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If true, very encouraging.
📢BREAKING:
— Electric Beard (@ElectricBeard_) January 7, 2023
McCarthy has the votes to be elected Speaker after @RepMattGaetz & crew got every single concession they asked for.
Gaetz has made McCarthy the most vulnerable Speaker in decades after he negotiated a condition that McCarthy can be removed for breaking the concession pic.twitter.com/7eRywKZGMJ
Two internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) committees secretly control how billions of dollars are spent, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.
Congress appropriates about $1 billion annually for EPA’s Superfund program, and the agency has accumulated nearly $6.8 billion in more than 1,300 slush fund-like accounts since 1990.
Two committees consisting entirely of EPA officials meet behind closed doors twice annually to decide how the agency spends those funds on highly polluted – and often dangerous – Superfund sites. All reports to and from the groups, as well as the minutes of their meetings and all other details, are kept behind closed doors.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials have accumulated at least $6.3 billion in more than 1,300 obscure spending accounts akin to slush funds that are essentially beyond congressional, media and public scrutiny.
The accounts – which were created through EPA’s Superfund program – are not technically secret because the agency officially acknowledges their existence. But getting concrete details about deposits and expenditures is extremely difficult.
The EPA deposited more than $6.3 billion into an estimated 1,308 special accounts between 1990 and 2015, according to the agency’s website, and has spent more than half of the total. The agency doesn’t publicly report individual special account balances or expenses.
There is new evidence senior Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials routinely use private email accounts to conduct government business, this time to pass along information from an energy lobbyist.
Michael J. Bradley, president and founder of an energy consulting firm that represents numerous green advocacy groups, described his preference for using a private email to communicate with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy regarding an agency regulation, according to documents obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“Joe, Would you please send this email to Gina for me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you but I don’t have a private email address for her and would prefer to not use an office email address,” Bradley emailed to EPA Senior Counsel Joe Goffman.
The radio star adds Republicans must learn their lesson and not repeat the mistakes they made following Eric Cantor’s historic fall from power—namely that Republicans must replace Boehner with a “principled conservative.”
Levin explained that with the resounding defeat of the former-House Majority Leader, conservative voters made their voices heard and sent a clear message to the Republican establishment. Washington Republicans, however, refused to get the message.
“The Republican establishment never learned their lesson after Cantor… They replaced Cantor with McCarthy, who is a wheeler and dealer—he is not a principled conservative… My concern now is that they will do the same thing again,” Levin said.
A rancher is taking the Environmental Protection Agency to federal court, asking a judge to stop the agency from fining him more than $16 million because he built a small pond on his property.
Johnson is facing millions in fines from the federal government after the EPA determined his small pond — technically a “stock pond” to provide better access to water for animals on his ranch — is somehow violating the federal Clean Water Act.
“We went through all the hoops that the state of Wyoming required, and I’m proud of what we built,” Johnson said. “The EPA ignored all that.”
In a compliance order, the EPA told Johnson he had to return his property — under federal oversight — to conditions before the stock pond was built. When he refused to comply, the EPA tagged Johnson with a fines of $37,000 per day.
Dismantling the pond within the 30-day window the EPA originally gave him was “physically impossible,” Johnson said.
That was in 2012. Today, Johnson owes the federal government more than $16 million, and the amount is growing as he tries to fight back.
U.S. District Court of North Dakota Chief Judge Ralph Erickson placed a temporary injunction against the agency, which would delay the regulation from taking effect Friday.
"The risk of irreparable harm to the states is both imminent and likely," Erickson said in his decision favoring the 13 states that sued the EPA over its Clean Water Rule, formerly the Waters of the U.S. rule. The rule has become a favorite target of Republicans as an example of federal overreach.
The judge said the water rule requires more study, including "jurisdictional studies" of natural gas, oil and water pipeline projects in North Dakota. The state is a leading U.S. producer of oil derived from shale rock formations deep underground... North Dakota [had] led the charge against EPA in the court, arguing that the rule violated state sovereignty.
AND THE PROPOSALS JUST KEEP ON COMIN': President Obama announces the details of the Clean Power Plan at the White House, August 4. It’s one of a series of plans the administration has announced this year through the Environmental Protection Agency.But critics from the business community say the new rules will come at a hefty cost for consumers and argue some of the regulations aren’t even necessary.
“It certainly seems as though they’ve saved some of their biggest regulations for the end of this administration,” said Greg Bertelsen, director of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “We’re less focused on the motivations behind the regulations than we are on the impacts on manufacturers.”
EPA insists all the new and proposed rules are needed to protect public health and meet the Obama administration’s goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
“What this proposal shows … is just how serious this administration is about putting real concrete measures in place to reduce emissions of harmful CO2 and methane,” Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, told reporters on a conference call regarding the methane rule.
All told, EPA and the Obama administration have announced proposals for at least five measures in recent months:
It’s been said that ‘timing is everything’ and time is just one of the issues at stake in the legal proceedings surrounding the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which would regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. Specifically, the Court must decide if a proposed federal regulation, like the CPP, can be struck down before it is finalized.
In this case, that would be the right decision.
Last month, attorneys on behalf of Murray Energy Corporation and a bipartisan coalition of 15 states argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit seeking to have the Court dismiss EPA’s plan. One of the arguments made by EPA is that the Court must not dismiss the rule because it is still tentative, could change, and the EPA could still “even withdraw the proposed rule”.
When it comes to the Clean Power Plan, however, the EPA is clearly talking out of both sides of its mouth. As EPA attorneys seek to convince the courts the proposed rule could be influenced or even withdrawn based on the feedback received in the public comment period, EPA officials are blatantly singing another tune.
Just one week prior to the oral arguments before the Court of Appeals, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told an energy symposium, “[The Clean Power Plan] is going to happen. We have the legal – not just right and authority but responsibility – to do it.”
In March, McCarthy said, “EPA is going to regulate… If folks are thinking any of these pieces aren’t going to happen – and (the Clean Power Plan) isn’t going to be implemented, I think they need to look at the history of the Clean Air Act more carefully.”
These are hardly the words of an agency that is still making up its mind.
Fortunately, Judge Thomas Griffith seemed to pick up on this during oral arguments, asking the EPA if McCarthy’s remarks suggest that the agency’s comment period is a “sham.” While the EPA argued it wasn’t, the evidence certainly suggests otherwise.
CHQ Chairman Richard A. Viguerie has been calling for the replacement of GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner arguing that Boehner’s not a conservative and that his regular failures of leadership disqualify him from heading the largest House Republican majority since 1928.
But in the wake of the revelation that Boehner’s second ranking lieutenant, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, spoke to a racist group (the European-American Unity and Rights Organization) founded by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, and Boehner’s 100% support for his embattled lieutenant, Mr. Viguerie’s demands for Boehner’s replacement have suddenly gained new adherents.
Fox News personality and influential talk radio host Sean Hannity is calling on every Republican member of the House of Representatives to reconsider whether Boehner is in fact an effective leader.
Hannity, like Viguerie, said that if Republicans return to conservative principles by rejecting Boehner and installing a replacement, they will be rewarded with political victories in 2016’s crucial presidential election.
“Every Republican member needs to ask themselves if John Boehner is really the best person to lead the conservative movement at this important time in history,” Hannity told Matt Boyle of Breitbart News. “Are they voting for him as a leader or for the Committee assignments they have been promised? The American people expect and deserve bold and dynamic and inspiring leaders. The next 2 years are critical for the country.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chief is traveling to Missouri this week to promote among farmers the agency’s proposal to redefine its jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act... The agency has faced some of the harshest backlash to the rule from agricultural representatives, who say that farmers will either have to obtain permits or be outright banned from common farming practices like digging ditches or building fences.
...[she] told reporters that much of the opposition to the rule relies on myths.
“Unfortunately, I think there’s a growing list of misunderstandings that have been floating around,” she said. “And so part of the reason to go down to Missouri is to clarify those issues and to try to knock down some of the misunderstandings.”
“While there are some legitimate concerns out there with the rule and many issues that we teed up ourselves in the rule to try to seek comment, we’re hearing some concerns that really are, to put frankly, they’re ludacris,” [sic] she said.
...[F]armers harvesting hay may be exempt from needing a CWA permit only if they follow NRCS Conservation Practice Standard No. 511: four pages of criteria covering timing of the harvest, moisture content of the hay, length of the cut hay, stubble height and much more.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is trying to use a bill aimed at preserving federal lands for hunting and fishing as a vehicle to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to redefine its jurisdiction over the nation’s lakes and rivers...
“This legislation will stop the Environmental Protection Agency from taking over all private and state water in the United States,” Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for Barrasso, said in a statement, adding that the rule proposed in March would “significantly expand federal authority under the Clean Water Act.”
This week, the inspector general’s office from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused a small unit within the agency of operating illegally as a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has been blocking independent investigations of the EPA for years. Here are the top five things you should know about the unit and the investigation.
