What’s Next?
Not since just before the turning point in the Second World War has there been so much public angst about America’s future.
The father of the kid I’m tutoring is a stockbroker, and I asked him yesterday, “What’s going to happen?” to which he replied, “The trade war will be over by Thanksgiving, Trump’s going to get re-elected, and the market is going to go through the roof.”
Everybody seems to be fairly sure of what’s coming next.
Though I don’t share that confidence in general, I can tell you this: The federal government’s effort to eliminate science from policy-making will not stand. How can I be so sure? Because the public will not allow it. The quality of our air and water has already started to decline as a result of the EPA’s gutting emissions regulations.
Young people won’t sit around and let the government rob them of their future. 
Old people were around when Los Angeles looked like the pic at the right, and our rivers were catching on fire.
We’re not going back.
Craig,
By cracky, that’ll larn ’em !
More stern sermonizing from the cracker barrel pulpit! More wishful thinking that fate with punish the wicked who support the President by bringing disaster on the whole nation!
Oh, how you gloat at the thought of disaster for your fellow Americans.
For years the EPA,(like most government bureaucracies) needed reform and pruning.
During the Obama years the EPA grew enormously in both personnel, power and political agenda.
The EPA is not alone as a government bureaucracy getting out of control. All government services that can interfere in people lives, need constant monitoring by elected officials to prevent public servant forgetting they ‘serve’ the public, not control the public.
The Trump administration was elected because the American people wanted the President to reduce the power of these bureaucratic bullies.
Take the case of Andy Johnson.
Andy is a typical small businessman operating a small welding business. A great family man, veteren, and father of four small daughters.
All Andy and his family wanted to do, was build a pond on his small hobby farm in Wyoming, for their horses and cattle to drink and graze.
Andy, did the right thing, he contacted the Wyoming well as his county authorities and with the help of State engineers, his neighbours and most of his savings set to work constructing the pond, filling it with filtered water, providing a habitat for trout, ducks, herons, moose and bald eagles.
The pond was so successful, it was written up in some environmental magazines.
Imagine to astonishment of Andy and his wife Katy, when armed EPA agents raided his small farm, and arrested him for building a pond on his own property he was in breach of the Clean Water Act.
The EPA ignored Andy, his lawyer, and the State of Wyoming’s documentation showing that his stock pond was exempt from the Clean Water Act and studies that showed his pond provided positive environmental benefits.
The EPA, however, claimed that the rocks, sand and concrete Johnson used to create the dam and spillway were pollutants.
The fact that the EPA had no supporting evidence, the EPA ordered Andy Johnson 90 days to comply with an order to rip out the pond and fill it in or be subject to $16 million in fines and two years in goal.
Fortunately, Andy and Katy Johnson found a powerful friend in then Presidential candidate Donald J Trump. Trump promised to ‘look into it” and true to his word, persuaded a very experienced Wyoming lawyer to take on Andy’s case ‘pro bono’.
The lawyer had the case brought forward and the trail judge found the EPA guilty of an “egregious of power”, acting unlawfully, granted an injunction against the EPA.
Recently, the EPA settled Andy and Katie’s claim against for cost and damage including false prosecution, for an undisclosed sum.
When Rachel Bovard, a journalist working for USA Today began investigating EPA abuses, she was arrassed and threatened with arrest by EPA agents and the FBI.
Pres. Obama refused to take her questions and she was barred from EPA press briefings.
On election, President Trump instructed over 1046 EPA abuses to be investigated.
These include cases such as, Mike and Chantell Sackett , who in 2007 were threatened by the EPA with $75,000 a day in fines for trying to build a house on their own property, across the road and 500 feet away from Priest Lake in Idaho.
The ensuing 8 year court battle saw the death of Cahntell, and Mike filing for bankruptcy before the case was finished.
Charles Johnson, a Massachusetts cranberry farmer, spent millions of dollars fighting the agency for 22 years for the right to farm his own land. He finally settled in 2012, at the age of 80.
Kevin Lunny, a forth generation oyster farmer who lost his family’s oyster company in California when the Department of the Interior granted itself limitless discretion to reissue the required permit and argued that Lunny didn’t have the right to sue.
In Alaska,the EPA denied Richard Schok the ability to expand his pipe fabrication business when they claimed that permafrost, the subsurface layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year, was actually a wetland and refuge for a species of tropical duck!
All of these cases share a common feature. They all arose as a result of Obama era legislation which allowed unelected bureaucrats to make completely selective decisions about how a law should be interpreted and enforced, without the oversight or input of Congress or the public.
Thus agency bureaucrats simply decide a ‘policy’ exists and then will it to life, granting it the imprimatur of a Statute. The agency can then enforce the policy and only very expensive Court proceedings can reverse these penalties.
President Trump is attempting reforms to stop this sort of bureaucratic bullying.
The President signed two executive orders requiring transparent formulation and notice before enforcement. The orders also establish an independent review process free of charge for those affected by the any action.
Critically, these orders also make sure ordinary Americans have the ability to challenge the government’s determination against them.
These are important reforms, protecting more humble Americans.
But, you will remain silent because ’round the cracker barrel you love “big government” and powerful, paternalistic, elitist bureaucrats.