Posted by Tina
House Republicans have decided it’s time to look into the relationship that exists between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a lobbying group that “allegedly played a major role in crafting recent global warming rules and stymieing an Alaska mining project.”:
Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and California Rep. Darrell Issa sent a letter to the EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asking for records regarding the environmental group’s role in drafting a rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, and blocking a permit for the Pebble Mine in Alaska.
“It appears that NRDC’s unprecedented access to high-level EPA officials allowed it to influence EPA policy decisions and achieve its own private agenda,” Republicans wrote to the EPA and NRDC. “Such collusive activities provide the NRDC, and their financial backers, with an inappropriate opportunity to wield the broad powers of the executive branch.”
“The fact that an ideological and partisan group drafted a rule that places a tremendous cost on everyday Americans through increased electricity prices is harmful and outrageous,” the letter continued. “Accordingly, these practices must cease immediately.”
Amen to that!
When lobbying transforms from the democratic right and ability to petition government into a direct law making syndicate its time to pull the plug.
This investigation was sparked by a report in the New York Times in July that highlighted a proposal made by the NRDC:
David Doniger and David Hawkins, and the scientist, Daniel Lashof, worked with a team of experts to write a 110-page proposal, widely viewed as innovative and audacious, that was aimed at slashing planet-warming carbon pollution from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. On June 2, President Obama proposed a new Environmental Protection Agency rule to curb power plant emissions that used as its blueprint the work of the three men and their team.
The EPA has repeatedly denied that NRDC played an outsized role in crafting the agency’s carbon dioxide emissions limits, which aim to cut existing power plant emissions 30 percent by 2030.
The House Republicans’ report included the following:
“…the Obama EPA has been deliberately staffed at the highest levels with far-left environmental activists who have worked hand-in-glove with their former colleagues. The green-revolving door at EPA has become a valuable asset for the far-left and their wealthy donors. In addition to providing insider access to important policy decisions, it appears activists now at EPA also funnel government money through grants to their former employers and colleagues.”
The NRDC is supported by wealthy, influential entertainment industry activists like Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio and big corporate interests such as Goldman Sachs, Google and Walt Disney. Email records reveal direct involvement between former EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson and NRDC officials according to investigations into phony email accounts she had set up to communicate under the radar.
Every American, including those who own companies, have a right to talk with our representatives about their needs and concerns for our country. They should not be empowered to bypass the legislative process by making deals with government department heads directly to impose regulations, taxes, or fees or directing the awarding of government grants.
To make this matter even more despicable and suspicious, revelations of climate science fairy tales have been prominent in the news of late. People all over the world are waking up to the giant scam that has cost them dearly since the global warming scheme was launched.
This egregious power grabbing practice must be stopped! The ultimate remedy for abuses is an awakened electorate, exposure, and new management and leadership. Those we have placed in power have trampled on our Constitution and abused the power and authority given them. Our founders devised a system of checks and balances to prevent power in the hands of the few. No system is perfect, however. When our leaders become arrogant and overstep their authority it is up to the people to toss the buggers out!
This appears to be standard operating procedures for this administration. Using insider information and transferring workers from one dept. to another while denying their involvement in questionable practices under investigation.
Three that come to mind are the IRS, Benghazi and DHS scandals.
Defending the IRS:
A man who once worked for Lois Lerner is representing the agency in court.
“Investigations of the IRS are taking place not only in Congress but also in court. One case, which has developed slowly since it was filed in 2010, reveals much about both the long reach of the agency and the interwoven nature of the broader federal bureaucracy.
Defending IRS commissioner John Koskinen against the claims of the pro-Israel group Z Street is Andrew Strelka — and before joining the Department of Justice’s civil-trial section, Strelka worked at the IRS for Lois Lerner, who was then the agency’s head of exempt organizations. As it happens, this is the very IRS division at which the mistreatment of Z Street is alleged to have occurred — and Strelka worked there at the very time Z Street’s application for tax-exempt status was being considered.
Scott Coffina, a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath and a former Justice Department prosecutor says Strelka’s representation could violate Washington, D.C.’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers in “several” ways, in particular the rule that prohibits a lawyer from representing a client in a matter where “The lawyer’s professional judgment on behalf of the client will be or reasonably may be adversely affected” by his personal interests. “If Mr. Strelka was involved in the targeting of conservative groups,” Coffina says, “it is hard to imagine that he can give dispassionate advice. He would have a tough time evaluating the merits of the plaintiff’s case and advising his client on strategies in the litigation. He seems to have a personal conflict of interest.”
Another rule proscribes attorneys from participating in cases in which they might be called as witnesses, though Coffina explains that to be called as a witness and Strelka’s testimony would have to be necessary to the case. “The government might be able to get around it and keep the lawyer in place in there is another IRS employee available to testify on what the lawyer might testify to himself,” he says.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/383336/defending-irs-eliana-johnson
Missing Person Alert! Where is IRS Scandal Figure Andrew Strelka?:
“The IRS targeting scandal has all the intrigue of a political thriller. First it was the missing e-mails, then destroyed hard drives and now a missing person in the form of one-time Lois Lerner underling Andrew Strelka. On September 3, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding to know, by a Friday deadline, the information on the whereabouts of Strelka. In the letter Jordan suggested the Department of Justice was hiding Strelka from the House Oversight Committee investigating the IRS-targeting scandal. Incredibly, this accusation has yet to be covered by any of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening or morning shows. Strelka is important to the case because, as Fox News.com reported, he was “employed as an attorney at the Justice Department’s tax division, until recently represented the IRS in civil lawsuits filed over the targeting. However, Strelka used to work under IRS official Lois Lerner in the exempt organizations division of the IRS.”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2014/09/05/missing-person-alert-where-irs-scandal-figure-andrew-strelka#sthash.Fp1WxJsV.dpuf
DHS Muslim Advisor Admits Islamist Ties:
“A prominent Muslim advisor at the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has close ties to a convicted Hamas fundraiser and other radical Islamist causes, including a nonprofit that proclaims sharia is the only legitimate law according to Islam.
Incredibly, this Homeland Security advisor, Mohamed Elibiary, has regular access to classified information and is a prime mover behind two of the Obama administration’s most dangerous policies; normalizing relations with domestic and foreign Islamist groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood) and arduous enforcement restrictions of laws related to material support for terrorism.
While this may seem incomprehensible to many, it’s all documented in a disturbing report published this week by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington D.C. think tank dedicated to promoting national security. The 33-page document is actually based on a lengthy, five-part interview with Elibiary, an influential member of Obama’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Elibiary admits he’s a longtime friend of a self-described Islamist (Shukri Abu Baker) convicted in 2008 of financing the terrorist organization Hamas through his U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, the Holy Land Foundation. Elibiary reveals that he donated to the Holy Land Foundation monthly until it was shut down by the U.S. government and he defends Baker, depicting his prosecution as a case of political persecution.
He also admits knowing the Muslim Brotherhood “social network” and supports a partnership with Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. and abroad. “I simply find it counterproductive to American national security interests to treat the Muslim Brotherhood like the mafia, Nazi party, fascists, communists or any other entity we politically ostracize,” Elibiary says. He adds that Muslim Brotherhood members “naturally exist everywhere at this point, but that’s not a problem in and of itself because there have been MB members inside the US abiding by the law for a very long time.”
The document includes a number of alarming details of Elibiary’s close relationship with a wide array of U.S. Islamist groups, including the radical Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America which declares that the only legitimate law according to Islam is Sharia. The group also urges American Muslims to nurture hostility towards U.S. law, according to Arabic documents discovered and translated into English by the Center for Security Policy.
As troubling as this may seem, Elibiary wields tremendous power in national security issues, promoting a narrative that the Muslim brotherhood and other Islamists are moderates. He has also worked to purge even the most basic information about the doctrinal drivers of terrorism from U.S. government training materials. The root cause of terrorism and Islamic extremism is not the Islamist ideology but legitimate gripes against Western policy, Elibiary insists in the interview.
When former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Elibiary’s DHS appointment in 2010 Judicial Watch reported that he was a backer of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a well-known Egyptian jihadist named Sayyid Qutb. In fact, Elibiary participated in a tribute to Khomeini, the ruthless Iranian revolutionary whose teachings continue to govern Middle Eastern terrorist organizations like Hezballah. Last year JW reported that Elibiary leaked classified documents to a media outlet that had declined to do a story supposedly exposing DHS’s promotion of “Islamophobia.”
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2013/10/dhs-muslim-advisor-admits-islamist-ties/
We have a shadow government running things by keeping individuals hidden and what they do kept secret from the people entitled to be informed.
The only way this administration will comply with a FOIA request is after being ordered to comply by a court judge.
Peggy even then they ignore and delay, as you know!