Posted on 10/18/2016 9:00:25 PM PDT by Sequoyah101
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, released a majority report Sept. 20 indicating what it claims are examples of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to expand their jurisdiction over U.S. waters beyond Congressional intent. The report is the result of the majority staff’s investigation into how EPA and the Corps are interpreting and implementing their authority under the Clean Water Act. Despite the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ national stay on enforcement of EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule, the majority report says EPA is enforcing the rule and expanding its jurisdiction.
Under the title From Preventing Pollution of Navigable and Interstate Waters to Regulating Farm Fields, Puddles and Dry Land: A Senate Report on the Expansion of Jurisdiction Claimed by the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act, the report purports to demonstrate EPA and the Corps’ regulation defining “waters of the United States,” promulgated on June 29, 2015, would codify many of the most extreme overreaches of federal authority asserted by these agencies.
Although the new regulation is currently stayed, pending the outcome of litigation challenging the rule, the case studies claim to demonstrate that assurances given by EPA and the Corps regarding the scope of the WOTUS rule and its exemptions to the positions taken by these agencies in jurisdictional determinations and in litigation are factually false.
(Excerpt) Read more at hpj.com ...
This article is a lead in to comment on other topics and is related to the EPA somehow figuring out a way to believe that plowed furrows are "mini mountain ranges". How remarkably absurd! Yet, some do believe this must be so?
Today I went to a workshop offered by the National Center for Appropriate Technology, an NGO from the Carter years that is now struggling for relevance in a new direction, sustainable agriculture or something like that.
www.ncat.org www.attra.org
I also had an unpleasant encounter with the Oklahoma Stewardship Council (OSC) an outfit lobbying against Proposition 777 here in Oklahoma otherwise known at the Right to Farm Bill. OSC is backed by Sierra Club, Best Friends of Pets, Oklahoma Coalition of Animal Rescures, ASPCA and more particularly the Humane Society of the United States which is NOT about animal rescue shelters but about free range chickens, $6.00 a dozen eggs in Kalifornia and farting cows. Drew Edmondson is the leader of the OSC charge. Some people wil do anything for a dollar and this is a case of dragging a dollar through a law office and see what you get. What OSC is promoting is misleading at best.
Lined up on the other side is Oklahoma Farm Bureau, The Wheat Council, Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, American Farmers and Ranchers etc.
I am for Proposition 777 by the way. I am also gun shy of even getting the dozer out to fix some drainage problems the way things are now.
I'll attempt to be brief in my observations of changing times:
- Two new generations will soon be in charge, their view of normal is much different than before - They believe we are killing the earth - When asked how to rid pastures of black berry thickets I replied, "roundup". They actually stepped back from me. When I said I believe in better living through chemistry they walked away. I became a pariah. - We will not feed the world with "eco friendly" agriculture except in a few survivor post apocalyptic world. - Sustainable agriculture is a high cost, low productivity botique business. e.g. the cost of production for one free range chicken is $6.50 selling for nearly $10.00. One can't assuage their guilt for destroying the earth and fill their belly very long at that price. - The new generation is one of not understanding that economy is not affordable because they have been conditioned to believe in subsidies. The money will come from somewhere they believe. - There were more government paid people conducting the seminar than there were other people at the seminar and nobody saw the problem with that.
I have been a conservationist all my responsible life. We are stewards of the land. We don't own it but instead are allowed to use it. God gave us dominion over it and the cretures of the earth for our benefit. We must leave it better than we found it or at least do no harm.
This preceeding set of observations though is just one example of changing times, a new generation, who make change believing they are somehow going to get right what everyone else got so wrong.
I've become a fan of late of a quote by Patton:
"An incessant change of means to attain unalterable ends is always going on; we must take care not to let these sundry means undo eminence in the perspective of our minds; for, since the beginning, there has been an unending cycle of them, and for each its advocates have claimed adoption as the sole solution of success."
Every era has its crisis. Every generation thinks what is must be wrong and often they only find that it needed to be the way it was for a very good reason. Other times they are misled to become willing dupes and minions for people who only want power and dominion over others.
We are now on the brink of paying the real price for the raising of our children.
Paying the real price of basically letting the government raise our children.
You could say that in most cases I suppose. In my scouting days, attempting to provide some guidance for what have now become early Millenials or late Gen X the norm was latch key kids, ritilian kids, drop off kids, all winner kids, lots of whining kids and frankly a lot of kids I simply did not like and neither did my son as it turned out. We discovered one day that we were both enduring scouting for the other so we gave it up for each other.
It is hard to put your finger on but they see the world as normal from a much different perspective. We interpret the facts of the day through the prisim of our experiences to that point in time.
And Inhofe is a useless RINO
If they had any guts, they would put the Army Corps of Engineers completely out of business. They should only be available to the Army in wartime and only for projects related to warmaking.
The EPA’s fascist criminal activity was exposed in Raponos v US. The EPA eco-Nazis engaged in outright acts of sedition against the Congress and the Supreme Court. At that point, the entire EPA should have been arrested and put on trial. Yet Congress did nothing. Not even a hearing.
You and I agree,,,,,
From the article:
Landowners will not be able to rely on current statutory exemptions or the new regulatory exemptions because the agencies have narrowed the exemptions in practice and simply regulate under another name.
“For example, if activity takes place on land that is wet:
Plowing to shallow depths is not exempt when the Corps calls the soil between furrows “mini mountain ranges,” “uplands” and “dry land”;
Disking is regulated even though it is a type of plowing;
Changing from one agricultural commodity constitutes a new use that eliminates the exemption; and puddles, tire ruts, sheet flow and standing water all can be renamed “disturbed wetlands” and regulated.
-30-
“mini mountain ranges,”??? Jesus Christ - Alice of Wonderland would be right at home here.
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