Wouldn’t that violate the “takings clause” of the Constitution.
As well as the due process clause.
Here the executive branch (article 2) performs an article 1 function and, in effect, legislates. It then reverts to its article 2 role and prosecutes. Then it assumes article 3 status and conducts a hearing to determine guilt or innocence. It continues in that role as it imposes a fine. It then reverts to its article 2 role and concludes that it will garnishee wages in payment of the fine which it has imposed after a hearing which it has conducted in an article 3 role.
Of course I recognize that there are administrative hearings and administrative prosecutorial actions but what I am complaining about is the consolidation of all these roles in one unelected, unresponsive bureaucracy which is increasingly being improperly used in substitution for legislation. Presumably, legislation is more receptive to the will of the people than regulations fashion by anonymous bureaucrats but the absence of such legislation, which has been defaulted to bureaucrats, actually represents the will of the people that no action should not be taken.
The article 5 movement contemplates as one of its reforms an amendment that says that regulations that are not affirmatively ratified by Congress within a specified time period automatically become null and void.
No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
Any imposition of a fine, and collection thereof, without basic Due Process rights, by the Federal Government of the United States, is a violation of this clause. Those Due Process rights (going from memory) are:
Notice of claim
Reasonable time to respond
Setting of Hearing before a Court or detached neutral magistrate, and notice of hearing
Burden of proof at said hearing on the government
Right to appear at the hearing, be represented by counsel, to see, hear, confront and cross examine the government's evidence, right to present evidence, and secure presentation of evidence by compulsory process enforced by the Court, and the right to appeal an adverse decision.
These rights are clearly violated by this policy.
The Takings Clause immediately follows:
...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation...
The EPA routinely violates this provision of the 5th Amendment by classifying lands as "environmentally protected."
What should now be apparent to everyone is that our Constitutional Rights and liberties are dead letters. Those God-given rights have been supplanted by State-given "collective" and "positive" rights, with which all of the individual rights embodied in the Bill of Rights are philosophically incompatible. You cannot have both.
This was inconceivable when Nixon created the EPA, What has changed is that Federal Government's various fiefdoms have grown so large, so pervasive and so powerful that they no longer recognize any restraints whatsoever on their power. Not only do they not recognize any restraint on their power over the American people, I believe they don't recognize any restraint on their power as against each other under Separation of Powers principles.
“Wouldnt that violate the takings clause of the Constitution.”
Yes it does but they and other Federal agencies have been doing this for years. They lock up your funds so you can’t defend yourself. If the EPA gets by with this there will no longer be private property in the US. This is intimidation and blackmail by a bunch of thugs not qualified for any real work other than government. If they were canned they would be flipping burgers for Mickey D’s.