Abolish The EPA

Abolish The EPA

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The EPA's recent move toward strangling the coal-fired electricity generating plants in America is another power grab by the "greenies" in the US government.  If not stopped by the Congress these new regulations will close and shutter dozens of coal-fired plants around the country and thousands upon thousands of workers in the electricity generating business, and businesses associated with them, will be out of a job. 

We are looking at a shortage of electricity in America if Congress does not vacate these regulations.  Rolling blackouts will be common here (in America) as they already are in developing countries.

I reside in Hurricane Alley so I know a thing or two about having no electricity for days and weeks on end. You are not going to like it, America.  But you'd better prepare yourself because it is coming as surely as a Martin flies to its gourd.

Look.  You may not like it.  You may not want to hear it -- but -- the plain fact is: Windmills and solar panels cannot produce the quantity of electric power a vibrant economy like America MUST HAVE to thrive.  It is simply impossible.  On the other hand, it might work if we bought Europe and covered it will windmills and solar panels.  But, frankly, I suspect even that would not be enough. 

Solar panels are great for powering driveway lights and small weather stations and such.  But to power a single city, like New York or Los Angles, you'd need an area larger than the size of Nebraska with nothing but solar panels twinkling at the sky.  It is a DUMB idea!

Windmills are a joke.  Unfortunately they are a lethal joke to the thousands of birds slaughtered by those whirling blades every year.  And they are butt-ugly!  Have you seen them?  Forget the little Dutch windmills on greeting cards and such.  They are tiny compared to today’s modern wind machines. 

Today's windmills stand as much as two hundred to three hundred feet tall and their blades span as much as three hundred feet across.  They are monsters.  Did I mention they are ugly, to boot?

Oh, and did I mention the secret bout windmills?  No?  well, you see -- they don't work when the wind is not blowing.  Now, when we say the wind is blowing, we don't mean the breeze we mortals thing of as "the wind."  No we are talking about the kind of winds you find on mountain slopes and along the shorelines.  Strong winds.  So, what happens when the wind isn't blowing and the windmills aren't producing electricity?  Well, power plants fueled by coal, nuclear power, and natural gas have to be fired-up to generate enough electricity to keep pumping power out onto the national power grid.  

When the sun's not shining -- solar panels produce zero electricity.

When the wind's not blowing-- Windmills produce zero electricity.

If you call the popular play and movie "Man of La Mancha," you will recall that he only TILTED at windmills (and he was as mad as a hatter).  Our dreamy-eyed President has embraced the cussed things.  (Did I mention they are ugly, too?)

The only practical electric car I have ever seen was a toy.  It actually did what it was supposed to do and that was to create fun for a child -- and NOTHING more.

While I am on electric cars -- I don't recall anyone saying what it would cost the owner of one of those battery powered cars when, and if, they had to replace the batteries!  I suspect one could buy a fairly good used car for what one would have to pay to replace those batteries.

Generally speaking, Americans are not dumb -- even though the Obama Administration gives every indication they believe we are.  Americans are not going to purchase electric cars for many decades into the future -- if ever.  Like the bullet trains the President is so fond off, so far as battery powered cars are concerned -- we don't need them, we don't like them, and we sure as heck, don't want them.

The EPA is the point of the spear for the green/socialist agenda in the United States.  I did not like it when President Richard Nixon created the EPA some forty years ago.  I feared, even then, the EPA would become and would do exactly what it has become and is doing.  Any agency with that kind of power -- and unanswerable to the American people -- can always be expected to go rogue.

A dark side of the human condition, human nature, if you will, is a thirst for power over one's fellow human beings.  Given an opportunity, sad to say, those who tend toward slacking their thirst for power will do so.

The EPA has become so powerful it defies the Congress of the United States.  In a free country a government agency gone rogue must be put down.    

In my lifetime there have been three, count 'em, THREE organizations that have wrought unspeakable damage on their respective countries -- the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, the KGB in the Soviet Union, and the EPA in the United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency has become a rogue agency.  It is power hungry and it has an agenda.  That agenda is based on a lie and a hoax, but it makes little difference because the EPA has the power to FORCE Americans to abide by the will of the EPA or be destroyed.  There is another agenda, akin to a "back story" to the pubic agenda of the EPA and that is the furtherance of socialism in America.

Make no mistake about it.  The green agenda and the socialist agenda are one and the same.  While environmentalism, much like a watermelon, is green on the outside, inside it is communist red.    If communism had an official religion, it would be environmentalism.

Again, we call upon the US Congress to abolish the EPA.  Funding should be cut off, entirely, until the dismantling of the agency is complete.

In an article entitled "The EPA Wrecking Ball," my friend Alan Caruba said:  "We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan." (SOURCE)

LINK:http://www.factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/03/epa-wrecking-ball.html

I could not agree more with Alan.  Sometimes it feels as if we conservative writers suffer from much the same curse as that with which Apollo hobbled Cassandra of Greek mythology. 

You may recall that Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but when she failed to return his love -- he added the curse that no one would ever believe her predictions.    

In the face of all our predictions over the past four decades nothing has been done to put a stop to this government agency that is off the reservation.  Now it has grown so powerful it tells the US Congress what it (The EPA) will do and dares the Congress to stop it.

The EPA has gone beyond the pale. As an agency of the US government, which is constitutionally answerable to the American people, the EPA is now outside the limits of acceptable behavior.  Its actions are now objectionable and certainly improper in a free country.

Abolish the EPA -- NOW.

J. D. Longstreet

Agenda-driven “science” at EPA ... by Willie Soon and Paul Driessen

Agenda-driven “science” at EPA

Newly proposed air pollution rules impose exorbitant costs for illusory health benefits

Willie Soon and Paul Driessen

In December 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency released new Clean Air Act “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.” Once again, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson touted the supposedly huge benefits of controlling emissions of mercury (Hg) and other air toxics from U.S. coal- and oil-fired power plants (or electric generating units, EGUs).

The people of Idaho may welcome this new rule, since EPA’s miraculous modeling machine has promised to prevent “six premature deaths” and create “up to $54 million” in health benefits by 2016 – even though not one coal-fired EGU in Idaho fits the EPA’s final rules. Even the District of Columbia, which has only one oil-fired unit, will somehow, magically realize “up to $120 million” in health benefits, presumably from new restrictions on coal-fired units in Maryland or Virginia.

The average U.S. citizen, however, can be excused for no longer being willing to be penalized by EPA – the Extreme Punishment Authority – for such minimal, imaginary and manufactured benefits.

In fact, the final rule may be the most expensive one ever devised by EPA. And yet, even EPA admits, the alleged “hazards to public health” from mercury and non-mercury emissions from American EGUs are “anticipated to remain after imposition” of the new regulations.

As to benefits, EPA computer models claim Hg emission cuts will reduce average per person “avoided IQ loss” by an undetectable “0.00209 IQ points,” with estimated “total nationwide benefits” of $500,000 to $6.1 million by 2016. For the electric utility sector, says EPA, net job creation from the rules will be “not statistically different from zero” and could be between minus 15,000 and plus 30,000 jobs.

In fact, the new regulations will likely eliminate tens of thousands of jobs annually, especially in energy-intensive industries that rely on low-cost electricity to survive and face growing competition from foreign companies that pay far less for energy, labor and raw materials. Small businesses will also get hammered.

“EPA cannot certify that there will be no SISNOSE from this rule,” the agency admits. “SISNOSE” is EPA-speak for “significant impacts on a substantial number of small entities.” In other words, the rules are likely to inflict significant economic harm on small businesses, and thus on the health and welfare of numerous (former) small business owners, employees and families. The agency failed to explain why it has once again ignored the adverse impacts on human health and welfare caused by its rules.

EPA also confessed that U.S. power plants actually contribute a  mere 3% of the total mercury deposited in computer-modeled American watersheds, and thus in fish tissue. Citizens will justifiably wonder where the other 97% comes from, and why we should spend so much money for so little benefit. (The “missing” mercury comes from foreign sources and from volcanoes, subsea vents and other natural sources.)

To see how extreme EPA’s scenarios are, consider five more egregious errors in the final regulations. First, EPA admitted it could “calculate risk” for only 3,100 (4%) of the continental USA’s 88,000 watersheds.

Second, for over 60% of the 3,100 watersheds it did model, EPA took only one or two fish mercury measurements – making it virtually impossible to adopt even valid 75th-percentile fish mercury values. There is a breaking point where extremely poor statistical sampling renders EPA’s pretentious number crunching, conclusions and rules invalid. That breaking point has clearly been reached.

Third, the agency’s estimates for mercury exposure risks are solely for “hypothetical female subsistence consumers” who daily eat almost a pound of fish that they themselves catch in U.S. streams, rivers, and lakes over a 70-year lifetime. That’s less than 1% of U.S. women. For the rest of American women (who eat mostly ocean fish, purchased at a grocery, on a far less regular basis), EPA’s rules are irrelevant.

Fourth, EPA admits that only 22 to 29% of its computer-modeled watersheds are “at risk” from EGU mercury, even when it erroneously assumed that at least 5% of total Hg deposition into the watersheds came from U.S. power plants. If the modeling criteria were tweaked only slightly – to reflect average freshwater fish consumption rates for American women, and require that at least 15% of total mercury deposition be attributable to EGUs – not one U.S. watershed would be at risk.

Finally, EPA ignores the presence of selenium in nearly all fish. Its strong attraction to mercury molecules protects fish and people against buildups of methylmercury (MeHg), mercury’s biologically active and more toxic form.

Combining any series of small probability scenarios results in a near-zero likelihood that the events will actually happen. If each of five scenarios has only a 20% chance of happening, the likelihood that all five will happen is 0.032 percent.

As the preceding analysis suggests, the probability that all the EPA’s improbable scenarios will actually happen is virtually zero; the likelihood that its new regulations will benefit human health is also zero. 

However, EPA still stubbornly “disagrees that [mercury] exposure levels in the U.S. are lower than those in the Faroe Islands.” Exposure to MeHg in the U.S. is “the same” as in the Faroe Islands, EPA insists.

The agency is simply wrong.

Extensive medical and scientific studies demonstrate that average Americans are exposed to at least 5 to 10 times less MeHg than average Faroe Islanders. The islanders consume large quantities of pilot whale meat and blubber – which is high in methylmercury, high in PCBs and low in selenium. As a result, their blood mercury concentrations can be up to 350 times higher than the mean blood mercury levels measured by the Centers for Disease Control for average American women.

The Faroe Islands study is irrelevant to mercury exposure risk for average Americans. EPA’s use of that study is deceptive. American women and children are safe from any likely threats from mercury.

To top it off, EPA itself proclaims: “The emissions limits in today’s rule are technology-based … and do not need to be justified based on their ability to protect public health.”

In other words, if the technology exists to eliminate these pollutants, the agency will impose the new regulations – regardless of their cost, their effect on electricity prices and reliability, their impact on factory and other jobs, and whether the rules actually do little or nothing to improve human health.

It has become increasingly obvious that EPA’s real goal is to assert its authority over ever-increasing segments of our economy; reinterpret medical and scientific studies to fit its regulatory agenda; and replace as many coal-fired power plants as possible with costly, unreliable renewable energy systems. 

American voters, elected officials and courts need to challenge these radical, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, demand an end to EPA’s distortion of science and reality – and reverse these flawed rules.

____________

Willie Soon is a natural scientist with strong interest in mercury and public health issues. Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality.

Minimal benefits, extensive harm ... Craig Rucker

Minimal benefits, extensive harm

EPA mercury rules for electricity generating units are based on false science and economics

Craig Rucker

The Environmental Protection Agency clams its “final proposed” Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rules will eliminate toxic pollution from electrical generating units, bring up to $140 billion in annual health benefits, and prevent thousands of premature deaths yearly – all for “only” $11 billion a year in compliance costs.

This may be true in the virtual reality of EPA computer models, linear extrapolations, cherry-picked health studies and statistics, government press releases and agency-generated public comments. However, in the real world inhabited by families, employers and other energy users, the new rules will bring few benefits, but will impose extensive costs that the agency chose to minimize or ignore in its analysis.

Emissions of mercury and other air toxics from power plants have been declining steadily for decades, as older generating units have been replaced with more efficient, less polluting systems or retrofitted with better pollution control technologies. While a few older plants still violate EPA’s draconian proposed rules – the new rules are not based on credible scientific and epidemiological studies.

As independent natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon and CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen pointed out in their Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily articles, and in Dr. Soon’s 85-page critique of EPA’s draft rules, US power plants account for only 0.5% of the mercury in US air. Thus, even if EPA’s new rules eventually do eliminate 90% of mercury from power plant emission streams, that’s still only 90% of 0.5% – ie, almost zero reduction. The rest of the mercury in US air comes from natural and foreign sources, such as forest fires, Chinese power plants and the cremation of human remains (from tooth fillings that contain mercury and silver).

EPA fails to recognize that mercury is abundant in the earth’s crust. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and released into the atmosphere when the trees are burned in forest fires, fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. In fact, US forest fires annually emit as much mercury as all US coal-burning electrical power plants. Mercury and other “pollutants” are also released by geysers, volcanoes and subsea vents, which tap directly into subsurface rock formations containing these substances.

The agency compounds these errors by claiming fish contain dangerous levels of mercury that threatens the health and mental acuity of babies and children. In making this claim, the agency commits four more grievous errors. First, it ignores the fact that selenium in fish tissue is strongly attracted to mercury molecules and thus protects people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic form.

Second, EPA based its toxicity claims on a study of Faroe Islanders, who eat few fruits and vegetables, but feast on pilot whale meat and blubber that is high in mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – but very low in selenium. Third, it ignored a 17-year Seychelles Islands evaluation, which found “no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects” in children who eat five to twelve servings of fish per week.

Fourth, it used computer models to generate linear extrapolations from known or assumed toxic levels down to much lower levels. Not only is this method contrary to sound science and epidemiology; it resulted in politicized “safety” levels that are twice as restrictive as Canadian and World Health Organization mercury standards, three times more restrictive than US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and four times tougher than US Food and Drug Administration recommendations.  No wonder the Centers for Disease Control says blood mercury levels in US women and children are already well below excessively “safe” levels set by EPA.

Simply put, EPA grossly exaggerated the health benefits of its proposed mercury rules – and then claimed additional mercury benefits based on double counting of reductions in particulate matter. It also ignored the adverse effects that its rules will inflict. Not only is EPA’s anti-mercury campaign scaring mothers and children into not eating nutritious fish that is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. It is also raising electricity heating, air conditioning and food costs, impairing electrical reliability, costing jobs, and thereby harming the health and welfare of countless Americans.

Energy analyst Roger Bezdek has calculated that utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit older plants – and another $30 billion a year to operate, maintain and power the energy-intensive pollution control equipment they will be forced to install. Moreover, under its MACT rules, EPA intends to micromanage every aspect of power plant operations. It will now cite companies for violations even if emissions fully comply with air quality standards, if operators merely deviate from new agency “work practice standards” and “operational guidelines,” even under unusual weather conditions or equipment malfunctions that are beyond the operators’ control.

While it is true that older power plants are more significant sources of toxic air emissions, those plants are mostly in key manufacturing states that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity. Many utility companies cannot justify those huge costs – and thus plan to close dozens of units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and small businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little to replace it.

Electricity consumers could pay at least 20% more in many states within a few years. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will pay 40-60% more. That will severely affect business investment, production and hiring – and family plans to repair cars and homes, save for college and retirement, take vacations, or have health physicals or surgery.

Chicago public schools will have to pay an additional $2.7 million annually for electricity by 2014, says the Tribune. Hospitals, factories and other major electricity users will also be hard hit. Many poor and minority families will find it increasingly hard to afford proper heating and air conditioning. Further job losses and economic stress will lead to further reductions in living standards and nutrition, more foreclosures and homelessness, and additional drug, alcohol, spousal and child abuse.

The very reliability of America’s electricity grid could be at risk, if multiple power plants shut down. Brownouts, blackouts and power interruptions will affect factory production lines, hospital, school, farm and office operations, employment, and the quality of food, products and services.

The impact on people’s health and welfare is patently obvious. But EPA considered none of this.

EPA insists there was strong public support for its rules. However, its rules were clearly based on false, biased or even fraudulent information. Furthermore, EPA itself generated much of that public support.

The agency recruited, guided and financed activist groups that promoted its rulemaking. Over the past decade, it gave nearly $4 billion to the American Lung Association and other advocacy organizations and various “environmental justice” groups, according to a Heritage Foundation study. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and members of her staff also visited historically black and other colleges – giving speeches about “toxic emissions,” providing templates for scare-mongering posters and postcards, and making it easy for students to send pro-rulemaking comments via click-and-submit buttons on websites.

This EPA action does nothing to improve environmental quality or human health. In fact, by advancing President Obama’s goal of shutting down power plants and raising electricity costs, it impairs job creation, economic recovery, and public health and welfare. It is intrusive government at its worst.

It is a massive power grab that threatens to give EPA nearly unfettered power over the electrical power we need to support our livelihoods and living standards.

Congress, states, utility companies, affected industries, school districts and hospitals, and families and citizen groups should immediately take action to postpone the MACT rules’ implementation. Otherwise, their harmful impacts will be felt long and hard in states that depend on coal for their electricity.

 ___________

Craig Rucker is CEO of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

EPA Attacks The GOP

EPA Attacks The GOP

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The Environmental Protection Agency has begun to feel our breath on their necks and they are lashing out. 

  

An article by Lisa P. Jackson entitled “Too Dirty too Fail -- House Republicans' assault on our environmental laws must be stopped.” appeared in the L. A. Times October 21^st, 2011.  In the article, the author says the following:  “Since the beginning of this year, Republicans in the House have averaged roughly a vote every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation's environmental laws. They have picked up the pace recently — just last week they voted to stop the EPA's efforts to limit mercury and other hazardous pollutants from cement plants, boilers and incinerators — and it appears their campaign will continue for the foreseeable future.”  (Ms. Jackson is the administrator of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.)

 To this I say: “Hallelujah!”  If America is fortunate enough to actually have a Congress and White House controlled by Republicans, after next year’s election, one of its priorities should be the abolishment of the EPA.

 The EPA is the “Vatican” of the pagan religion “Environmentalism.”  In this century, and the last, so many have turned from the worship of a supreme being, we call God, to what we used to call “paganism”… the worship of nature, or the environment, or… more specifically… Environmentalism.

 Yes, Environmentalism HAS become a religion.  Well, actually, it always was, it has just come back into favor in the past 100 years, or so.

 I do feel it is incumbent on the Republican Party to “put down” the EPA.  After all, it was the administration of a Republican President, Richard Nixon, which established the Environmental Protection Agency in the first place.  So the GOP owes it to America to put the EPA out of its misery … or rather, relieve America’s misery by abolishing the EPA.

 The EPA is the government agency from Hell.  It has grown in size and power like an insatiable beast.  Its tentacles have spread throughout America and reached into nearly every aspect of American life.  No one in America is safe from the EPA.

 And it continues to gorge and grow.  Just last November The Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled: “The EPA Permitorium.” In the article the WSJ said: “The scale of the EPA’s current assault is unprecedented, yet it has received almost no public scrutiny. Since Mr. Obama took office, the agency has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 major policy rules.”

 Look.  It was bad enough that the EPA declared CO2 a greenhouse gas. Many in my generation learned in their elementary school science class that CO2 is absolutely necessary for everything on earth to … LIVE. 

 Then the EPA decided to look into regulating DUST … you know … DIRT tossed into the air and carried on the wind currents.

 “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a crackdown on farm dust, so 21 Senators signed a letter addressing their concerns on the possible regulations.

 The letter dated July 23 to the EPA states, "If approved, would establish the most stringent and unparalleled regulation of dust in our nation's history." It further states, "We respect efforts for a clean and healthy environment, but not at the expense of common sense. These identified levels will be extremely burdensome for farmers and livestock producers to attain. Whether its livestock kicking up dust, soybeans being combined on a dry day in the fall, or driving a car down the gravel road, dust is a naturally occurring event." (SOURCE.)

Consider this from an editorial in the Oil & Gas Journal: “EPA, acting under authority of a loopy decision in 2007 by the Supreme Court, started down this wayward path in part to press Congress into action on climate change. Lawmakers should consider that an institutional affront. In the face of last year's collapse of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate, in fact, they should see EPA's persistence as the potential for a constitutional crisis.

This is an Executive Branch agency claiming control of a major dimension of the US economy in contradiction of the will of the people as expressed through Congress. Congress must stop it. Congress must set clear and permanent limits on the maverick agency's authority and behavior. Congress must act soon.” (SOURCE.)

Just reining in the EPA will not do.  It is not nearly enough.  The agency needs to be permanently put out of business. No government agency should ever have the power or the reach of the current EPA.  Shut it down, lock the doors, board-up the windows and throw away the key.

J. D. Longstreet

EPA To Turn America’s Lights And A/C Off!

EPA To Turn America’s Lights And A/C Off!

Singled-handedly forces America into 3^rd world status

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Not only will the EPA’s new ruling force Americans to turn off their lights and air conditioning, it is going to shutdown a HUGE portion of the coal-fueled power plants across America, causing massive lay-offs and running America’s already astronomically high unemployment rate into outer space!

Look.  We Americans are going to have to take the reins in our teeth and see to it this rogue agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is abolished… forever! 

I want to hear a Presidential candidate climb up on the stump and proclaim that if elected President he/she will see to it that the EPA is – not cut back- not reined in—SHUTDOWN, abolished, consigned to the dustbin of history. 

You may recall that our currently vacationing President told us this was coming IF he became President.  He told us electricity prices would “necessary skyrocket.”  Well, here it is.

Apparently, Mr. Obama and his legion of old hippies in the EPA have finally screwed-up enough chutzpah to shove their new regulations down the throats of the power companies and they have managed to do immeasurable harm to the economy of the United States. 

It is looking more an more as if the Obama team actually DOES believe that Obama is a one-term president and they intend to do as much damage to America as they can before they and he are booted out of the White House by the outraged American electorate.

Now is the time… today … to contact your congressperson and your senators and demand that the EPA is forced to roll back this catastrophic ruling.  Congress must step in and stop this destructive move by the EPA.

Talk about a “Nanny State!”  The EPA is justifying their move by claiming the following:  “The EPA projected the rule will save up to 34,000 lives a year and prevent more than 400,000 asthma attacks as well as 19,000 admissions to hospitals.”  (Read the entire article HERE.) 

The article goes on to say:  “Nationwide, the EPA estimated that utilities are projected to spend $800 million on the rule in 2014, in addition to $1.6 billion a year that's been spent to satisfy an earlier version of the regulations.

But the EPA estimates the nation will see $120 billion to $280 billion in annual health and welfare benefits beginning in 2014. (Read the entire article HERE.)

The first phase of compliance hits utilities in 2012.  That means, of course, it will also hit Americans in the pocketbook beginning early in 2012.

How much more must America suffer at the hands of an agency run amuck?  Is THIS the straw that will, finally, break the camel’s back? 

If the Congress of the United States is serious about helping America regain a healthy economy, the very first thing they should do, when they return from their August vacation, is to STOP this EPA regulation and take the necessary action to completely strip the EPA of all it’s power and close and shutter that agency’s doors … forever.

Getting rid of the EPA would hardly put a dent in the government’s micromanagement of American life.  But – it would be a start.

 

J. D. Longstreet

Obama’s Back Door Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Obama’s Back Door Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

There Must Be An Election Coming

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Once again the Obama Administration has by-passed Congress, federal laws, and the Constitution by granting what amounts to amnesty for illegal aliens within the US.

The Washington Times reported last week (Friday August 19^th, 2011) the following:  “ … the Obama administration said Thursday that it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, such as attending school, having family in the military or having primary responsible for other family members’ care.


The move marks a major step for President Obama, who for months has said he does not have broad categorical authority to halt deportations and said he must follow the laws as Congress has written them.


But in letters to Congress on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she does have discretion to focus on “priorities” and that her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases to see who meets the new criteria. (Read the entire article HERE.)


You may recall, dear reader, we warned months ago that Obama was seeking some method to grant amnesty to all those “undocumented democrats” in time for his reelection bid.  Plus, we have warned many, many, times that Obama would do whatever it takes to win in 2012.  This, I warrant, is just the beginning of the Obama Campaign’s shenanigans to secure his bid to return to the Oval Office in November of 2012.

The Washington Times article continued:  “The top House Republican on the Judiciary Committee said the move is part of a White House plan “to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants.”


“The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican. “The Obama administration should not pick and choose which laws to enforce. Administration officials should remember the oath of office they took to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land.” (Read the entire article HERE.)

When is enough … REALLY enough?  Seems to me this is the Obama Administration thumbing its nose at federal law.

When, oh, when, is the Congress going to grow a spine and confront the Obama White House and explain that America does not have a KING!  We have a constitution and the Obama Administration is trampling all over it.

How many times must we repeat that illegal aliens are law-breakers, criminals, and ought to be jailed and deported… period?

As soon as Congress returns it must pass legislation that outlaws exactly what the Obama Administration is doing by granting illegal aliens amnesty and refusing to comply with the federal laws already on the books.  Seems to me this is serious grounds for impeachment proceedings. 

This is such an in-your-face move aimed directly at the Congress that it defies explanation other than the Obama Administration has decided they are going to lose nest year and they’ve just decided to throw everything they have at the American people, and the Congress, and see what sticks.

And, really, isn’t it about time we rid ourselves of the Department of Homeland Security?  I mean, it might have been a good idea at the time (one I did not agree with) but DHS has taken on far too much power and the fear of DHS by the American people rivals that of the German people for Hitler’s Gestapo.  Even the name sounds like one of the Third Reich’s numerous security departments.  Its not as if we don’t have enough intelligence agencies … we do.  DHS is acting more like some state secret police than is comfortable for the people of a constitutional republic. 

The Congress should cut off all funding for DHS and do so immediately.  Just shut it down.  It has grown far too powerful and is entirely too easy to manipulate by an administration, any administration, that wishes to force its will on the American people.  In my opinion, it has become a threat to the liberty and freedom of Americans.

If this Congress allows the Obama Administration, including the Dept. of Homeland Security, to get away with this blatant refusal to enforce immigration laws, the law of the land, passed into law by the people’s representatives in the national legislature, then not a single currently serving senator or congressperson should be allowed to keep their seats in the Congress.

Look.  It is very simple.  If a department of government, or even a President, is allowed to refuse to uphold any law they choose, then what’s to stop them from refusing to recognize any other law they choose… say… like … oh, the second amendment, for instance?

The whole thing smacks of illegal amnesty for illegal aliens.  Shouldn’t SOMEONE be drawing articles of impeachment?  If we don’t stop this unlawful power play by the administration … what will they do next, huh? 

It is long past time for the Obama Administration to be brought to heel.  If we wait for the election – there may NOT BE AN ELECTION.  There ARE ways to, uh, “postpone” an election.  Do we really want to take that chance?

J. D. Longstreet