Seeing the Underlying Intent of the Daily Consequences We Deal With
Steve Dittmer | AFF Sentinel
Colorado Springs, CO
Originally sent to subscribers 05/02/24
There is a significant portion of the American population that doesn’t really grasp the fundamental difference between communism/Marxism/socialism and America’s Constitutional form of government designed to safeguard individual liberties and group freedom. They have not studied, have ignored or disregarded, for example, communism’s horrendous record of replacing individual rights with the rights of the party or the government.
So some of them are surprised that “student” uprisings are led, populated (50 percent in some cases) and funded by groups desiring the disruption and eventual demise of America’s government, culture and economy. Taking down a government from within requires creating chaos, destroying its economic underpinning and eventually, its ability to fund and defend itself.
What Guy Benson calls an “unholy alliance between communism and Islamists” operating on dozens of college campuses right now is an example of this effort.
It is obvious that today, we have some politicians and government bureaucrats in federal agencies that subscribe wholeheartedly to this leftist idea of reform and revolution in America. We have others who unwittingly go along with the hardliners, believing that free market capitalism doesn’t provide everyone’s outcome perfectly and equally. It does provide equal opportunity within the limits of individual abilities, individual dedication and hard work and the unavoidable differences in living situations and accidents of birth and historical time.
Recognized or not, this is the context of political happenings under President Biden, his agency leaders and the Democrat factions within Congress.
Many Americans are now beginning to connect the dots between the results and the intent of the movement to take over the American government using a flood of presidential executive orders and bureaucratic rules. Then there’s the manipulation of public opinion by marshalling demonstrations in the streets. Subsequent understanding of the summer of 2020’s riots have fostered quick skepticism of the university takeovers now.
The economy and the inflation we’re dealing with now has served to wake people up to the actions of government legislative bodies and agencies on the operation of their daily households. A doddering figurehead president is taking the heat right now but he is just the latest symbol of a decades-long movement.
Two angles of using federal agencies to advance ideology with no regard for logic or consequences for our economy or our people, much less the Constitution, were brought up in the Wall Street Journal Thursday. One illustrates the feckless and deceptive nature of the left’s political maneuvering and the other the left’s tactic of acting now without authority or regard for long-term economic or cultural consequences.
Essentially, in the latter case, the agency attitude is “So sue us.”
It is a corollary of the Clinton’s attitude in the ‘90s: can you prove it in court?
We’ve discussed at length the Democrats’ gambit of promising Sen. Joe Manchin permitting reform for developing fossil fuel projects in exchange for his vote on the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Manchin’s trust in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is inexplicable to us, but it happened. Not only did permitting reform not get a decent debate of a standalone bill but the verbiage crammed into a monster debt ceiling bill turns out to be perfectly suited for the kind of end around agency rulemaking the left excels at.
The 489-page ”Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule” that supposedly was about assessing the environmental impact of infrastructure projects like transmission lines, pipelines or wells has had a whole new layer added to the calculations. The characters that crafted the SEC’s rules requiring businesses to calculate every scintilla of GHG emissions anything they do or someone else does evidently hang out with EPA’s crafters. Part of that sweeping, “whole of government” approach the leftists use to change the world to their liking faster.
So in addition to years of researching and documenting the environmental impact of say, a transmission line that takes a decade or so to complete, all the agencies involved now must add calculations for all the indirect and cumulative effects on green-house gas emissions. So a pipeline permit application, for example, must include all the estimated emissions of the burning of natural gas carried in its pipeline for the decades of useful life of the pipeline, (“Good-Bye to Permitting Reform,” Wall Street Journal, 05/02/24.
Which means the scoring is so tilted that only “green” projects the left approves of will get permitted and fossil fuel projects will not.
Machiavelli himself could not have imagined such a fantastic labyrinthine twist. But then, he could never have imagined the EPA either.
And yes, there are additional layers of carefully crafted complications that make it even worse.
The other example is a suite of rules affecting electricity producers issued by EPA to force coal-fired plants to shut down prematurely.
We’ve written before about SCOTUS’ in West Virginia vs. EPA, when the Court found that Congress had not given the agency the power to dictate how Americans were to get their energy. In a pattern Biden’s agencies have made familiar, they’ve set out to find a way around the Court’s ruling.
We’ll examine that case next time.
Meanwhile, it has been mentioned that one reason we are getting such a blizzard of regulations now, is that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) deadline for “look-back” is May 22, 2024. The calculations and exemptions and requirements are complicated enough that the National Law Review used a graphic timeline to explain it. But it boils down to this: if the next Congress and president want to invalidate a rule, they must be published in the Federal Register after May 22. Under the CRA, a resolution passed by majority in both houses of Congress and signed by the President will invalidate a rule, (Federal Agencies Face Looming Congressional Review Act Deadline,” 05/02/24).
So Biden’s minions are trying to beat the deadline.
Otherwise, Congress can still invalidate a rule but it is a lengthier process involving notice and comment period.
To provide context, the Law Review article noted a half dozen EPA rulings that could be affected, and that doesn’t count the ones above, the wastewater regulations on packing plants or others still coming down the pike.
Next time: Will the Courts Strike Down More Plans to Shutter Power Plants
To contribute to AFF with a credit card there are two options:
To use any credit card on Square, click first link below:
To use your Paypal acct. click below:
Comments