Junkscience.com reports that:
EPA official Al Armendariz who rocketed to infamy last week because of 2010 comments about “crucifying” industry, has resigned from the agency.
Click for his resignation letter. (PDF)
Here’s the source of the uproar, this video:
Inhofe wasted no time going after this public servant turned crucifier.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, announces that he has launched an investigation into the Obama-EPA’s apparent “crucify them” strategy targeted at American energy producers. This investigation will look into EPA’s actions towards domestic energy production specifically in light of the agency’s recent efforts relating to hydraulic fracturing.
Inhofe’s announcement today follows several questionable statements from top EPA officials, including comments released in a little-watched video from 2010, which reveals EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz admitting that EPA’s “general philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies.
Unfortunately, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds more just like him at the EPA, an organization that seems to be at war with the industry of the United States of America, and the people too. See:
old engineer says:
April 30, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Mindbuilder says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:20 am
“Nowhere does it mention that what this guy was saying was that he was crucifying violators to make an example and get other violators to comply with regulations because he didn’t have the manpower to go after every violator. This is a standard and legitimate tactic of prosecutors and regulators. It’s not anti industry. There is nothing wrong with it.”
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I keep waiting for a WUWT denizen who is a lawyer to comment on this. My recollection from serving on Courts Martial while in the Navy was that the legal principle was that it not permissible to punish to “make an example.” Each case is to be decided on the facts of the case alone. I doubt if civilian law is that different from military law. From a legal standpoint, I don’t think it is a standard and legitimate tactic. Any lawyer care to comment?
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old engineer, firstly as I understand it this guy actually said that he would make examples of companies irrespective of the merits, by using the ‘shoot the first five men you see’ analogy. That is clearly illegal under any circumstances.
It is both impossible and undesirable to constantly monitor every participant in a regulatory regime for compliance. So, targeting of limited resources to high risk areas is perfectly legitimate, although best practice is to combine it with random checks so that lower risk areas do not feel that they are immune from scrutiny. As not all breaches (like all crimes) are detected, in a sense every prosecution is ‘making an example’ of the consequences of breaking the rules. But you are right that it is inappropriate and illegal to penalise any person or entity, whether in a criminal or civil matter, on any basis except the merits of the individual case.
Myrrh says:
April 30, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Isn’t the EPA a private company? If so, does this mean that any fines collected are profit? If so, then of course its brief is to regulate to the nth degree because the more regulations the more chance of violations and the more profit.
Nixon proposed the idea, as was mentioned before, Congress authorized the creation in 1970. Good idea…maybe…I mean everyone loves clean air and water…but it needs to be eliminated. It is redundant and not needed.
17,000 government Nanny’s looking after us…gee thanks!
We the People…at the rate things are going, there are more people dependent on the Government than there are people paying to keep it running…NOT GOOD.
He’s just the fall guy whose career has been ruined while His bosses carry on their agenda regardless. A foot soldier, not a general.
I just love the way these guys like to try and appear reasonable and reasoned at all times when underneath they reveal themselves to be the extremists.
Glad to be voting for Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.).
Obama says in the video if they cap and trade the CO2 with a limited ceiling, that will require retrofits and the cost of that will be passed along to consumers, inevitably. That is clear enough. He did not invent the idea and lots of others plan to do exactly the same thing. I don’t see why there is so much fuss just because he repeats it. A lot of his party supporters believe in that too. Why the big surprise? Obama didn’t invent Cap and Trade.
<sarc
Cap'n'Trade is a foreign ideology, right? Maybe some foreigners can be bombed into submission and it will go away.
</sarc
If smoke-chuffing coal burners (and many other industries) had not, in the past, been so silly about adopting very reasonable limits on their pollution of the local environment, it would have been a lot harder to convince a gullible public to demonise CO2. The refusal of coal burning plants to, for example, do someting as simple as inject calcium hydroxide into the flame path to dramatically reduce their SOx and NOx has had a downstream consequence: the public perception that they don't give a hoot about the environment, just making money, with a thin gruel of 'electricity should be cheap' served to the public hungering for more effective environmental management. The power companies falsely inflated the cost of reducing their emissions (into the billions, they claimed) to bolster the argument that doing nothing was the only viable, economic alternative. Had it been an American patent perhaps the result would have been different. We won't know.
The 'crucifixion experts' have walked into the breach to render court-upheld 'exemplary punishments' not because they are fair or reasonable, but because industries respond to fears of successful lawsuits. How many Love Canals or burning rivers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jxV6BbREfY&feature=player_detailpage would it take for private incentive to give way to concern for community? Note the phrase in the video about industry not responding 'to anything less than absolute pressure'. Well, they got it. In a society driven and managed by fear, why is it a surprise that 'both sides' are using demonisation and fear instead of rational argument? The real demon lies within. Does anyone think that changing Barak or Lisa will change the Climate of Fear?
In fact that would be a pretty good name for a book on the subject of extremism, industrial and environmental.
Curfew says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:02 am
There needs to be a purge of “nutters” at the EPA. A shedding of extremists from the top downwards. A large dose of realism!
To try to establish some kind of common sense to their thinking.
You know, make examples of them……..
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How about just getting rid of the EPA all together?
Or better yet restore the actual CONSTITUTIONAL DIRECTIVE that CONGRESS MAKES LAWS.
What part of “To make all Laws” is so hard to understand??? Congressmen now have up to 18 permanent employees, and the Senate may hire as many as they wish based on a budget that reflects the population of their state. Isn’t that enough people to be able to write any additional laws needed? Heck Congress did not allow large staffs to exist until the 1970s. Before the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 staff was rarely more than one or two advisers.
NO WHERE in the Constitution does it say that The Executive Branch has the POWER to make laws. NO WHERE in the Constitution does it say a bureaucracy under the President has the right to make laws. Yet the Federal Register where new bureaucratic regs are published, had 81,405 pages in 2010. The Federal Register was created in 1935 under Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). Much of the Constitution was trashed at that time because of the real threat of Court-packing by Roosevelt.After the threat the Supreme Court just rolled over and ruled as FDR directed.
U.S. Constitution Online
One down and 25,000 more to go, did he move to a job at IRS?
R Barker says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:12 am
EPA is the first place I would look to make some serious funding cuts with an eye to bringing the Federal budget into balance with projected revenue. A 40 percent real reduction would be a good start.
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How about a 75% budget cut to ALL the alphabet soup like the EPA, USDA, FDA, DoE, DoEd, DoC, HRS, CDC, IHS, NIH, HLS, HUD, DoI, DoJ, DoL, DoT, CIA, FBI, CPSC, FCC, FEMA, GAO, OPM, NASA, NAO, NRC and SBA.
Also how about a good hard look at the government pensions and reduce them to reflect pensions in the private sector. Not including Social Security, federal pensions are expected to reach 5.4 percent of GDP by 2015 In total, the USA spends more on pensions than it does on Education, Defense, Welfare, and Transportation. It costs tax payers a little less than government health care. ( total = State + Federal + Local)
Mindbuilder says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:20 am
I’m dissapointed in the above summary of this issue. Nowhere does it mention that what this guy was saying was that he was crucifying violators to make an example and get other violators to comply with regulations because he didn’t have the manpower to go after every violator. This is a standard and legitimate tactic of prosecutors and regulators. It’s not anti industry. There is nothing wrong with it.
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There certainly is when those targeted are the Mom and Pop outfits and the inspectors are told hands off the big boys. (as reported by Sancho Jones) Something similar was seen with the USDA. See SHIELDING THE GIANT: USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy
Ray says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:36 am
He might be just repeating the “philosophy” he was told to follow. Go to the head of the agency to know where this is coming from, really.
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That is the person who appointed the head of the EPA ~ OBAMA (or rather his handlers)
FYI: there is a feature article in HoustonPress on a fracking lawsuit where EPA first supported a water well owner Steve Lipsky only to back off early this year. Armendariz was in the thick of it. http://www.houstonpress.com/2012-04-26/news/texas-epa-fracking-well-water/
Gail Combs says:
May 1, 2012 at 11:35 am
Re:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
I’m puzzled. I’ve noticed several times that Obama is said to have studied the Constitution at Harvard – whatever that means – I wonder if they are teaching a different Constitution?
This is from 2008:
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2008/10/30/101091-thomas-obama-marx-and-trashing-the-constitution/
“A complete restructuring of society is what Obama advocated in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public radio station.
According to Politico.com, in that interview, Obama – “reflecting on the Warren Court’s successes and failures in helping to usher-in civil rights – said, ‘I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.’ ”
He has it backward. The Creator already endowed African-American people with these rights, which is precisely the argument powerfully made by Martin Luther King Jr.
Any rights that are “vested” in people by other people may be removed by the same or future people. Endowed rights are “unalienable” and what America did was to finally recognize those rights.
The distinction is crucial..”
“Obama thought the Warren Court should have “broken free” from the constraints placed on the Constitution and the courts by the Founding Fathers. This is remarkable hubris.
Obama said the Constitution mostly “says what the states can’t do to you . . . what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” That’s because the Constitution is about liberty and protecting citizens from oppressive and invasive government.”
Ah, here:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-professor/
“Sen. Obama, who has taught courses in constitutional law at the University of Chicago, has regularly referred to himself as “a constitutional law professor,” most famously at a March 30, 2007, fundraiser when he said, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.”
http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/obama-at-hls.html
“Obama helped research a complicated article Tribe wrote making connections between physics and constitutional law as well as a book about abortion. The following year, Obama enrolled in Tribe’s constitutional law course.
Tribe likes to say he had taught about 4,000 students before Obama and another 4,000 since, yet none has impressed him more.”
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2012/04/04/laurence-tribe-harvard-law-professor-constitutional-law-scholar-president-barack-obama-mentor-says-that-obama-misspoke-regarding-comments-about-scotus/
“President Barack Obama is going to rue the day when he made the ridiculous comments and vale threats to the Supreme Court Justices regarding “judicial activism” and Obamacare. Emperor Obama actually questioned how an “unelected group of people” could overturn a law approved by Congress.”
“How bad of a comment was this by Obama, even his former mentor, Harvard Law professor and Constitutional Law scholar Laurence Tribe was forced to say that Obama misspoke. Wow, if Tribe thinks that Obama was one of his best students, I hate to see the not-so good ones who have no concept of “judicial review” and Murbury v. Madison. Or is it just Obama that likes to mislead “We the People”?”
“You don’t think any harm was done, really? If Tribe really thought that no harm was done to Obama and Obama’s credibility he would not be commenting on The One’s misspeak and comment that Obama made was misleading people. ”
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Well, I think this all very odd indeed. Obama shows not the slightest grasp of the Constitution – how could he have got the very basic premise wrong in 2001?
What was he teaching..?
I agree with Gail…”Or better yet restore the actual CONSTITUTIONAL DIRECTIVE that CONGRESS MAKES LAWS.”
All rules and laws being enforced by the EPA should be null and void unless they have specifically been approved by a vote in congress. This idea that EPA gets to write its own rules and regulations and then enforce them as they see fit should NOT be allowed. EPA should propose a specific regulation to be enforced and them submit it to congress for a vote. If it passes, they get to enforce it but otherwise NOT. EPA should NOT be writing and enforcing laws at the direction of the president and his appointees. That is dictatorship and tyranny.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
May 1, 2012 at 8:54 am
“How many Love Canals or burning rivers […] would it take for private incentive to give way to concern for community? Note the phrase in the video about industry not responding ‘to anything less than absolute pressure’. Well, they got it.”
So you are saying tyranny (arbitrary handouts of punishment) is justified. That’s quite an extreme form of environmentalist statism; more extreme than even the German watermelons. Hope you find yourself on the wrong end of your argument someday. Say, when the EPA declares your property wetland.
Smokey says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:45 am
As I see it the EPA is in it for the loot that can be extracted by “crucifying” any company that violates one of its myriad rules.
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You are correct. One of the reasons farmers were having a hissy fit about HR875 (House version of the Food Modernization Act) was this part:
This is cut and paste directly from HR 875 with nothing added.
The Mega-Corporations have already been holding seminars on how to pass their liability for food borne illness on to the farmers. (Sorry Jim the info is not available to the general public.) THAT is what the change to HACCP in 1996 was all about and the 1995 WTO Agreement on Ag. The change was to the use of “risk assessment ” the identification of potential hazards and the critical control points (HACCP)/ review of written procedures and “traceability” instead of the pre-1995 traditional GMP, and close government inspection and testing of food. Corporations are no longer inspected except for the paperwork and thanks to the new law, the liability from resulting illnesses can via “traceability” be passed back to the farmer.
However the really nasty part was the EMPIRE BUILDING clause.
A civil servant is paid according to the number of people reporting to him. The more fines collected the more people can be hired WITH NO INPUT FROM CONGRESS. This takes away the Congressional leash (unfunding a bad program)
The final law did not include many of the nastier provisions of HR 875. However once attention has been directed elsewhere these type of provisions have a way of slipping back into a law through amendments. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act had over 100 amendments and every single one of the original provisions originally removed are now in the law.
@DirkH
May 1, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Crispin in Waterloo says:
May 1, 2012 at 8:54 am
“How many Love Canals or burning rivers […] would it take for private incentive to give way to concern for community? Note the phrase in the video about industry not responding ‘to anything less than absolute pressure’. Well, they got it.”
So you are saying tyranny (arbitrary handouts of punishment) is justified. That’s quite an extreme form of environmentalist statism; more extreme than even the German watermelons. Hope you find yourself on the wrong end of your argument someday. Say, when the EPA declares your property wetland.
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How is being a victim of industrial tyranny any better than being a victim of government tyranny?
Industry wants to ‘have total freedom’ and someone else wants ‘total control’. What argument am I making that I end up on the wrong end?
In case it was not obvious from my comment let me clarify: You swim with sharks you get eaten. You live by the gun you die by the gun. You seek absolutist freedom you get absolutist controls. I am defending neither. I am pointing out the stupidity of both positions. There is no space for fundamentalism in consensual governance. Even the Puritans had to admit that. The halls of WUWT often ring with the call of the tough lone cowboy. It is fascinating to watch but not an effective substitute for ‘the gummint’.
Love Canal, which is not too far from here, was a criminal act against the people, the State and the environment. That is excess of freedom. Banning coal fired power plants because of an imaginary future effect of CO2 is an excess of regulation. Both need to be moderated.
“The New Left – the Anti-Industrial Revolution”, by Ayn Rand.
(New edition titled “Return of the Primitives”)
describes many activists
Better, adopt the Soviet Army response: the “Vertical Stroke”. Demote or dismiss his superiors about 4 or 5 layers deep.
No, because the “nutters” have been hard at it for decades making sure none but themselves were left standing. It long ago became a self-selection process.
That’s really dim. Armendariz wasn’t dumped for saying what he said; he was dumped for doing that kind of cr** in the first place! It’s an abuse of authority and, as Imhofe showed, extends to noisy fake prosecutions and “determinations” that fall apart in court and are quietly withdrawn, after the public damage has been done. He’s evidently also working hand in glove with enviro-pressure groups.
BTW, the First Amendment is protection for those who dare to criticize the government. It has nothing to do with libelling private citizens or companies in order to intimidate. Get over it!