I have written before on this blog about the dangers of a government bureaucracy, once it has been created. The dangers include the bureaucracy’s ability to take on a life of its own, exceed its mandate, increase its own scope and authority, operate with limited oversight and thus beyond the protections afforded by our system of checks and balances. Just about the time that some goofy liberal read the post and commented that I had not provided any decent examples of this actually taking place, the EPA, that literal bonanza of examples for bureaucrats gone wild, has provided that perfect example for me. So, here’s to you people of the EPA, thank you for being the poster children for everything that’s wrong with our government, liberals, Democrats, The Obama Administration, bureaucrats, anyone employed to work in the public sector.
From the Investor’s Business Daily editorial:
Nebraska’s congressional delegation sent a justifiably angry letter to Administrator Lisa Jackson last week complaining that her Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its legislative and constitutional authority by conducting drone surveillance flights over Nebraska and Iowa farms looking for violations of the Clean Water Act.
“They are just way on the outer limits of any authority they’ve been granted,” said Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns, an opinion the bureaucrats rejected Friday in responding to the letter. The EPA argues that the courts, including the Supreme Court, have already authorized aerial surveillance, such as taking aerial photographs of a chemical manufacturing facility.
Law enforcement using drones for legitimate law enforcement operations is one thing, what the EPA is up to is another. I do not know the specifics of the Supreme Court Case being referred to here, but I sincerely doubt that it was meant to give carte blanche for any infringement upon our collective civil rights as citizens of the freest society ever on Earth. There is a manifest difference between an agency tasked with law enforcement obtaining a warrant to fly a drone over a crime scene to determine the best method of apprehension of a criminal which will mitigate the possibility of civilian casualties, and the EPA flying drones randomly over a farmer’s property to determine if there is any way they can declare the mud puddles formed just after rain falls to be newly formed wetlands. To add injury to insult is that they can use this technology to put the farmers out of business. Afterwards this will be used to bolster Administration efforts to cite a decrease in food production as evidence that some new oil industry killing regulation is necessary to save the American Family Farm.
There is also a difference between a drone flying over public property, as creepy as I do find that, and a drone flying over private property. Being able to declare a private pond a navigable waterway so that you can place my home to be under federal jurisdiction as a part of the Clean Water Act is beyond any intended scope of the original function of any government agency in and of itself. Flying a drone over my property to determine if the potential to declare any part of my land a navigable waterway is most certainly beyond that.
Barack Obama and his Administration have very plainly declared war against the American People. We all have heard as children the story of the Pied Piper. He was hired by the townsfolk to rid the town of rats. He led all of the rats from the town by playing his flute. He came back later and asked the towns folk to pay the piper. When they refused to pay, he played his flute and stole their children. Grimm’s fairy tales are not for the feint of heart. Like all of the stories told by the Brothers Grimm, our subjects of the lessons involved are never fully capable of seeing the folly of not paying attention to the consequences of their ill conceived decisions until after the witch has begun the process of slicing them up and cooking them. The creation of the EPA was innocently conceived. In its current form, it began as a response to the Cuyahoga River catching fire for the third time, except that in April of 1972, it happened when the national media was in town covering the days leading up to the Presidential Primary. Hooray for us, we hired the piper, and he made a few commercials with an Indian crying, and presto, we cleaned up our environment. During the last couple of decades, the EPA has increased its demands upon us, and our refusal to pay, via Cap and Trade, LOST, KYOTO, and the plethora of other legislative boondoggles, has caused the Piper to start up with that flute of his.
Such is the danger of hiring the magic flute playing man. He is just as capable of turning his magic against you as he was in benefiting you. The piper has taken to destroying our economy and his intention is, just like it always seems to be with those unfortunate children who always star in the stories told by the Brothers Grimm, to destroy our economy and to slice it into little bits and cook it up. The good news of course is that we don’t have to allow this to happen. We can kill off our piper, and put an end to the EPA.
Thomas Sowell wrote in his latest column that calling Barack Obama a Socialist is an insult to Socialists. Socialists believe in government owning and controlling the means of production and inflicting their top down central planning from that perspective. Fascists believe in private citizens keeping control of the productive means, but that the political leaders would issue their edicts as to what products would be produced and lead from that perspective. The advantage of course comes when disaster inevitably strikes, the political leaders still have someone else to blame for the disastrous consequences of the top down planning. National famine caused by the Obama Administration will doubtless be blamed on greedy farmers demanding that they actually be paid for their efforts and hard work, and not on the fact that the Obama policy agenda is making it damn near impossible to operate a family farm.
Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: EPA
