Posted on 06/11/2012 8:00:11 PM PDT by STARWISE
An Asheville, N.C. man has enlisted the aid of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr to investigate a visit he received from two armed Environmental Protection Agency officials and a local police officer.
Burr has been in touch with the man and started an inquiry into the incident with EPA.
According to the Ashville Citizen-Times, Larry Keller claims the EPA targeted him after he sent an email on April 27 to former EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz, who resigned on April 30 over comments he made comparing the administration’s enforcement policy to Roman crucifixions. (RELATED: Complete coverage of the Al Armendariz scandal)
The letter to an EPA external affairs director read simply, “Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello? – Regards- Larry Keller.”
“I wanted to know why someone in his position would say what he did. I wanted to question his reasoning and principles. It’s all about freedom of speech,” Keller told The Carolina Journal.
The agents visited Keller on May 2, two days after Armendariz resigned.
Keller is not convinced the matter is over, and he wants a full explanation. But the Journal reported that Patrick Sullivan, the EPA’s assistant inspector general, does not believe there was “any unprofessional behavior” by Office of Inspector General personnel, and that Keller “answered the questions and the suspicious nature of the email was resolved.”
Fox News Channel reported that the EPA has invited Keller to come to Washington. The Asheville man, however, is unwilling until he has a full understanding of what the EPA wants to discuss.
“The charter of the EPA is to protect the environment and public, not to act as a quasi federal police department,” Keller told Fox News on Saturday.
In late April on the Senate floor, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe highlighted video of Armendariz, then the Region 6 Administrator, explaining EPA’s heavy-handed approach to enforcement. That video brought about Armendariz’s resignation just days later.
“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” Armendariz said in the video footage.
“It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years
Reagan did not create the EPA that occurred under Nixon. It was not armed by the Patriot Act.
Armendariz is as ignorant as he is thuggish. The Romans a) never administered like that, never, and b) never encountered Turks during the long period during which they subjugated Anatolia, the modern Turkey, which then was nearly a dozen kingdoms, city-states, pirate lairs, dependencies, and provinces of the Seleucid and Macedonian Empires.
Reagan did not create the EPA but it became armed under his watch in 1983 when the EPA went to the FBI and asked to have some of the bureaucrats to be deputized as ‘enforcement’ officers.
Republicans and Democrats both are responsible for the ruination of freedom and privacy in this nation.
Threats of violence against EPA Inspectors when out in the field were what prompted arming certain of them. There are only a few who are armed, the vast majority are not and many often have good relations with the regulated communities.
A friend of mine was an Inspector and he was welcome at the sewer plants he inspected because his reports actually helped the operators operate their facilities more effectively. He also understood and sympathized with the technical problems they faced. But he was a rarity in that he actually knew what he was talking about (not being a Womyn’s Studies major but an ME with a PE license) and was not trying to add scalps to his belt.
Since politics reflect the wishes and demands of the people it would be far more accurate to state the FACT that it is the PEOPLE which is responsible “...for the ruination of freedom and privacy in this nation.” Had they not overwhelmingly voted for the RATS for decades the GOP would have never been tempted to whack the Tar Baby. The only reason there are ANY conservative ideals left is because of the GOP.
It also should be clear to anyone who has looked into this that the electorate has NOT voted conservative. It will vote for the more conservative presidential candidate on occasion but consistently fills Congress with Democrats.
I’m am hoping this is changing as the RATs move even further Left but it will remain an ongoing problem if for no other reason than that the Democrat Party is filled with professional politicians in contradistinction to the GOP which is filled with amateurs, citizens who finally got fed up and ran for office, and ideologues who just hate government. This makes having a consistent long-term policy difficult.
Ah, regulated communities. That’s Agenda 21 in a nutshell, and the EPA is a tool.
So to put it bluntly should Agenda 21 be implemented through armed federal agents?
Isn’t that a communist revolution by the executive branch?
Former ‘crucify them’ EPA leader met with environmentalists instead of testifying before Congress
06/07/2012
Former Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz skipped a scheduled appearance at a Congressional hearing Wednesday, but managed to squeeze a trip to the Sierra Club — in Washington, D.C., less than a quarter-mile from Capitol hill — into his busy day.
In a press release, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works ranking Republican Sen. James Inhofe declared the “mystery is solved. Rather than testifying in the House and being accountable for carrying out the Obama EPA’s ‘crucify them’ agenda, it appears Mr. Armendariz may have had a job interview with the Sierra Club.”
The Oklahoma Republican added that “at least at the Sierra Club, Armendariz won’t run the risk of losing his job for telling the truth about President Obama’s real agenda.”
In the instance of which I was speaking, the “regulated community” was sewage treatment plants not an actual community. It has nothing to do with Agenda 21 or any other outside the provisions of the Clean Water Act which has been around in one form or the other since before the 20th century. These plants are required to meet certain discharge standards and the regulations are primarily implemented through the states which also send out inspectors and of which there are likely some who are armed, I don’t know for sure though.
What I was speaking of has nothing to do with communist revolution. I don’t think this case has anything to do with any actual environmental law but seems to be because of a perceived threat against an Agency official. Apparently they are getting jumpy.
Anytime the ‘environment’ is given authority over ‘personhood’, that’s communism.
I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.
During the Clinton administration the environmental activists, green socialists if you will, decided to sue some power plants so they could shut them down.
In the past, a person suing a land owner had to show they were harmed by the land owner, in order to get the courts to determine a remedy for their harm.
They could not show harm to themselves by the land owner so, they claimed that the ‘environment’ was harmed, and won. They call it ‘environmental justice’ and it has changed our law from a basis of individual legal responsibilities through equal justice to a collectivist political mess.’environmental justice’ can mean anything the collectivists want it to mean in order to advance their political agenda.
Environmental justice does not mean justice is not being meted out to the environment or that the Agency sues on behalf of the environment. It is designed and/or claimed to provide justice to poor communities where the dirty, most polluting industries locate because land is cheaper there.
Of course, this policy just further makes those communities poorer by driving industry and jobs OUT of those communities but don’t expect the libs to understand that.
Property rights have always been subject to laws enacted by the State. Many are justified, many are not. Most environmental groups would not recognize Agenda 21 under any guise. Treaty obligations have the force of law according to the US Constitution.
Even without state involvement companies are subject to tort law for damages they produce. So there is little doubt that suits by individuals claiming such damages have a good chance here since the People have a very negative attitude toward business and regularly use the courts as punitive institutions against it.
It is the attitude of a large segment of the People which empowers this kind of thing. Polls indicate that the EPA is one of, if not THE, most beloved agencies of the government.
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