Good day all. Things are looking pretty bleak at the Environmental Protection Agency. With Scott Pruitt at the helm, it’s been full steam ahead onto a rocky shoal, or so say previous EPA administrators.
EPA secretary, Scott Pruitt was appointed to head the agency for a simple reason. It has been out of control for decades and as the Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma, took the EPA to court many times of their blatant overreach. When President Trump took office, he appointed Mr. Pruitt to head the agency he loathes. The results? Good news for America and total shock and abject horror from the Totalitarian Environmentalist Movement. Here are the details from that side of the fence from the Huffington Post:
Shortly after taking office, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt set out to permanently limit the agency’s regulatory power in what he billed as a “Back to Basics” agenda focusing on cleaning up toxic waste and providing safe drinking water ? but not curbing new industrial pollution.
The Environmental Protection Racket Agency has, since it’s creation, assumed more and more authority it was never granted by congress. Furthermore, it has been generally staffed with what amounts to environmental fanatics and socialists bent on destroying the United States and everything it was built on. With the appointment and confirmation of Secretary Pruitt, that came to screeching halt, and the fanatics are very unhappy about it.
Former administrators warn that it could take anywhere from a few years to three decades for future administrations to restore the EPA to where it was a year ago, before the regulatory rollbacks, mass attrition and budget cuts.
“If [former President Barack] Obama’s name is near it ? irrespective of whether it’s good, bad or indifferent ? they’re undoing it,” Christine Todd Whitman, who served as administrator under former President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, told HuffPost. “To just mindlessly do it is… mindless. There’s no other word for it.”
I describe Christine Todd Whitman as mindless. Instead of reigning in the mess left by her predecessor, she sat back and let the fanatics have their way. It doesn’t help her case that she is a paid up member of the GOP(e) Elite and member of the Beltway Uniparty.
The lasting damage is already significant, and seems likely to get worse.
Your liberal tears of pain and horror are like honey to me.
Despite rumors that Pruitt may leave his post early to run for Senate or governor in Oklahoma, his home state, or take over as attorney general if Jeff Sessions steps down, the administrator has plans to ramp up his efforts in 2018. He told The Wall Street Journal this week that his second year would focus on accelerating efforts to remake the agency and speeding up the permitting process.
I can see Secretary Pruitt taking over for Sessions. Jeff Sessions has proven himself to be a complete failure as AG. If he goes, and Pruitt moves over, he will do to the DoJ what he’s been doing to the EPA. Tearing them a new one and forcing them to return to the Rule of Law and the Constitution.
Now the HuffPo may think that his replacement as Secretary of the EPA will be more “Malleable”, they need to think again. Pruitt won’t leave unless he knows that his replacement will continue his good work of crushing the envirowhacko fanatics, and President Trump will listen to him.
Some of the policies Pruitt has rolled back could be restored. The administrator decided in April not to prohibit a pesticide linked to brain damage, immediately prompting lawsuits that could force the agency to issue a ban anyway.
The next EPA chief could ramp up enforcement efforts to make up for the dramatic drop in prosecutions of polluters seen so far under Pruitt. A future head of the agency could also reverse Pruitt’s October order barring scientists who receive agency grants from serving on its advisory boards, and could even, in theory, issue a new order to limit the industry-funded researchers now set to dominate the panels.
And here we see the typical Progressive dream of restoring the tyrannical powers of an agency out of control. If you think President Trump is going to reverse course on the EPA, think again. (If that is at all possible for a Moonbat) I hate to tell you this, but we dodged a major bullet last year when President Trump defeated your dream candidate, Felonia von Pantsuit. When I say bullet, I mean that literally.
That cow has the mindset of a typical Third World tyrant and would have triggered a full blown shooting civil war. One or more of those bullets would have been sent in your direction. Thankfully, she lost and instead of having to shoot you, we can have far more fun mocking and belittling you.
Yet, Pruitt’s swift moves to axe major rules that took decades to craft stands apart from previous Republican efforts to slow new regulatory regimes at the agency.
The Bush II administration really didn’t have that much of a problem with a powerful central government. In those cases where they did see damage being done, (which was a very rare thing), they might have put it in a cabinet somewhere. When Pruitt came in, he had been fighting the EPA’s tyranny for years. He wasn’t interested in a cabinet, or taking a scalpel to the regulations. Swinging an axe? Hell No, he brought in a chainsaw and a bulldozer.
Take, for example, the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, which curbs heavy metal pollution from coal-fired power plants. The rule took over two decades to craft: It began under former President Bill Clinton, was briefly sidelined during the Bush era, and came into effect more than two years ago, under Obama. But, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had not adequately accounted for the cost of adhering to the regulation, and sent the case back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal government had been scheduled to defend the rule. Then, in April, Pruitt ordered the agency to “fully review” the findings behind the rule, stoking fears among environmentalists that the new industry-friendly administration was laying the groundwork for a potential repeal.
That so called regulation was designed to completely destroy several industries. It was created from junk science and if enacted, would cause major energy problems for America. Thanks to the EPA, when a coal fired plant wants to do some upgrades, they are forced to put everything the EPA wants right then, regardless of the costs. So, instead of upgrades that will help clean the exhausts, and can be afforded by the powerplant’s owners, the EPA’s rules would basically force them to do a full renovation at massive costs and little gain. So what did power companies do? Nothing more then basic maintenance since this didn’t force them to spend more money then they had.
Consider, too, the Clean Power Plan. The signature Obama-era climate policy limiting carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and incentivizing renewable energy came out of a policy analysis started in the mid-1990s.
Funny how all the things that the EPA started ramming down the throats of Americans began inder Bubba Horndog’s administration.
Back then, the Clinton administration drafted what became known as the Cannon memo, arguing that greenhouse gas emissions could be regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. That formed the legal foundation of Massachusetts’ landmark Supreme Court victory over the Bush-era EPA in 2007.
That was one of the stupidest decisions by the USSC in decades. Basically, they said that Carbon Dioxide is pollution. That makes every living thing that exhales a polluter.
From there, the Bush administration began writing what became known as the Endangerment Finding ? that greenhouse gases posed a threat to public health and required EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act ? although it never implemented the policy. In 2009, the Obama administration picked up the baton, issuing the Endangerment Finding and, in response to its mandate, drafting the Clean Power Plan.
The so called “Clean Power Plan” was designed to funnel billions of dollars to Obama’s cronies and wealthy supporters. It would have created a major energy deficit for the United States leading to brown outs and rolling blackouts. Of course, this didn’t matter to the Progressives since they are special people and would have absolute priority for all the electricity they wanted.
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the rule in February 2016. Rather than defend or modify that regulation, Pruitt proposed repealing the plan outright in October. He didn’t provide an alternative.
The USSC realized that they had made a major mistake. When the opportunity came up, they moved to rectify it. Thanks to Secretary Pruitt, it looks like that fiasco is coming to an end.
If the Clean Power Plan were completely repealed, the next administration at the EPA would have to start from square one, said Carol Browner, who served as EPA administrator under Clinton from 1993 to 2001. She said it could take “20 to 30 years.”
The agency suffered from “sort of benign neglect” under Bush, said Browner, but “it wasn’t a forced policy.”
“Under Pruitt, what they’re doing is conscientiously tearing the place down,” she said.
Let’s talk about Carol Browner shall we? Her tenure as head of the EPA was one of the most corrupt in living memory. She refused to provide information to the oversight committees, destroyed documents and used outside email accounts, to hide her activities as one of the leading Fanatical Environmentalist whackjobs. She should have been prosecuted for what she did, but since it was Bush II, and he was a leader in the Uniparty, punishing her for her criminal activities was never going to happen. Now? The Statute of Limitations has probably run out.
The EPA’s dismantling does not rest in Pruitt’s hands alone. The Trump administration has proposed slashing the agency’s budget by 30 percent ? to a 40-year low of $5.7 billion ? and the Republican-dominated Congress seems ready to make significant cuts. Restoring the agency’s capacity in the future will require replenishing its coffers with adequate funding.
Is that all? Just 40%? How about reducing it to by 100%?
“It’s just the sheer fact that you’d need a budget to do it,” Browner said, referring to the challenge of reversing the damage Pruitt has inflicted.
And why would we want to reverse it? I want Secretary Pruitt to inflict even more damage. I want that agency GONE!
Restaffing the agency after Pruitt could pose a series of challenges. More than 700 personnel have left the EPA over the past year, according to a joint investigation published last month by The New York Times and ProPublica.
I call 700 bureaucrats out the door a good start, almost as good as 700 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean.
Of the employees who quit, retired or took buyouts, more than 200 were scientists, and another 96 were environmental protection specialists.
Environmental protection specialists? What the hell is that? Are they similar to what Organized Crime has? You know, thugs sent out to get “Protection money” from small businesses?
The EPA aims to cut staffing by nearly 50 percent ? from 15,000 to less than 8,000 ? by 2021, the agency told the Washington Examiner this month.
Still to many useless bureaucrats. We need to cut that down to about 200 people, which should be enough to finish up any paperwork and close the doors.
“The challenge that this administration is posing, and it’s certainly not limited to the EPA, is they’ve created a wealth of uncertainty,” Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator from 2013 to 2017, told HuffPost. “At EPA, it’s uncertainties in the business community. Do they ever take rules seriously if every administration undoes everything the prior administration did?”
Allow me to translate. What McCarthy is saying is that under her, businesses knew exactly what was going to happen. They were going to be crushed and forced out of business. Under Pruitt, they are confused for a simple reason. They can’t believe that the dead hand of government in the guise of the EPA is being removed from their throats. They are slowly coming to the conclusion that that freedom is returning. In the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, under Scott Pruitt, America is:
Thatisall
~the Angry Webmaster~
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