[Note from Bob: This essay by Adobe Walls is rather long and he has suggested we split it into four parts (Part 1 may be found here, Part 2 here.). Each morning at this time, another part will be posted.]
Re-Redesigning The System
by ADOBE WALLS
Concurrently with ferreting out nefarious leftists within government we must undermine the fourth branch’s support from it’s NGO allies.
The first step would be to stop disbursing grant money entirely. After a cursory review of grant recipients it could quickly be determined which organizations should be permanently excluded. For instance after congress banned funding for Acorn. Many Acorn “cells” simply renamed themselves and continued receiving grants using the same tax ID number as before. No doubt some collusion with fourth branch operatives was involved. This clearly violates the intent of congress and it would have been fairly easy to identify the groups using Acorn tax ID numbers as ineligible for federal funding. Refuse grants to any NGO that has sued the government by simply determining that for whatever reason they don’t meet the criteria. The proper purpose of grants is not to launder tax dollars through NGOs in order to finance the parts of the left’s agenda it can’t get passed by congress. If the Sierra Club and other groups don’t like it they can sue. Let them sue for survival rather than the agenda. This brings us to the second step.
…A little known US law called the Equal Access to Justice Act, signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, allows the groups to use lawsuits against government as revenue sources. When they sue, the government has to incur the costs of defending itself against the lawsuits, and also picks up the expenses for the groups suing the government. No one even keeps track of how much money the government has ended up spending on such lawsuits.
The intent of this law was to allow individuals or small groups the ability to use the courts to defend themselves against big government. It was not intended to bankroll already well-funded NGOs in their efforts to circumvent the congress in tandem with the fourth branch. Simply determine that paying the left outside of government to sue the left inside of government violates the law and cease paying NGO legal bills. Once again if the NGOs don’t like it they can sue. Once the relationship between these leftist groups and the government becomes actually adversarial as opposed to only theoretically adversarial perhaps some of the ardor of their romance will dim. At a minimum it would tie up resources otherwise spent crushing our liberties and prosperity.
Obviously all of the above would have the leftist media (which is almost all of the media) howling. This brings us to managing the narrative.
As reported by John Roberts at FoxNews.com on January 22, 2014:
Newly disclosed emails suggest senior policy officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups are working closely to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, critics say. …EELI senior legal fellow Chris Horner told Fox News that as a government agency, EPA couldn’t be seen as overtly trying to kill Keystone, but was reaching out to environmental groups for other ideas on how to do it.
The emails were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. In one communication, Lena Moffit of the Sierra Club wrote to three senior policy staffers at the EPA, including Michael Goo, who was then the associate administrator for policy.
This story was covered by conservative media and on numerous blogs such as The Federalist: ”How the EPA Helps Environmental Groups Sue the EPA” by Josiah Neeley February 6, 2014 and Ace at AoSHQ: “Despite Agency Denials, Emails Show EPA Coordinated With Left-Wing Political Groups to Pressure Energy Companies; EPA Head Dodges Questions”. This news was only pried loose by a FOIA request and like all of the scandalous outrages since 2008 received little mainstream media coverage.
But what if this news had broken via a White House press release accompanying protestations that lawless corruption such as this (and illegal corruption is what it is) will no longer be tolerated? Merely protecting the environment long ago ceased being the EPA’s true agenda but most of the American public doesn’t even suspect this. If one suggests abolishing the EPA most people are aghast, envisioning rivers choked with sludge and the air nearly a solid made of toxic particles. Abolishing the Department of Education strikes many as some insane plan to end public education entirely. This is because most Americans are low or no information voters if they vote at all. The so called “press” is largely responsible for this. As they obfuscate and rail about the Hardass administration’s reforms a daily release of leaks and where possible formal charges against the depredations of the fourth branch’s bureaucrats must be the response. Throwing open the windows into the thoroughly corrupt soul of the fourth branch would outrage many who are currently clueless.
The EPA issues nearly 3,000 administrative compliance orders a year that call on alleged violators of environmental laws. …The EPA asserts that the finding of violation triggering a compliance order are not appealable to the courts until and unless the EPA first sues the property owner.
This is outrageous as is the EPAs assertion that it has the authority to declare every mud puddle in the country a wetland.
According to the EPA, compliance orders serve as the beginning of the conversation between the Agency and a violator, and are intended to incite voluntary corrective action….
In other words if the subjects of these orders are allowed to seek justice they might not voluntarily submit to outrageous violations of their property rights. No doubt many of these orders deal with actual violations of the Clean Water Act and the regulations pursuant to its enforcement as authorized by congress. Many however are blatant fourth branch overreach and abuse of authority. For all intents and purposes a regulation that empowers an enforcement agency to deprive us of our property (fines and of denial of our right to use private property) is a law. The notion that only the enforcement agency has the right to due process is preposterous on its face. How many Americans are aware how pervasive this abuse is? Even those who have no property bristle at the idea that what they could have isn’t really theirs to use. Most Americans have no idea this is possible until it happens to them.
As Mark Steyn wrote:
For more and more Americans, law has been supplanted by “regulation” – a governing set of rules not legislated by representatives accountable to the people, but invented by an activist bureaucracy, much of which is well to the left of either political party. As the newspapers blandly reported in 2010, the bureaucrats weren’t terribly bothered about whether Congress would pass a cap-and-trade mega-bill into law because, if faint-hearted Dems lose their nerve, the EPA will just “raise” “standards” all by itself.
Steyn again:
Where do you go to vote out the EPA?
The answer to that question is you go to the polls and elect hardasses with a ruthless, brutal if necessary dedication to the task at hand. Jazz Shaw tweeted:
US businesses spend 10.36 billion hours each year filling out govt. regulation compliance paperwork. #ATTinnovation #TRICE
— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) February 21, 2014
How many of those hours are spent avoiding capricious administrative compliance orders and the fines that accompany them without recourse to due process? How many Americans know that?
Very few.
The reason most Americans don’t know how abused their fellows are, is because that’s how the left and it’s allied media want it. Most Republicans simply don’t care or at least don’t care enough to buck the system. Even those who do care are barely heard and even less successful. How many of Senator Coburn’s reports on government waste actually resulted in effective action to put a stop to that waste? The Republican establishment aspires to run the redesigned system more efficiently not reform it and end the abuse. The Energy and Environment Legal Institute and other conservative, liberty oriented NGOs are attempting to curb abuse of authority by the fourth branch. They receive far too little attention or funding to be significantly effective.
Conservatives also could do better choosing what and how they cover. A ten year old girl forced to close a lemonade stand receives more conservative media, social media and blog coverage than a home owner savaged by the EPA. A person who remedies their poorly draining property in order to build their dream home can be forced to “restore” a three inch deep puddle and then spend their savings to install plants that may not have been growing there in the first place. As a result most who are suffering these outrageous abuses are not aware how common their plight is. This lack of knowledge prevents them seeking redress and support from those similarly being abused. Most who suffer these regulatory calamities don’t fight the system; they are far too intimidated by the officious bureaucrats and the jackboots just around the corner ready to back them up.
Most don’t find out how or who could help defend them from the fourth branch until after it’s too late. In part this is because they’d never heard anything at all about those who’ve experienced this abuse before them. Why this is so now is already known but what if the White House itself were diligently and loudly bringing this lawless abuse to the public’s attention? The left media would have to cover this even if only to try and spin it as an assault on the only progress made since the dawn of time. Their only other option would be sit quietly while the Hardass administration eviscerated the fourth branch. They simply couldn’t do that; not responding to the daily outrage press releases is simply beyond their powers of self-discipline. The media’s credibility has been falling for decades and this trend has accelerated the past few years. Of necessity the media’s credibility will have plummeted further by opposing the election of President Hardass.
In addition there are other ways to communicate. The Obama White House has developed an extensive and at least somewhat effective social media network. This network spans across the entirety of both the executive and fourth branches of government. A new president would inherit this asset. The left can’t take it with them when they leave. Even their contact lists will remain, if they delete them they can be prosecuted for destroying government records.
