WASHINGTON, April 9 – Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compel the agency to produce text messages sent by government officials, as required by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In December 2013, CEI requested the text message correspondence associated with a handful of top EPA officials and current Administrator Gina McCarthy when she was in charge of plans to regulate or tax carbon dioxide.
EPA previously acknowledged destroying all of Ms. McCarthy’s copies of her text message correspondence on her EPA-assigned account. This request sought her EPA colleagues’ copies, which EPA has stonewalled.
“This lawsuit challenges, yet another in a pattern of EPA, moves to block access to public records,” said CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner. “CEI’s FOIA request will reveal whether each and every one of Ms. McCarthy’s text messages to EPA colleagues were indeed ‘personal’, as the EPA has claimed to somehow excuse their wholesale destruction, or whether EPA has been destroying copies of officials’ use of this alternative to email. Under the law, there is no distinction between the two. If the latter is the case, it is unimaginable that EPA can proceed with its agenda without reconstructing the widespread document destruction and restoring the legally required record.”
Note: The core of lawsuit is EPA’s erratic application of statutorily provided fee waivers, which as Horner has documented previously, the agency has been far more likely to deny for certain right-of-center groups. (See: Congressmen demand end to EPA’s IRS-like bias against conservative, state/local FOIA requestors.)
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EPA, the center of the evil cult. Send spys into the center, report the truth to the web.
The U.S. Justice Dept. is the defender of this evil lie machine.
Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever.
Not.
Would be nice to have a insider to bring the data out. Makes it a lot faster. But now they blockt the data you cane know for sure there is something wrong whit it. Why would someone block data that is oke?
If the IRS fiasco is any guide, the lawsuit won’t go very far very fast. What is needed is Congressional inquiry.
Why is it that predominantly left leaning groups are so darned secretive, seemingly hateful of transparency, and generally authoritarian in nature?
Rud Istvan, I didn’t see a sarc tag, but surely the congressional inquiry comment was a joke. Which scandal has John Boehner allowed any of his congressional committees to get to the bottom of? Did you see Holder thumbing his nose at congressmen yesterday with no ramifications whatsoever?
“Congressional inquiry?” More specifically, what is needed is a Congressional select committee with subpoena power backed up by a truly independent special investigator. Sadly, the likelihood we’ll get either is slim to none, especially while this Administration is in power. if we ever hope to find out and see any justice done on these and more issues, we’ll need to pay particular attention and act accordingly in the coming elections. Any reprise of 2012 will ensure it doesn’t happen.
Can’t they just ask the NSA for them?
In UK there is a saying that government agencies use to snoop on us; “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.” You probably have a similar one in the USA?
Totally different when the boot is on the other foot; the left foot of course!
Joe Public says:
April 9, 2014 at 9:40 am
And Putin’s got them from Snowden. May be be easier to get than prying them out of EPA.
No need to look behind the curtain Dorthy …Every thin is just the way we say it is …I am convinced that the cart is indeed ahead of the horse but it’s not a horse that is pushing the cart but the Trilateral Commission with their front group The CFR ….http://www.augustforecast.com/ it looks like the duck ,walks like the duck , but for some reason sounds like a Loone ….peace
The ‘green’ ideology (based on CAGW non-science) is promoted by Holdren who is whispering intentional exaggerations in a gullible President’s ear, who in turn through the EPA, bypasses our representatives Congress.
I am embarrassed as a US citizen.
Go CEI!!
John
chris says:
April 9, 2014 at 9:27 am
Why is it that predominantly left leaning groups are so darned secretive, seemingly hateful of transparency, and generally authoritarian in nature?
It really isn’t just the “left” listing. Any group whose members are convinced they know how things should be in some area of life, and also believes that there is a great “need” to initiate or protect that state of being, runs to authoritarian attitudes in its members, regardless of whether it is the Communist Party or the Tea Party, Democrats or Republicans. You may have noticed that whenever the national list shifts to port or starboard that there isn’t any rush to make things “right” by easing the always tighter control that the state is granted over the individual.
Kipling wrote about this in “MacDonough’s Song” just over a century ago. It identifies arguments about war, abortion, the tyranny of religion, the right to weapons, and the malefic influence of state-funded academics and was published in 1912. Kipling’s only suggested solution was pretty much to defenestrate anyone who wanted to tell others how they should behave in public and in private. So, over 100 years with no discernible improvements – anywhere.
Chris – that’s like saying, “Why is it that volcanoes are so darned hot?” Secretive, opaque authoritarianism is the essence of leftism – see Kim Jong-un, Chavez, Pol Pot, Castro, Ortega, Honecker, Ceausescu, Stalin, Mao, Hitler & Mussolini (socialists for those who object they were righties), Lenin, Bakunin, Robespierre, etc., etc.
chris said:
April 9, 2014 at 9:27 am
Why is it that predominantly left leaning groups are so darned secretive, seemingly hateful of transparency, and generally authoritarian in nature?
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They must do in order to perpetrate their agenda. They cannot otherwise prevail.
Sadly, while the CEI has a case, Obama has the judges and DOJ. Nothing will come of it.
Cut their budget 5% per month until they can “locate” the requested information.
If you get EPA’s attention can you ask them if they intend to reduce their chapter 7.4 Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) from 2010 that lead them to conclude that projected atmospheric reductions on the order of 2.9 ppm CO2 by 2100 will result in a global mean temperature reduction of 0.006 to 0.015C and sea-level rise reduction of 0.06 to 0.14 cm from their GHG rule now that the IPCC came out with a new “report”?
Federal Register link for above:
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=57cadd3c-afb0-4890-bae5-3d6a101db11f
It’s about damn time!
Let’s support them…… and the contributions ARE tax deductible! From their website:
CEI is a non-partisan, educational and research institute operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. CEI accepts no government grants or contracts, nor do we have an endowment. Contributions to our efforts are tax-deductible.
http://cei.org/donate
Mac
The EPA is clearly a cozier gang than the IRS, their mission pretty well delineated by their title. Moreover, Lois Lerner set the transparency bar by refusing to answer any questions, invoking her fifth amendment rights. Corporate-related E-mails are still trickling in to the select committee as the IRS lackeys vet the ones they want to share, and the new commissioner, Mr. Koskinen, has promised his full cooperation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/us/politics/house-republican-accuses-irs-head-of-stonewalling.html?_r=0
I didn’t notice anybody laughing aloud during that congressional inquiry – but they might as well have been. I’d vote for contacting Snowden. Anybody have e-mail address?
WRT the passage above… you might check a few of your comma placements.
@Bill Parsons – it is now official – Lois Lerner has been referred for criminal prosecution. But then Holder was held in contempt, so I do not expect anything to come of it.
http://republicanleaderforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx?ID=417523-12486548
philjourdan says:
April 9, 2014 at 10:50 am
Sadly, while the CEI has a case, Obama has the judges and DOJ. Nothing will come of it.
Phil,
If you do nothing, it is a certainty that “Nothing will come of it.”
We must each be part of the fight to wrest control of our country from these crony socialists! Failure to fight them right now means the corruption continues without end.
Gads! How I have come to detest that fatalist ‘do nothing’ form of useless, whining resignation to political malfeasance!
Stand UP, Man! Fight Back!!!
Mac
@MtK – I agree! Sorry my post came off sounding like I was not going to fight. But I have no faith that the republicans in congress are going to. And definitely not the democrats.
The U.S. Justice Dept. is the defender of the EPA efforts to promote UNEP international Marxism?
President John F. Kennedy Speaks about this issue
Mac the Knife:
At April 9, 2014 at 12:13 pm you say
Mac the Knife,
If you misidentify the problem, it is a certainty that “Nothing will come of it.”
You are promoting the wrong fight.
Many (most?) of those promoting AGW are capitalists ‘milking’ the system for subsidies for ‘renewables’. The problem is the corruption. Political philosophies are not relevant.
Oppose the corruption and avoid allowing your political prejudices from hindering that opposition, or continue to promote your prejudice and fail to oppose the corruption..
Richard