The blogosphere is all atwitter this week after the disclosure of the “crucifixion” video, in which the director of U.S. EPA Region 6 in Texas urged his staff to “crucify” oil and gas companies in enforcement actions.
In the video, disclosed by U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Regional Director Al Armendariz said:
It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there.
Sen. Inhofe calls this a “’rare glimpse’ into the Obama administration’s mindset” and is launching an investigation. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said: “I have spoken to Dr. Armendariz, I have made clear to him that I am glad he apologized because his comments were disappointing, they are not representative of the agency, they don’t reflect any policy that we have, and they don’t reflect our actions over the past two years.”
A new group has recently released a video advocating free-market policies from a whole new perspective, and the result is very compelling.
The group is called Free Market America, and its stated mission is to defend economic freedom, particularly from environmental extremism.
The video puts the viewer in the perspective of someone who wants to dismantle the country, and walks them though what they would do to accomplish it. Throughout the video, the viewer becomes aware of how many of today’s ideas match the destructive actions learned through this perspective.
What makes this argument compelling is that this sort of connection cannot be built from anything other than concrete evidence. Leaving the viewer to digest the sobering truth once the video ends.
After watching the video, feel free to read the transcript below if you would like a closer look at the video’s points.
If I wanted America to fail …
To follow, not lead; to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream — I’d start with energy.
I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy. Of course, I couldn’t take it by force. So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.
We’re doing it again … because it’s necessary to “think globally and act locally” about the climate — but with the truth, not propaganda and politicized reports passed off as rigorous science.
The Heartland Institute is hosting a conference aimed at having a real debate about the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. And this year’s conference in Chicago May 21 – 23 dovetails nicely with the NATO summit in the Windy City (which ends as ours begins, on May 21). Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, will be our dinner speaker the first night.
Heartland has invited dozens of scientists who believe man is chiefly responsible for the fluctuations of the climate to debate those who disagree … again. We will be joined by dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists who understand the need to educate the public, and fellow scientists and educators, about what’s really happing to the planet’s climate. The world’s media will be there — and, we hope you will join us. Registration information can be found here.
Get Twitter updates of the conference by following @HeartlandInst and the hashtag #ICCC7.
The regulation of chemicals has been an issue of growing importance, as new concerns over the effects of chemicals found in everyday products emerge, a greater emphasis has been placed by governments and consumers on how certain chemicals affect the human body. One chemical that has become a chemical of concern for some environmental groups is Bisphenol A, or BPA.
Chemical BPA is a chemical used in plastics for many consumer products. Amongst other uses, BPA most commonly used in hardened plastics and as part of the safety liner for food and beverage cans.
Fear of chemicals and “toxins” is rampant among the so-called “environmental” left. Unfortunately, that phobia infects national media coverage as well. For more than a decade, the left has been on the attack against BPA, a chemical that is commonly found in plastics and other products.
Anti-chemical groups such as the Breast Cancer Fund and some scientists have crusaded against BPA (known formally as bisphenol A), connecting it to cancer and reproductive problems and claiming that it is “a threat to human health,” despite government agencies that have declared it “harmless” even in baby bottles. Much of the national media have bought in spreading fear of the chemical in ordinary canned goods, on cash register receipts, in dental sealants and more.
The Food and Drug Administration has a deadline of March 31 to respond to a petition by the Natural Resources Defense Council—an environmental group—that seeks to ban BPA. NRDC argues that the FDA should ban BPA on the basis that it causes harm to humans. In making these contentions, they cite animal studies showing potentially negative consequences of the chemical.
Seymour contends that the reports commenting on the negative effects of BPA are receiving more attention from the press, while studies refuting these claims are almost universally ignored.
Heartland friend Steve Hayward over at Powerline hips us to a story about a Boca Raton, Florida high school that has not had a clean experience upon making their building “green.”
Students at a high school in Boca Raton, Florida, must step over rivers of urine and endure the stench of rancid waste after a plan to bring ‘green’ waterless urinals into bathrooms backfired.
School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms.
But with no water moving through the school’s copper pipes to flush the urine into the sewer system, the waste produced noxious gases that ate through the metal, leaving leaky pipes that allowed urine to drip into walls and flow onto floors.
‘It was pretty disgusting,’ school board chairman Frank Barbieri told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
‘The girls had to step over a river of urine. I could smell it as soon as I walked into the hallway.’
Former Congressman and Reagan Administration Budget Director David Stockman roasts corporations that are fattening themselves at the trough of crony capitalism. This discussion with Bill Moyers is well worth watching. You’ll learn why government bailouts and corporate welfare are so harmful to the economy, corrupting of government, and dispiriting to business people and consumers who believe in free enterprise.
In his State of the Union Address tonight, President Barack Obama endorsed the findings in a book The Heartland Institute will be featuring at our next “Author Series” event on Feb. 1 in Chicago: Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution.
Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.
Yes. Outside of Washington, but definitely not inside. (The applause in the chamber after that suggestion by the president was pretty tepid — on both sides of the aisle.)
The details of that insidious nexus of entirely legal crony capitalism and the personal profit by powerful members of Congress is exactly what Schweizer of the Hoover Institution outlines in his book — which was recently featured by 60 Minutes on CBS.
If you’re in the Chicago area, and want to meet the man who wrote the book that put the words above in the president’s State of the Union Address, register here to attend our luncheon book event and lecture.
Space is limited, so act soon! Watch the 60 Minutes feature on Schweizer and his book below the fold. You really shouldn’t miss it — the video, or Heartland’s book luncheon. [click to continue…]
I’m currently planning my next book in which I intend to discuss how shockingly anti-science the MSM has become when it comes to pet policy issues that involve science, technology and the environment. My proposition is that MSM journalists are so bad at reporting on these issues not so much because of their left-leaning biases, but because they are largely ignorant and lazy when it comes to covering these complex concepts. Thanks to guys like Paul Krugman at The New York Times I’m sure that I’ll never have any shortage of material to illustrate the point.
Jim Rust handily deconstructed Krugman’s arguments regarding mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in his excellent post of January 5. Admittedly, Rust had an unfair advantage in that discussion: he used actual data. Somehow I think that the average Joe would find actually data showing that mercury emissions from coal fired power plants represent of a pittance compared to natural and overseas sources a bit more persuasive than Krugman’s approach which was essentially “mercury bad – EPA good”. Perhaps that’s nice messaging, but it leaves a lot to be desired from the scientist’s point of view.
That’s what columnist George F. Will calls Heartland’s friends at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Its mission:
Simply put, we challenge the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it unconstitutionally takes away individuals’ property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles speech. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.
Some ideas sound so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas sound so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operations of a free market are among the second kind.
In the 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush promised the nation that he will use taxpayer funds to develop cellulosic fuels (fuel made from grass, woodchips, or other plant material) to power our cars by 2012.
In 2007, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her fellow members of Congress were big believers in cellulosic ethanol and subsequently mandated that the following quantities be produced. You might wonder how Congress could do that when no facility, no technology, and no idea how to make commercially viable cellulosic ethanol existed. These facts were apparently brushed aside as unworthy considerations, as is the tendency with facts regarding legislation labeled with the words “energy independence.”
