November 21, 2010. Over at Front Page Magazine, Rich Trzupek has published an alarming piece on the latest EPA move to attack American industry.
After the manmade global-warming hypothesis took crushing body blows, and after the proposed cap and trade bill was placed on the back burner, many people thought the battle was over. They were wrong.
We’re not talking about pollution here. The subject is CO2 emissions and their purported role in dangerously heating up the planet—a premise which has been mercilessly and correctly discredited by rational skeptics.
Because the Obama White House now has limited options in its war against industrial production, it has come up with a new strategy:
Not a law, and not a massive set of EPA regulations that would come under public scrutiny before approval. No, this is more devious.
Lisa Jackson, EPA chief, has issued a “guideline” to state EPA administrators. The message will urge deep agency inspections of factories that go far beyond measuring emissions at the smokestack.
Plant equipment and manufacturing processes will be investigated to see how more efficient methods and purchases can be accomplished to reduce CO2 output.
The amount of EPA meddling and interference in the private sector would be potentially enormous.
The Jackson guideline, legally speaking, is just an opinion offered by the EPA. It carries no legal force, and therefore, there is no need for oversight or the usual sort of approval process. It slips in under the radar.
However, as Trzupek notes in his article, state EPA administrators treat opinions from their Washington chief as “holy writ.” They will make every attempt to act on them.
Will legal challenges be mounted against this back-door approach to controlling industry in the US? I don’t know.
I recently interviewed attorney Jonathan Emord on another matter. In the course of the conversation, he stated that federal agencies have long been overstepping their constitutional powers by both enforcing law and making it. Such actions breach the fundamental separation-of-powers principle.
Emord pointed out that this criminal activity is carried out by twisting the meaning of laws passed by Congress. Agencies compose a set of regulations that will enable them to oversee a new law—and sometimes these regulations intentionally depart from the meaning of the legislation to suit an agency agenda.
In this case, however, the EPA has decided to forego regulations in favor of a “guideline,” an opinion. It adds another strategy to the playbook. And it, too, is surely unconstitutional, to the degree that state administrators fall in line with it.
Common sense makes it clear that, if the White House and Congress are shrinking away from putting a cap and trade bill on the table and debating it—because the odds of it passing are very long—then such a law shouldn’t be permitted to sneak into practice by other means.
It has become fashionable to blame industry for anything and everything. However, instead of rigorously enforcing existing laws to punish corporations for polluting and endangering lives, what we are looking at here is a wholesale, across-the-board attack. An attack that could take society back to a more primitive time and dim the lights.
It’s easy to rail against industry while standing on the platform it has created.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com