Thread: EPA Official on How To Deal With Non-Compliant Companies

‘Hit Them as Hard as You Can’ & ‘Make Examples Out of Them’
April, 25, 2012 — nicedeb

The Blaze reports: http://api.viglink.com/api/click?for...13354467325651

Chances are you’ve never heard of him. We suspect most Americans haven’t. However, with the recent unearthing of the video below, that could change very soon.

Thanks to a little digging by the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), attention has been brought to a 2010 video that seems to confirm what many conservative have long suspected: that the EPA is at war with the oil and gas industries.

“[O]il and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production,” Armendariz says in the video.

The top-ranking EPA official goes on to explain his philosophy of policy enforcement [emphases added]:

I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff…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 would 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.

And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.

Watch : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=ze3GB_b7Nuo

Where does the President even find dirtbags like this? The EPA is being run like an organized crime syndicate punishing energy producers while the President shrugs his shoulders and blames the rise in energy prices on oil speculators.

…in regards to the rest of his remarks, and given some of the recent litigation brought against oil, gas, and coal producers by the EPA, Mr. Armendariz’s speech seems to confirm the aforementioned idea that the EPA is at war with these industries.

You can see it in how the organized left is going after companies that associate with the the free market conservative group, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), about which, Michelle Malkin has the latest. http://api.viglink.com/api/click?for...13354468642701

MORE:

Via The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/in...#ixzz1t5cQqPJ1

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe took to the Senate floor Wednesday to announce an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s “crucify them” enforcement strategy to keep oil and gas producers in line.

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Inhofe sent a 16 question letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson Wednesday quizzing the agency on its handling of the aforementioned Parker County, Texas case — in which the EPA issued an emergency order against the Range Resources drilling company for methane contamination in water wells only to quietly reverse their decision 15 months later.

“EPA needs to be held accountable,” Inhofe said on the floor. “The American people deserve to know exactly why EPA pushed ahead with such intensity to capture alarmist headlines, and then, when their investigations didn’t pan out the way they had hoped, they were forced to reverse their claims.”

According to Inhofe, it is imperative that the EPA answers for their apparent hostility to oil, gas and coal producers.

“[T]wo things are clearly incontrovertible,” he concluded. “1) the Obama Administration has done everything it possibly can to destroy domestic production of oil, gas and coal. And 2) the Obama Administration now is successfully carrying out its admitted plan to ‘boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe’ and make energy prices ‘necessarily skyrocket.’ Fortunately for the American people, they have yet to fully achieve their goal and we have got to stop them.”

EPA Bullying via Resourceful Earth: EPA Announces Plan to Use Clean Water Act to Preemptively Strike Down Pebble Mine Project Permits: http://resourcefulearthnews.org/2012...oject-permits/

Last month the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suffered what should have been an embarrassing defeat when the Supreme Court ruled that Mike and Chantell Sackett could bring suit against the EPA. That Supreme Court decision was the culmination of a costly 3-year battle between the Sackett’s and the powerful Obama Environmental Protection Agency which used the Clean Water Act in an attempt to prevent the couple from building their home on their property in Idaho.

It seems that the Sackett ruling might not have been such an embarrassment to the mega-bureaucratic government agency because just last week the EPA announced plans to use the Clean Water Act to preemptively prevent the Pebble Mine Project from being built in Alaska. This battle has also been going on for about three years.

It seems that many of the well-heeled in Alaska and Oregon don’t want the Pebble Mine Project built close to an area they consider their personal playground, Bristol Bay, Alaska. And so, under the guise of environmentalism, the powerful few help finance astroturf campaigns and environmental activists in an attempt to ‘Keystone’ the Pebble Mine Project without concern for the Native populations of the area and the much needed jobs and the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be infused into the depressed economy both directly and indirectly.

These NIMBY activists (Not in My Back Yard) have shut down projects across the country. The most famous recent case is the Keystone Pipeline. Now, through the EPA’s announcement last week, it seems the next Obama Administration ‘Keystoning’ will be focused on the Pebble Mine Project.

http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2012/04...s-out-of-them/

You can see it in how the organized left is going after companies that associate with the the free market conservative group, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), about which, Michelle Malkin has the latest.

MM's column this week is a follow-up to last week’s piece on ALEC vs. the progressive mob/corporate appeasers. Be sure to read the entire column (plus my e-mail exchanges with several cowardly businesses that caved to the Van Jones crowd), click on all the links, get educated, educate others, and use this information to help fight back. The conservative movement needs all hands on deck.

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/04/25...d-your-ground/

Who is Rashad Robinson? And why has his fringe, race-baiting organization been able to pressure several major corporations into abandoning a pro-limited-government legislative association — all for a few cheap social-justice brownie points?

Conservative consumers need to get informed, get active and stand their ground against free speech-squelching progressive activists who have demonized the American Legislative Exchange Council. This isn’t just a battle over ALEC. It’s a war against the left’s shakedown artists taking aim at our freedoms of speech and association.

ALEC, as I reported last week, is the four-decade-old policy organization of state legislators and like-minded business people who believe in “the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty.” They are under fire from a longstanding network of liberal groups — tied to the Democratic Party — that are unhappy with effective conservative opposition at the state and federal legislative levels.

Anti-ALEC hypocrites seized on the Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida to blame ALEC and Republican lawmakers for their advocacy of Stand Your Ground self-defense legislation – even though the case does not implicate the policy and ALEC followed Florida’s lead on the legislation. Moreover, eight of the 15 states that have adopted such polices were helmed by Democratic governors at the time of passage.

Robinson is spearheading the anti-ALEC campaign, along with Soros-backed Progress Now and a MoveOn.org/Big Labor political action committee, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). While they claim to oppose black “voter suppression” by working to undermine anti-voter fraud bills backed by ALEC, Color of Change’s true agenda is to chill and suppress pro-capitalist, pro-Second Amendment, pro-low taxes and pro-law enforcement lobbying and legislating in the political marketplace.

Robinson is in charge of “Color of Change,” a radical activist group founded by disgraced 9/11 Truther, anti-police agitator, Occupy movement promoter and former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones. The group used Hurricane Katrina to condemn America as institutionally racist. Most shamefully, Jones and his fledgling group helped perpetuate director Spike Lee and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s wild conspiracy theories about government-engineered black genocide in New Orleans.

Before taking over Jones’ demagogue duties, Robinson previously lobbied for felon voting rights at the left-wing Soros family-backed Fair Vote. The group has repeatedly fought common-sense efforts to rein in voter fraud. Unsurprisingly, Robinson is close to the community organizer in chief’s administration. While media director at gay rights group GLAAD, Robinson traveled to Serbia in 2010 to officially represent the U.S. at a gay pride festival. He was invited by the Obama State Department, which sponsored the trip.

Robinson claims that his group has “more than 800,000 members” and “is the nation’s largest online civil rights group.” The numbers, however, don’t add up. The Color of Change Twitter account has fewer than 14,600 followers. Robinson himself, acclaimed by leftists as a new media guru, has a measly 1,400 followers after three years on the premiere social networking platform.

But the foot soldiers of radical organizer Saul Alinsky know how to conjure up facades and false narratives. Over the past several weeks, Robinson has released a series of press releases claiming mass victories in the Color of Change campaign to boycott ALEC. The bulletins are being dutifully regurgitated by sympathetic journalists such as National Public Radio’s Peter Overby — a former staffer at the anti-ALEC group Common Cause, a fact that he failed to disclose to radio listeners in at least two recent hit pieces on ALEC.

Color of Change’s corporate appeasers include McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Mars Inc., Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Intuit, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Reed Elsevier (owner of LexisNexis), American Traffic Solutions and Arizona Public Service. This week, Robinson also claimed that Yum Brands and Procter and Gamble had dropped their memberships as a result of “hundreds” of Color of Change phone calls.

On Tuesday, I called Procter and Gamble and asked them how many phone calls they received. Company spokeswoman Christine Wever refused to answer. I asked whether the company had met at any time over the past year with Color of Change or any other protest group regarding their specific complaints about ALEC. Wever refused to answer.

I also called the media office at Yum Brands several times with the same questions. No response by end of business Tuesday.

It’s not enough for conservative consumers to avoid cowardly businesses that cave to Van Jones and company. Beating back the anti-ALEC mob means getting ahead of them. Color of Change and its “hundreds” of callers are now pressuring State Farm (tweet them here https://twitter.com/#!/statefarm ) and Johnson and Johnson (tweet them here https://twitter.com/#!/JNJComm ) to join the spineless herd and cut ties to ALEC.

I’ll say it again: Silence is complicity. Speak now or surrender your ground.

***

Let me repeat:

State Farm and Johnson & Johnson are getting pressured by Color of Change to withdraw their ALEC memberships. Are you a State Farm policyholder? Are you a mom who uses J&J products? Are you allowing Rashad Robinson to speak for you?


Related: ALEC now faces a frivolous IRS complaint from longtime nemesis and anti-ALEC mob partner Common Cause.

Update: Color of Change is now targeting Amazon.

Emails from duck-and-cover companies that caved into the spawn of Van Jones…
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/04/25...d-your-ground/

From Kraft Foods:
susan.davison@kraftfoods.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 2:30 PM
subject: Kraft Foods Statement

Hi Michelle,
Thanks for reaching out about our membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Our statement is below.

We belong to many external groups, including ALEC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes growth and fiscal responsibility. ALEC covers numerous issues but our involvement has been strictly limited to discussions about economic growth and development, transportation and tax policy. We did not participate in meetings or conversations related to other issues.

Our membership in ALEC expires this spring and for a number of reasons, including limited resources, we have made the decision not to renew.

Best regards,
Susan

Susan Davison
Director, Corporate Affairs
Kraft Foods Inc.

Michelle Malkin
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 3:22 PM
to susan.davison

Thanks for this statement, but it doesn’t answer my specific questions:

1) Did Kraft meet with Color of Change/its representatives/or any related groups regarding their grievances about ALEC over the last year?

2) How many phone calls did your company receive complaining about your association with ALEC?

Thank you.
Michelle

susan.davison@kraftfoods.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 4:13 PM
to me

Michelle,
I’m sorry, I don’t have anything else to share beyond our statement.

Susan

-

From Proctor and Gamble:
Wever, Christine wever.cm@pg.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:40 AM
to me

Michelle:

Thanks for reaching out to us and for your inquiry. Below is a statement you can attribute to me as company spokesperson or just as a company
statement. (Please note the decision about ALEC was made independently of any protest activity. Our memberships change every year for a variety of
reasons.)

“We review all of our trade association and policy group memberships on an annual basis. Decisions about which memberships we retain are guided by
budgetary considerations, value to the business and engagement on issues core to our ability to compete in the marketplace. Our 2012 membership
review has been ongoing since January, and as a result of this review, we have decided that we will not renew our memberships in ALEC and NCSL in
the 2012-13 Fiscal Year.”

Thank you for reaching out.
Christine Wever

-

Michelle Malkin
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:45 AM
to Christine

Christine: Thank you. The statement does not address my specific questions. The group Color of Change continues to claim “victory” and explicitly suggests that you made your decision because of their protests. My first question is: Has P&G at any time over the last year met with Color of Change or any other protest group regarding their specific complaints about ALEC?

My second question is: How many total calls, if any, did P&G receive complaining about its former membership in P&G?

Thank you.

Wever, Christine wever.cm@pg.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:48 AM
to me

As noted below, the decision about ALEC was made independently of any protest activity. Decisions about which memberships we retain are guided by budgetary considerations, value to the business and engagement on issues core to our ability to compete in the marketplace.

Thank you.
Christine

Michelle Malkin
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 12:56 PM
to Christine

Can you get back to me on these two questions? Thanks.

Best, Michelle
…Once again, these are my specific questions:
My first question is: Has P&G at any time over the last year met with Color of Change or any other protest group regarding their specific complaints about ALEC?
My second question is: How many total calls, if any, did P&G receive complaining about its former membership in P&G?

Wever, Christine wever.cm@pg.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 1:37 PM
to me

I won’t have anything beyond the statement below. Thank you.

Christine

From Yum Brands:
Ferguson, Virginia Virginia.Ferguson@yum.com
Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 3:24 PM
to me

Michelle – I just received a message that you are on deadline. We’re not members. Thanks for checking.

Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 6:10 PM
to Virginia

That’s not what I asked. Will you please call me? I have tried reaching your company all day. [number redacted]

Job Creation and EPA Enforcement Philosophy – Coincidence With Roots
Crucified Firms Don’t Create Very Many Jobs
Posted by Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) Thursday, April 26th at 12:00PM EDT

In the video above, Al Armendariz discusses how his agency should enforce regulations on Oil and Gas extraction firms. The term crucifixion enters into the discussion. I’m sure it was just a rhetorical flourish in the proud tradition of Huey “The Kingfish” Biden, however, our choice of wording does offer a nice, handy window into our souls.

The EPA’s crucifixion agenda was on leafy, green display when they ruled that power generation facilities could not emit more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity produced. The people getting nailed to the cross predictably come from locations that rely on coal-fired power for their electricity. The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin describes why this poses a difficulty for coal-fired generation facilities.

“The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.”

This would be fine and dandy to anyone who doesn’t dig or ship or burn coal except for two wee problems. The US currently derives 45% of its electricity from coal-fired plants. These plants would have to install carbon sequestering technology which does not exist at a level yet where it can be commercially mass-produced.

In and of itself, we wouldn’t be dead just from enhanced regulatory costs levied against coal-fired electrical production. The problem occurs when the EPA uses other regulatory actions to also squeeze the viable alternatives to coal-fired plants. Natural Gas extraction firms have rapidly increased supply availability via the use of frakking methods to force previously unavailable natural gas out of the ground. Senator Jim Inhofe describes EPA actions towards natural gas producers following Armendariz’s infamous crucifixion edict.

“Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
“In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.”

And meanwhile at The Bureau of Labor Statistics, we learn that the Glorious Obama Recovery seems to have hit a rough patch. Employers added only 120,000 new jobs to their payrolls last March after several months of averaging twice as many. Meanwhile, the four-week moving average of new unemployment claims hit 381,750. This is as poorly as this indicator has fared since early January.

This stalling economic activity occurs in synonymy with rising energy prices. It occurs at the same time our Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, claims that the US Government has no control over the price of gasoline. He says this while the EPA does everything in its power to increase two possible substitute goods for crude oil in power generation. His disingenuous response bears no relation to what the explicit goal of President Obama’s energy policies have been since 2008. Here is how President Obama described the economic outcome of his environmental policy goals.

Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money.

So does the EPA have a deleterious effect on the current economy? A reflexive thought would be that firms undergoing regulatory crucifixion tend not to have excess funds to hire new staff. They also tend to stay away from anything that would require them to take regulatory risk. Regulatory crucifixion leads firms to stop asking where they should explore and start asking what they need to shut down if they don’t want nail holes in their hands. Logically, this should lead to a necessary level of damage to American economic vitality.

Logic also suggests that higher electricity prices, as President Obama indicated he believed would occur, should create negative externalities in consumer spending and on hiring in mechanization-intense industries. This quite possibly shows up in the perniciously stubborn U3 rate of unemployment that only seems to decline when hoards of perpetually idled workers get officially classified as “discouraged.” Or maybe this is all just a result of American velleity.

I tend to think the crucifixion philosophy at the EPA, the high prices of energy and the slowing rates of economic vitality are all components of a system. The EPA regulatory posture has a steady-state effect that increases the prices of energy inputs to production. The things firms produce have a higher manufacturing overhead, so that they are harder to make. The firms hire fewer workers and charge consumers more for their goods and services. This is how The Government-Centered Society kills economic vitality.



http://www.redstate.com/repair_man_j...ce-with-roots/

Ya know Walmart should be our gov't instead of what is in D.C. They put up with nothing, its their way or the highway.

“Crucify them:” It’s the Obama Way
By Michelle Malkin • April 27, 2012 08:57 AM

One of President Obama’s radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. “I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” he began. In a video obtained and released by Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Armendariz then shared his bloody analogy:

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 would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. . . . So, that’s our general philosophy.

Echoing President Obama’s “punch back twice as hard” treatment of his political enemies, Armendariz explained to his underlings: “You hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.”

In other words: Suck up, fly left, or face prosecution. The goal isn’t a cleaner environment. The goal is political incitement of fear.

Publicly humiliated by the video release of the persecution strategy session (FYI: the video has now been pulled, but there’s a copy here), Armendariz said this week he regretted his “poor choice of words.” “It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws.”

Tyrannical actions, of course, speak louder than weasel words. And the record shows that Obama’s environmental overlords run amok.

It was Obama’s power-mad interior secretary Ken Salazar who vowed to keep his “boot on the neck” of BP after the Gulf oil spill in 2010. Salazar and former eco-czar Carol Browner colluded on a fraudulent report — condemned by federal judges — that completely distorted a White House–appointed expert panel’s opposition to the administration’s job-killing, industry-bashing drilling moratorium.

It was Obama’s EPA that railroaded a senior government research analyst for daring to question the agency’s zealous push to impose rules on greenhouse gases. When Alan Carlin asked to distribute an analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases that didn’t fit the eco-bureaucracy’s blame-human-activity narrative, he was gagged and reprimanded: “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has [sic] decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” Public-relations management trumped truth in science, the deliberative process, and fairness.

It was Obama’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cahoots with the witch hunters at the Department of Justice, that raided Gibson Guitar factories in Memphis and Nashville three years ago over an arcane endangered species of wood. The guitar police have yet to bring charges, leaving the company in costly legal limbo.

And as Inhofe pointed out in response to Armendariz’s “apology”:

Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted U.S. natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best — and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.

Indeed, Armendariz the Executioner tried nailing a drilling company — Texas-based Range Resources — to the cross in 2010 with an emergency declaration that its fracking work in the Lone Star State had contaminated groundwater. The Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry, found no scientific evidence for the Obama EPA’s claims.

Forbes magazine reported: “In recent months a federal judge slapped the EPA, decreeing that the agency was required to actually do some scientific investigation of wells before penalizing the companies that drilled them. Finally in March the EPA withdrew its emergency order and a federal court dismissed the EPA’s case.”

Vice President Joe Biden is right about Obama’s “big stick.” Too bad he’s using it to beat down America’s domestic energy producers and wealth creators instead of our foreign enemies.

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/04/27...the-obama-way/

EPA’s “Crucify them” guy throws himself under the bus
By Michelle Malkin • April 30, 2012 12:41 PM


Like I said last week: “Tyrannical actions, of course, speak louder than weasel words. And the record shows that Obama’s environmental overlords run amok.”

The latest corruptocrat throws himself under the bus: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...d443a9c416b94b

The Obama administration’s top environmental official in the oil-rich South and Southwest region has resigned after Republicans targeted him over remarks made two years ago when he used the word “crucify” to describe his approach to enforcement.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sent Sunday, Al Armendariz says he regrets his words and stresses that they do not reflect his work as administrator of the five-state region including Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

But while the “Crucify them” guy is gone, his bosses and their “crucify them” ethos are still hard at work at the White House,.

comments

And at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

Gaffe (n.): Saying what you really think before you belatedly realize that you shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag.

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in fact his words express exactly the policy of this delusional administration.

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Note the bias in the google news blurb: He’s the victim of those oil rich Southwesterners and Republicans ‘targeting’ him for some innocuous two year old statement.

..

That was surprisingly quick. He must not have been a made man yet.

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He wasn’t singled out because he said “crucify”, he was singled out because he confirmed their M.O. Among the left, that’s the ultimate crime and is punishable by administrative death (or forced administrative suicide, as in this case).

EPA official resigns after ‘crucify’ comment outcry
By Dylan Stableford Senior Media Reporter | The Lookout – 1 hr 58 mins ago

Al Armendariz, the Environmental Protection Agency official at the center of a budding scandal surrounding a 2010 video in which he said the EPA should "crucify" polluters, has resigned.

Armendariz, head of the EPA's South and Southwest region in Dallas, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson late Sunday informing her of his decision to step down.

"As I have expressed publicly, and to you directly, I regret comments I made several years ago that do not in any way reflect my work as regional administrator," he wrote. "As importantly, they do not represent the work you have overseen as E.P.A. administrator."

Samuel Coleman, who served as the EPA's senior federal official in New Orleans during the agency's response to Hurricane Katrina, will replace Armendariz as acting administrator.

Republicans, already critical of what they call the Obama administration's war on energy, seized upon the video when it surfaced last week, calling for Armendariz to resign.

According to the Associated Press, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe led the charge, pointing to Armendariz's May 2010 speech as proof of the "EPA's assault on energy, particularly the technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking." Inhofe's office uploaded the clip, shown above, to YouTube.

Armendariz was appointed regional chief by President Barack Obama in 2009.

But "before SMU prof Al Armendariz had even warmed the seat at his post as EPA regional chief," Brantley Hargrove wrote in the Dallas Observer, "he was pilloried as an activist whose research into the air pollution caused by fracking operations made him unfit to run a five-state office overseeing some of the industry's most important drilling grounds."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...172924123.html

comments

This article does not give you the full extent of what he said. Look elsewhere to get the real picture on why he is resigning.

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would be nice if Congress had that attitude about waste and fraud in government.

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IF the Administration had a TRUE problem with what he said ... why wait until two years later > because it wasn't what he said ... it was what he said ON FILM and they didn't want to deal with the issue during the campaign.

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If all politicians stepped down after experiencing FOOT IN MOUTH disease, telling lies, or some radical rant, Washington would be a ghost town. That would probably be a good thing!

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Watch the Stossel television episode "Illegal Everything". There's a segment on the E.P.A.. It's sad and horrifying what they've done to people. You can watch it on Hulu.

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he Yahoo headline is totally bogus - it's not "crucify polluters" he said to 'crucify the first five guys they saw". You know, like the Romans. So, the EPA are the invader/conquerors and make examples of the first 5 guys so everyone else would be compliant. Meanwhile, it's the energy customer who gets crucified as well.

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This was on that really biased network Fox News a week ago. All the real legitmate news channels ignored the story. I guess they were too busy campaigning for Obama.

Feds shut down 100-year-old oyster company, destroy some lives and dreams
posted at 9:21 pm on November 29, 2012 by Mary Katharine Ham

Hey, no bigs. It’s just a 100-year-old company and California’s only surviving cannery, a sustainable, family-owned operation employing 30 people. The Drakes Bay Oyster Company has been in a seven-year fight with the federal government and environmental groups over whether it’s 40-year lease would be renewed this week. The Lunny family, which owns the oyster farm, was among a group of families that sold their ranch lands to the National Parks Service in the 1970s to protect them from developers, with the understanding they would get 40-year-leases renewed in perpetuity. After buying and operating the oyster farm without incident— they were even featured as outstanding environmental stewards by the National Parks Service— the Lunnys learned in 2005 they were accused of bringing environmental damage to an area the NPS and environmentalists were anxious to designate as the nation’s first federally recognized marine wilderness.

Sec. of the Interior Ken Salazar decided todaythe farm’s lease will not be renewed, http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...es-4077624.php despite some support for it from from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and serious questions raised by scientists about the research used to impugn the Lunnys. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...er-3242873.php

“After careful consideration of the applicable law and policy, I have directed the National Park Service to allow the permit for the Drakes Bay Oyster Company to expire at the end of its current term and to return the Drakes Estero to the state of wilderness that Congress designated for it in 1976,” Salazar said in a statement. “I believe it is the right decision for Point Reyes National Seashore and for future generations who will enjoy this treasured landscape.”

Please take 20 minutes to watch this video, a mini-documentary on how the federal government can bully a conscientious, small business into non-existence. It will make you sick to your stomach, especially as Corey Goodman, a member of the National Academy of Science and the California Council on Science and Technology, outlines the lengths to which the feds went to make it look as though Drakes Bay Oyster Co. was a polluter. http://vimeo.com/52331881

OysterZone.org has more information on the history of this fight. http://oysterzone.wordpress.com/ And, of course, a quick Google search reveals the federal government gives out subsidies for starting oyster farms on the East Coast while it’s shutting them down on the West. http://www.chesapeake-bay.org/index....culture-loans/ I’m gonna stop now because I’ve gotten this far without cursing.

My thoughts and prayers are with the owners of Drakes Bay and its employees and their families today.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/2...es-and-dreams/