EPA To Unleash Quarter Million New, CO2 Sniffing Bureaucrats, Cost $21 Billion

Are you talented and energetic?
Come help us protect the environment!

Every day is Earth Day at EPA! Join us in protecting the environment! Our diverse workforce connects to more than just a career — we share a common passion to promote a cleaner, healthier environment.

Yes, you too can join the ever-swelling ranks of government bureaucrats and save the environment simultaneously! Look at my exclamation point! It tells you how serious I am about the environment!

According to the Daily Caller,

The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules…

The proposed regulations would set greenhouse gas emission thresholds above which businesses must file for an EPA permit and complete extra paperwork in order to continue operating. If the EPA wins its court battle and fully rolls out the greenhouse gas regulations, the number of businesses forced into this regulatory regime would grow tremendously — from approximately 14,000 now to as many as 6.1 million.

All these GHG narcs will cost us 21 billion-with-a-B dollars in salary. Each year. From now until time itself—or the EPA—ends. How much the businesses themselves will have to waste on the legalities of compliance can only be imagined.

This multi-billion dollar figure doesn’t include the activities of the bureaucrats themselves. The nearly quarter million bodies added to the government rolls who will, in the course of their earnest duties, jump into their Priuses—bought, charged and fueled by tax—camp out at Holiday and Ramada Inns, consume comestibles per diem, print out their convincing Powerpoint slides on color paper—but enough! A good bet is the true cost is double to triple the salary.

Let’s take a look at some of the EPA jobs.

EPA agentYou could become an “Environmental Protection Specialist” at a whopping $111,148.00 a year, a cool cop who “manages procedures, leverages (FRS) functions, conducts research, monitors system performance, and works with internal programs and external stakeholders to support their needs for geospatial and non-geospatial(FRS) services.” Unstated is whether you’d get to carry a gun and can of whoopass, just like EPA agent Jack Taggert (Steven Seagal).

If that isn’t for you, why not consider enlisting as a “Public Affairs Specialist“, job presumably so dangerous it pays more than the Protection Specialist. You could pull down as much as $136,771.00 taxpayer dollars, bravely assessing “and further develop[ing] EPA’s use of social media”, while leading the EPA’s “strategic approach to using social media.” You will also “Manage specific social media tools” and “Facilitate the social media training program.” A tilting six-figure salary to sit on your stool and play with your Twitter.

Still further heights await. You can become one of the many “Assistant Regional Administrators for Administration and Resources Management“, and snag as much as $179,700.00. Those dollars would be taken from “rich” citizens who are not yet paying their “fair share.”

We haven’t hit the top yet. That would appear to be (I have not done an exhaustive search) one of the several positions of “Director, Ground Water and Ecosystem Division.” Each of these folks can net $200,000.00 in base pay.

None of the new quarter-million CO2 chasers are listed on the jobs site yet, so we can’t see their position descriptions. But it’s easy enough to imagine what they’ll be.

The EPA will, in closed meetings held while ensconced in buildings protected by armed guards, decide how much CO2 is enough, for every type of business. These ceilings will be absolute and not subject to debate. Sniffers will be dispatched to their offices to look up company webpages, which will provide the data the sniffers will use to issue their summonses and edicts.

“Prove we sniffers are wrong!, for the burden of proof is upon you,” the summonses will read. “Bring your company into compliance or else!” No appeal will be possible, for what authority above the EPA exists, save the president himself? Mere congressmen and senators are powerless to budge the bureaucracy.

The only recourse available to businessmen who refused to be cowed will be the courts, an expensive proposition. How, in those courts, can the EPA prove that the limits they set are correct, pure, and meaningful? That if those limits are breached that rampant, out-of-control global warming will finally strike, when not even our best climate models produce skillful forecasts?

Never mind: they won’t have to. They only need claim, “We are the EPA, charged with setting the legal limits of whatever we put our mind to set limits to.” And since this is true by law, they will almost certainly prevail.

16 Comments

  1. They’re protecting the children, so they could hardly be blamed for using strongarm tactics. I mean, they’re not just protecting today’s children; they’re protecting children not yet born. (Wait, I don’t mean they’re trying to prevent abortions. Please don’t get the wrong idea.)

    Lisa Jackson should have her corpulent behind thrown in prison. This is unbelievable.

    (Congratulations, Dr. Briggs, for getting linked from Climate Depot! And I realize this isn’t the first time. It’s still an honor, in my view.)

  2. GoIllini

    Back in the late 1970s, when the ink was still damp on my Ph.D., I worked on a similar program for EPA to establish “Best Available Treatment Technology Economically Achievable” for industrial wastewater discharge of conventional water pollutants. The data gathering and data analysis steps were carried out by engineering consultant contractors, and I was employed by one of them. One of my jobs was to prepare replies to the public comments on reports that were released to the public and proposed draft regulations by EPA. Reading the comments from trade organizations and industrial plant managers, and doing the research to formulate responses, firmly convinced me that the process was deeply flawed in execution, whether or not the intended purpose was good.
    An example a statistician could appreciate: How much water is used to tan leather? EPA wanted to know so they could propose regulations to limit water use. (This was mainly to prevent dilution being used as a pollution remedy.) They requested data from leather tanners with a many-page form and received a moderate amount of cooperation, in the form of raw data on water use and the volume of produced leather for those time periods. Some of the water data were in units of gallons per day. Some were in 100 cubic feet per month. Some were in other miscellaneous units. Some did not have any units identified. On the other hand, the leather production data was reported variously as “hides,” “sides,” “square feet” or other units. The data was then massaged to produce an estimate for gallons of water used per square foot of leather produced. The problem was that the raw data had never been converted to common units. Garbage in = garbage out. But EPA went ahead with promulgation of the regulations.

  3. Gary

    Yes, but the President will tax them at a higher rate than the secretaries so it all evens out. You know — fair share, spread the wealth, and all that.

  4. Rich

    You can’t blame them. They are not acting consciously because conscious action is an illusion. I know this because I just involuntarily read this scientific paper: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Wegner&Wheatley1999.pdf.

    There’s some statistics on page 489 which I find suspect though I have no plausible explanation for how that thought occurred to me.

  5. JH

    Boston is a fine city, and the Washington, DC area is a great place to live. Join EPA, and change it from within.

    OT, Steven Seagal is a not a very good actor. (He won’t be reading this comment.)

    OT, again, if Grandpa Gallo were alive, he would be 100 years old. (I am not making this up.)

  6. dennis

    Interesting. Of all of those pay rates, only the first fits within the General Schedule of Civil Service pay (under which the majority of government workers exist), and $111,000 would take years of gradually increasing responsibility to achieve. The top GS pay (GS-15, step 10) is a little north of $125,000, I think.

    These are political jobs (where they can pay what they like) or “special” categories in which OPM:

    “… may establish higher rates of basic pay – special rates – for a group or category of General Schedule (GS) positions in one or more geographic areas to address existing or likely significant handicaps in recruiting or retaining well-qualified employees. OPM may establish special rates for nearly any category of employee – i.e., by series, specialty, grade-level, and/or geographic area.

    OPM may establish special rates to address staffing problems caused by –
    • significantly higher non-Federal pay rates than those payable by the Federal Government within the area, location, or occupational group involved;
    • the remoteness of the area or location involved;
    • the undesirability of the working conditions or nature of the work involved; or
    • any other circumstances OPM considers appropriate.”

    Equally interesting would be to see where these positions are located. My bet is Chicago and then wherever besides that votes from the base are needed.

  7. @ JH. Spot on concerning Steven Segal’s acting ability, but OTH some say he emanates extremely interesting Ch’i. Doesn’t that make it a wash?

  8. On another note, this announcement by the EPA is encouraging in that we only need three more agency power grabs like this and all the non and under-employed PHD’s, BA’s and BS’s that voted for Teh Wan will have jobs and be off the unemployment rolls. At least in theory, although those living in and around Chicago might be a tad slow transitioning off the latter.

  9. Dennis above brings up a good point but didn’t expand it. By ADDING 230,000 new hires, all of the affected department heads get an immediate upgrade in “G-Level” with current perks and future retirement ‘benefits’. That will at least double the listed sticker price. With the ATF using tax money to run illegal guns to our neighbors, the Justice Department selective NON enforcement of all government crimes and elected Congress abvocating to an appointed dozen ‘supers’, there is ample evidence of a government gone ROGUE.

    All of the science of climate is bogus, along with the peak oil and big bang frauds. All this Faux Science is then reinforced with Faux History in our Faux Education system, necessary to maintain the Faux Democracy. How soon will we be full of Faux ? ? ?

    Visit http://www.FauxScienceSlayer.com then find and share truth. Veritas Vos Liberabit !

  10. @Human Perspn Junior, Jr. Heck, I’ve been linked from Climate Depot. It got me the most comments I’ve ever had. I didn’t consider it an honor, however, and I don’t imagine Morano intended it as an honor.

  11. @Faux Science Slayer: thanks for the link to your site. Noting your co-authorship of Slaying The Sky Dragon and wondering over the level of scientific comprehension shown in the articles on your site made it clear that I needn’t waste time or money on the book. For that, I’m grateful.

    Further, you’ve given me ample grist for my blog mill as well, drop in after a few days.

    Thanks for saving Bambi too!

  12. Ken

    RE: ’49er’ & S. Segal: “some say he emanates extremely interesting Ch’i”

    Is that really “Ch’i” or would that be “Karma”? I really have a tough time keeping the distinctions between the two straight….

  13. Ken

    @ Rich re suspect stats on page 489:

    I presume that would be associated with Figure 3, “Mean percentage of Intentionality rated for forced stops on objects primed 30 seconds before, 5 seconds before, 1 second before, or 1 second after the stop”?

    Reminds me of an analysis conducted regarding a fighter pilot flying at supersonic speeds at very low altitudes in unfamiliar territory indicative of almost-time-travel. The study considered the speed of light, speed a signal transits the optic nerve, etc. The conclusion was that if/when a pilot under such circumstances actually focused on a ground/fixed object in their immediate vicinity (something very difficult to accomplish)…when they became consciously aware of the image the object was at that instant actually behind them. Kind of like seeing in the present events from a split-second backwards in time. Aside from that curious oddity, there was really no point whatsoever to the analysis. Just like this….

  14. Person of Choler

    “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

    I remember reading that somewhere, long ago….

  15. Roman

    Person Of Choler………..
    splendid !
    Oh, the nostalgia….. I share it.
    There is another aspect of the developments often highlighted in this blog: the trail blazed by lysekiosm. We are dangerously close to official declaration that 2+2 is 8 ( or any other arbitrarily chosen number other than 4… oh, ok 4.00004). What is really chilling is the difference between the original lysnkoism and the contemporary state of affairs: here it has almost an attribute of a grass root movement. It is not imposed but is rather enthusiastically supported by a large number of “experts” and large parts of the society. The reason that allowed lysenkoism to thrive in this country MAY become a subject of some studies in future times. I would like to believe that it will happen in not to distant future.

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