No: That’s not quite right. Because even after its regulations are implemented, EPA won’t tell you why. They say you just have to trust them. They won’t even tell Congress why. Even when Congress asks nicely over a period of years. Even after a fed up Congress subpoenas them.
Yes: Did you not know? The EPA currently stands in violation of a court order to turn over evidence the EPA claims proves, for certain sure, that its latest batch of regulations are justified. When asked to comply with the law, this branch of the most transparent administration ever said—wait for it—“No.”
Meanwhile, armed EPA “agents”—hold on. Armed did I say? Armed, yes, and with automatic weapons. Full body armor, too. Helmets, crotch protectors and all. Look how fearsome! Grrr.
In August EPA charged screeching, with weapons barred, ready to shoot to kill, through tiny Chicken, Alaska, population 17, to look for possible violations of the Clean Water Act. The raiding party outnumbered residents of the town. Brave!
Good advice: Next time you venture into the woods to be part of nature, and you hear her call by the side of a stream—you know what I mean—make sure the spot you pick is truly isolated else beneficent government agents might put one between your eyes. Save the newts!
Oh, it’s looking like some environmentalist put in an anonymous call which claimed Chicken residents, all 17 of them, besides pissing into streams, were engaged in “human trafficking.” They weren’t. Oops!
Incidentally, 70 federal agencies are authorized to carry weapons and shoot you. No kidding: 70, and that number is growing. That survival cabin looking better all the time, eh?
What did President Obama say about gun control? Skip it!
Meanwhile, probably due to the EPA’s use of secret email accounts—remember Richard Windsor a.k.a. Lisa Jackson?—employee John C. Beale, who was often away from his desk, was able to rip off $900,000. Went undiscovered so long because, really, who would notice such a small amount? Nobody questioned Beale, who told people he was seconded to CIA. Good place to learn to shoot citizens. Hey, they probably have it coming.
And now, who can say why, we’re put in mind of Star Trekkin, a song which has Captain Kirk sing, “We come in peace. Shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill.”
Back to the EPA lawlessly, flagrantly, wantonly ignoring the subpoena. It was the House’s Science, Space, and Technology Committee which sent it. The data in question was the “Harvard Six Cities Study (HSCS) and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS II)” which claims to support the idea that dust causes death.
This revelation is an astonishing coincidence, you will say, seeing Yours Truly just wrote a series of articles showing the evidence of this kind this is gosh-darned suspicious (this this series and all the Jerret papers in this post). It isn’t only me. Stan Young and Jesse Xia of the National Institute for Statistical Sciences say “Whoa, nelly!” too, in language most scientific.
Funny, though, that the authors on which the EPA rely only cite papers which agree with their findings, and somehow ignore, miss, overlook, turn a blind eye to all papers which disagree. Or is it just another coincidence they missed all contradictory evidence? Strange things happen!
EPA, feeling the heat and maybe even embarrassed to be bucking the court, now says it will pony up the data by the end of this month. We wonder. They’ve said things like this in the past, so don’t hold your breath.
Actually, do! I mean hold you breath, you carbon emitter you. Are you trying to kill us all?
Maybe the EPA isn’t feeling too badly after all. Their newest antic is the “Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters.” This proposed batch of rules would allow the EPA to through a protective cover—get it? get it? bang! bang!—over any spot in the country which stays wet for more than a few minutes. It’s for your own good.
“What did President Obama say about gun control?”
Like any would be tyrant, he wants to control all the guns.
What, you thought he meant something else?
Surely when subpoenas get ignored, people get arrested? Is is different for Congress?
The EPA are a bunch of cowboys. But if congress doesn’t enforce its own laws then they’re a bunch of cowboys too. At Ronald Reagan only played one in films.
“at least”. I’m a cowboy too.
“Is is different for Congress?”
An interesting problem. Ultimately, the muscle lies within the Executive branch and He-Who-Would-Be-King is charge of that. If your arm started slapping you in the face on its own accord, how would you stop it?
There are options (such as the courts) but they only work if everybody follows the rules. Interesting article here:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/7/8/1731/15806/lawrelated/The-Congressional-Subpoena-Power-How-It-Is-Enforced
Scotian: Yes.
DAV: Interesting link.
Laws are only valuable if enforced. Obama just ignored the law he championed and delayed the employer mandate in Obamacare because it was politically expedient. Can he do that? Sure, if no one bothers to try and stop him–and they won’t.
It’s the same old EPA. In their study of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) they picked the studies that showed ETS was harmful and ignored the studies that showed it was not. They cherry pick the data. When they declared DDT a carcinogen there was no data at all to support that ruling. The EPA has been lying from the get go and congress has never called them on it.
RE: “Incidentally, 70 federal agencies are authorized to carry weapons and shoot you. No kidding: 70, and that number is growing.”
That’s soon to grow to include local school districts (or some predict):
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/boy-suspended-school-toy-gun-family-property-article-1.1465745
Related: Paper:
Three Paradoxes of Big Data
Abstract:
Big data is all the rage. Its proponents tout the use of sophisticated analytics to mine large data sets for insight as the solution to many of our society’s problems. These big data evangelists insist that data-driven decisionmaking can now give us better predictions in areas ranging from college admissions to dating to hiring to medicine to national security and crime prevention. But much of the rhetoric of big data contains no meaningful analysis of its potential perils, only the promise. We don’t deny that big data holds substantial potential for the future, and that large dataset analysis has important uses today. But we would like to sound a cautionary note and pause to consider big data’s potential more critically. In particular, we want to highlight three paradoxes in the current rhetoric about big data to help move us toward a more complete understanding of the big data picture. First, while big data pervasively collects all manner of private information, the operations of big data itself are almost entirely shrouded in legal and commercial secrecy. We call this the Transparency Paradox. Second, though big data evangelists talk in terms of miraculous outcomes, this rhetoric ignores the fact that big data seeks to identify at the expense of individual and collective identity. We call this the Identity Paradox. And third, the rhetoric of big data is characterized by its power to transform society, but big data has power effects of its own, which privilege large government and corporate entities at the expense of ordinary individuals. We call this the Power Paradox. Recognizing the paradoxes of big data, which show its perils alongside its potential, will help us to better understand this revolution. It may also allow us to craft solutions to produce a revolution that will be as good as its evangelists predict.
Find the paper at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2325537
It’s not just government that’s prying, though government can access the prying done by others–prying that most of us agree to, if unknowingly:
Google knows nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world
Story at: http://blogs.computerworld.com/android/22806/google-knows-nearly-every-wi-fi-password-world