Posted on 06/16/2012 2:31:17 PM PDT by Jerrybob
Perfect example of how screwed up things are in this country; how up is down and backwards:
News story on Fox yesterday about how the EPA is using drones to spy on farmers in Nebraska, Iowa and two other bordering states. Congress, went the report, is seeking to pass a law prohibiting the EPA from doing this.
Made me think: wait just a minute.... Isn't Congress supposed to be the premier law-making body in this country, and isn't the EPA merely an agency of government?
Then all that should be needed is a phone call from someone in Congress to the EPA, telling them that this practice is to cease immediately.
Instead, someone at the EPA decides to do this and Congress must try to pass a LAW to get them to stop this????
We are so screwed in this country. Nothing works as it should.
Yep. Trying to get the Dems to like him. Look how that worked out.
Didn't work for RR, GHWB, or GWB, either. Compromise with those jackals is a true fool's game.
The problem with the above is simple. There are 535 members of congress who's politics run the gamut of the political sprectrum. A call from someone in congress is and should be absolutely meaningless. Charlie Wrangle is someone in congress, would want any agency listening to his requests? How about Barney Frank?
The authority of congress lies the consensus of the two respective bodies. No agency, no individual, no nothing should ever pay attention when someone in congress makes a phone call.
There are plenty of self appointed overseers as well.
Around here we have the Raisin valley land trust. They come along in their cute little kayaks and write in their important looking notepads as I burn styrofoam on the shoreline for their benefit.
Maybe you all should take a look at ‘AGENDA 21’ that Congress passed! Hussein and his ilk had every bureaucracy in DC included in on ‘AGENDA 21’.... EPA, HHS, DHS, etc. ....you name it, anyone of them can take your property rights, water rights and every right you thought you had....Well, you can forget them now!! House and Senate passed it and Hussein signed it into law!! Only way to stop it now, is to vote his Arse out and his ilk with him!!! THROW THE BUMS OUT!!!
Maybe you all should take a look at ‘AGENDA 21’ that Congress passed! Hussein and his ilk had every bureaucracy in DC included in on ‘AGENDA 21’.... EPA, HHS, DHS, etc. ....you name it, anyone of them can take your property rights, water rights and every right you thought you had....Well, you can forget them now!! House and Senate passed it and Hussein signed it into law!! Only way to stop it now, is to vote his Arse out and his ilk with him!!! THROW THE BUMS OUT!!!
ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) should be a convenience store, not a US Govt Agency.
Congress passes laws giving agencies such as the EPA broad powers to create & enforce regulations. Given that these Congressional laws often are hundreds of pages long, they are open to broad interpretation by the agency.
The agency budget, passed by Congress, is another factor. If the agency (EPA) is generously funded, then it becomes very powerful, while little funding means little power. Swat team raids on Dairy farmers ain't cheap. Harassing citizens over false claims of wetlands requires numerous expensive bureaucrats & lawyers. As with any quasi-criminal enterprise, you need a lot of money to support a lot of soldiers.
Given that our “leaders” have a long, long history of growing gov’t, there is virtually no possibility that the power & reach of the EPA & other tyrannical federal agencies will EVER be sufficiently curbed. Not by Congress & not by the courts.
Reason and logic are not hallmarks of gubmint agents
Reason and logic are not hallmarks of gubmint agents
” Then all that should be needed is a phone call from someone in Congress to the EPA, telling them that this practice is to cease immediately.”
I think you’re misunderstanding the role and structure of Congress. Conress acts as a whole, by passing laws (and confirming nominees, etc). In this case, Congress passed certain environmental laws. Absent any Constitutional or statutory prohibition, the Executive branch has broad discretion regarding the tools & techniques they use to enforce the law. The EPA, which is the agency designated to enforce the laws in question, has decided to use drones as one of their investagatory/enforcement tools. That is well within the Executive branch’s discretion. If Congress wants to prohibit the EPA from using this technique, Congress must pass a law prohibitng the EPa from doing so. A phone call from someone in Congress wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) work, because for every member of Congress who called the EPA to tell them to stop using drones, another member of Congress may call the EPA to tell them to continue using drones.
They were in old Hueys that looked like they had been spray painted with cans of spray paint from Walmart. It wasn't even painted in an even color of black.
It looked like they had bought any type of black paint they could find.
Whoever it was was complete idiots.
I was working the backhoe and they dropped down in front of the backhoe so my back was facing them, and they couldn't get pictures. They then came down in back so they could get a picture of me.
The son of a bitch almost got himself shot. It's not everyday you have a helicopter drop down on you.
He pulled the camera up and I didn't know what he had at first.
When I realized it was a camera and he was taking pictures, I reached in the cooler and got a beer then waved at them.
When I started waving they stopped taking pictures.
“Given that our “leaders” have a long, long history of growing gov’t, there is virtually no possibility that the power & reach of the EPA & other tyrannical federal agencies will EVER be sufficiently curbed. Not by Congress & not by the courts...”
Well, if that’s the case, I can think of only one other way by which such powers will be “sufficiently curbed”...
ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) should be a convenience store, not a US Govt Agency.
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POST OF THE DAY! POST OF THE DAY!
Bfl w/19, 20 & 24
They aren’t always self-appointed, not exactly anyway. Part of the plan for these appointed oversight boards is to train citizens to spy on rural residents and report any suspected violations. The trouble that they often run into with their reports is that they have no enforcement authority.
They have come up with a way around that, though. They have invented “farm plans”. These plans that are drawn up with the help of the county planning board, (of course the farm owner is charged for the help -$300.00) are actually a binding agreement which cannot be revoked and gives the county permission to enter your property at will and look for violations. If they decided that you need to make changes to your farm, you either make them, or they will come in and do it for you and charge for the work.
The dirty little secret is that they have no authority to force you to sign a farm plan. If you refuse and ignore their threatening letters, there is nothing that they can do to you. Never, ever sign a farm plan. You are signing away your rights when you sign one.
I’ll tell the story of how I know so much about the appointed oversight and advisory boards.
A few years ago, when we were building our house, I became aware that the county was trying to form a “stormwater district’ that included the neighborhood where I was building. The purpose of this stormwater district was supposedly to benefit Birch Bay, a neighboring town (which is still unincorporated) We don’t live in Birch Bay and we never even drive through there if we can help it.
So, I started looking into this new stormwater district and found out that it was a scheme to get rural property owners to help pay for improvements to Birch Bay. Birch Bay had tried to get the BP refinery as part of the district and failed, but BP offered that they could help the town draw in all the rural properties and charge them per sq. foot of property, making the bulk of the funding come from people who did not live in Birch Bay.
So, I got busy reading the plan for this “Stormwater District” and found that it was to be run by an appointed board that would be funded by the fees that were collected. The actual work that would be done, would not be funded by the fees because fees must be spent in the area where they are collected, Got that, can’t take money from me for storm water and use it in Birch Bay, so that money is to be used to fund this paid board that runs the district. That never happened, or so I’m told. The advisory board claims to get their funding from an outside, unnamed source.
Anyway, during the community discussion period, I came up with a report by the state dept of ecology that named BP as one of two large property owners, having the greatest impact on our watershed. So, in the last minutes of the last public meeting, I stood up and asked the CH2MHill Contractor, how he could leave BP out of the district, when the state said that their property was one of the two main properties having the largest impact on the district. He said that I was right and that the county had withheld the report from him, that there is no way that they could leave BP out of the stormwater district under those circumstances.
BP was ordered to pay $164,000/yr under the fee schedule that BP had recommended for the property owners. But, then behind closed doors, BP met with the County Council and changed all that and then even got themselves a seat on both the secret appointed storm water advisory board and the citizen stormwater board that does nothing but rubber stamp the advisory board.
Recently, this board made a decision that will greatly benefit BP and once again negatively impact the residents of the area. When I complained, I was rudely shut down and labeled a conspiracy theorist. I said that it didn’t matter what they called me because it was illegal for them to pass this regulation when BP was benefiting financially from the decision. So, they took BP off the both boards before they passed the regulation.
It’s a classic pay to play scheme that the politicians and BP have been playing and the final impact is still not known.
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