers was premised.

If the EPA is not tamed in 2011, its regulatory reach will grow and grow. The agency has shrewdly begun its government-by-decree via diktats issued to power plants and refineries, obviously hoping that most Americans won't recognize that the precedent being set by these rules will apply to every business or operation in the U.S. that emits carbon dioxide. The fight to stop the EPA from crippling the power grid has immediate consequences to consumers but even greater consequences down the road for every citizen.

The president's willingness to indulge and indeed encourage such radical behavior should be a huge issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Totalitarianism Through Technology, Episode 2

Is Obama's tyrannical power grab designed to make U.S. citizens eager for tyrannical Congressional legislation?

Morning Bell: It’s Time to Stop the FCC Internet Czars

Imagine a future where the Internet is governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who rule at their own whim, regardless of legislators’ demands or judicial rule. Sadly, that future is now.
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And while the threat of unnecessary and harmful government regulation is worrisome, the way in which the FCC is pursuing its expanded powers is flat out alarming. Federal agencies like the FCC only have power as granted to them by Congress under the law. In this case, the FCC is charging forward full steam ahead, ignoring both Congress and the courts in order to act as it pleases — in effect, making the FCC commissioners self-proclaimed Internet Czars.

Wave goodbye to Internet freedom
FCC crosses the Rubicon into online regulation

With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web.

The FCC's Threat to Internet Freedom

Nothing is broken that needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net-neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure.

Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs, and ultimately increasing consumer prices. Others maintain that the new rules will kill jobs. By moving forward with Internet rules anyway, the FCC is not living up to its promise of being "data driven" in its pursuit of mandates—i.e., listening to the needs of the market.
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To date, the FCC hasn't ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths.

On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of a long winter's night for Internet freedom.

Mr. McDowell is a Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

Nothing Changed This Week-The FCC Still Has No Authority to Regulate the Internet

What was true before FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s Tuesday midnight run to grab power over the Web remains true today – the FCC does not have the authority to do what they have just announced they will do on December 21st.

Unless and until the Congress enacts law making it so, the FCC doesn’t have the authority to do anything. December’s vote to commandeer control of the Internet is no more legitimate than – and just as capricious as – if they were to vote themselves masters of all the nation’s pizza joints.

The FCC – no government agency – can just decide they want to regulate an industry – and then vote themselves power over it. That’s not constitutional, representative, limited government – that’s Hugo Chavez-style expropriative despotism.

And it’s not as if The Chairman has been suffering from a dearth of people pointing out his lack of authority. We have repeatedly pointed it out. And it hasn’t just been us.

In April, the D.C. Circuit Court said so, unanimously ruling the obvious – that the Commission does not have the authority to do anything to the Internet.

Then 302 members of Congress said the same – a large bipartisan majority. So then did more than 150 organizations, state legislators and bloggers, seventeen minority groups (that are usually almost always in Democrat lockstep) and many additional normally Democrat paragons including several large unions, several racial grievance groups and at least one anti-free market environmentalist group.

And then The Chairman officially announced his intent to usurp authority.

Obama's mystery proposal to regulate the Internet

In their net neutrality quest, Genachowski and two of his fellow Democratic appointees are working to expand government power into an area where the commission has no jurisdiction, under the guise of solving a problem that does not exist.
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This exercise in government opacity and overreach is already damaging the economy. As major telecommunications and Internet service companies prepare to roll out new fourth generation (4G) wireless service for millions of customers, these unelected bureaucratic commissars are recklessly creating doubt about the future value and profitability of those companies' investments. They are also discouraging future investments that need to be made for the Internet to continue its phenomenal growth.

Federal courts will almost certainly strike down anything the FCC adopts Tuesday, just as they did earlier this year. Congress will also have its chance to undo Genachowski's handiwork through the Congressional Review Act. But why should we have to go this far to rein in a government agency supposedly run by people who took an oath to "support and defend" our Constitution? Is Obama unable to make his own appointees obey the law? Either way, the new Congress should hold Obama accountable for what the FCC is now doing in his name.

Conservatives Plan Countermeasures to Neutralize FCC Internet Edict

More than 300 members of Congress from both parties contacted the FCC in the spring, demanding they defer to Capitol Hill on rules governing the internet, and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals dealt the FCC’s online regulatory ambitions a severe rebuke in April. The American people had their say on the matter, too: All 95 Congressional candidates who ran on an explicitly pro-net neutrality platform in 2010 lost.

Despite clear opposition from two branches of the federal government and the American people, the FCC has forged ahead with its aggressive regulations.
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The subtext to this brewing fight is the question of how far Congress will allow the executive branch to implement its agenda through increased regulation and rulemaking, bypassing the legislative process. This approach was advocated in a 54-page report published by the liberal Center for American Progress in November. “Pushing back against the FCC will set the tone for the next two years about how aggressive the Obama administration can be in pursing regulatory regimes. This fight is the first opportunity for Congress to show whether it has the will to stand up to these executive branch power grabs,” Kerpen said.
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Both Blackburn and Kerpen also mentioned the appropriations process as a safety net solution to impeding a regulatory onslaught, if legislative fixes fall short. “If the Congressional Review Act fails, we can look to appropriations to starve any funding for enforcement,” Kerpen said.

Bureaucratic Tyranny

I pay property taxes to the county in which I live. This is a good thing. The taxes paid by residents are used to provide services, one of which is the use of the county dump sites.

But now we have a problem. Only county residents have paid taxes which provide for the dump. Each county has its own dump(s). Residents of other counties should not be using the dump in my county. For this reason, as well as many others including the orderly management of personnel, land, and waste, we suddenly need to provide for the management of these facilities. And this also has a cost that must be borne by taxpayers.

But as is typical, the policing of the use of the county dump is done preventively rather than punitively. That is, rather than penalize those who misuse the dump, provision is made to prevent the misuse of the dump. In some cases, this approach is appropriate. It may be in this case, in which the goal is to prevent non-county residents from using the dump. The way this is pursued (though not achieved) in my county is through the issuance of decals that can be applied to the vehicle window belonging to county residents and must be displayed when discarding waste at the dump site. Naturally, these decals also cost money.

This approach does not prevent non-county residents from using the dump. Obviously, through a variety of methods, a non-county resident might obtain a decal that will allow him to illegally use the county dump. This is actually a little humorous to me because a much more effective method is so easily available. Any proof of residency like a driver's license could easily be used to authorize use of the county dump. And such a method would save money to the taxpayer and the county.

However, what bureaucrat could conceive of such an elegant solution? Bureaucrats tend to be 'little kings' running their own fiefdoms and enjoying the opportunity to enforce upon the unwashed peasants the rules which they majestically devise. Examples abound, most notably and frighteningly at the Federal level. I won't cite them here. Be on the lookout.

In addition, bureaucrats provide never ending excuses to add tax after tax in order to pay for their endless and typically needless, poorly designed, and inefficiently managed programs. Quite obviously, these endeavors are designed to generate revenue in many cases, not merely to pay for themselves.

As for me, when traveling to the dump I place the decal, still stuck to its original backing, on the dashboard of my vehicle so that it can be seen by the dump attendant. This has always been acceptable. I find repugnant the idea that I should drive around my whole life displaying a decal that I only use a few minutes every other week or so. That's just silly. Also, I sometimes borrow a pickup truck from a family member or a friend, who may or may not be a resident of my county, in order to deliver refuse too large or too numerous to fit in my sedan.

So, as one might expect, the 'little kings' have decided the dump can no longer be used except by professed residents of the county who are driving vehicles with decals actually affixed. I will no longer be permitted to use the dump if I simply temporarily lay the decal on my dash for the very few minutes that I need it. The poor soul who lives across the road from the dump will not be permitted to simply walk across the street with his garbage.

What purpose does this serve? First, additional decals must be purchased for those residents who may use a variety of vehicles to deliver waste to the dump. It might also be assumed by some pencil pusher who lives in the city, has his garbage collected, and never actually uses the dump he oversees that requiring the decals to be affixed might prevent the loan of decals to non-residents. To any rational person with the most rudimentary experience in the real world, such a notion is laughable. But what rational person in touch with real life would aspire to the position of bureaucrat?

Prevention may be preferable to punishment in some cases when the consequences are life-threatening. But it has become the norm in every situation and it offers no exceptions to a sacrifice of our liberty. Most obvious and egregious is the case of our 2nd amendment.

When exposed to any discussion of regulation, certification, licensing, or qualification, consider the legal requirement in question and whether the approach is preventive or punitive. A preventive methodology will nearly always be observed. Then consider to what extent the preventive measures have curtailed your rights. Finally, decide whether the security gained by such prevention is worth the price you pay in the currency of your liberty.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Will Americans Fold to Obama's Climate Bluff?

Obama doubles down with the creation of, yet another government agency, the National Climate Service (NCS). This is not to be confused with NCIS, which solves crimes rather than perpetrating them.

Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com picks apart the disinformation and conflicting information at Obama's new website, Climate.gov. He also lists the religious fanatics and corrupt corporatists involved with the project.

With the information that NOAA presents, the only thing that you can plan on is being confused, misinformed, and frustrated.

The real purpose of the NCS, of course, has nothing to do with education. It has everything to do with the politicization of the natural process of climate change for the unnatural ends of egomaniacal profiteers like Al Gore, and international socialists who want to use greenhouse gas regulation as a means of imposing their political agendas.

Climategate: Obama's National Climate Disservice