UPDATE: I got a direct email from the EPA with a statement. See below.
From Investors Business Daily:
Clandestine Government: During his first full day in the White House, Barack Obama promised he’d brought with him “a new era of open government.” Yet again, we have a promise that hasn’t been kept.
Among the administration’s many violations of public trust to recently become public is the Environmental Protection Agency’s apparent attempt to keep some of its correspondence hidden from the light of day through the use of aliases.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, for instance, has reportedly used the name “Richard Windsor” to cover her tracks in private emails.
Federal law prohibits the government from using private emails for official communications unless they are appropriately stored and can be tracked. Because things look suspicious at the EPA, the House Science Committee is investigating the possibility that the agency has conducted business it doesn’t want the public to see.
On Friday, the committee delivered letters to the EPA and “various agency inspectors general” seeking to find out if “senior personnel have been conducting official business through secretive means such as aliases and private email accounts.”
The letters, sent by committee Republican members, express concern that “senior Obama Administration appointees” might be violating the Federal Records Act, Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and “other statutes designed to facilitate transparency and oversight.”
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/111912-634046-epa-lisa-jackson-emailing-as-richard-windsor.htm#ixzz2ClZF2f8J
UPDATE: This email was sent directly to me this morning, comments follow.
============================================================
From: Johnson.Alisha@xxxxxx.epa.gov
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 9:16 AM
To: awatts@xxxxxx.xxx
Subject: EPA Statement
Want to make sure you have EPA’s statement on your story this a.m. This is attributable to EPA, the Agency.
For more than a decade, EPA Administrators have been assigned two official, government-issued email accounts: a public account and an internal account. The email address for the public account is posted on EPA’s website and is used by hundreds of thousands of Americans to send messages to the Administrator. The internal account is an everyday, working email account of the Administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.
Given the large volume of emails sent to the public account –more than 1.5 million in fiscal year 2012, for instance – the internal email account is necessary for effective management and communication between the Administrator and agency colleagues.
In the case of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, both the public and internal accounts are reviewed for responsive records, and responsive records from both accounts are provided to FOIA requesters.
=============================================================
That may be so, but it doesn’t explain these things.
1. Why is the account named “Richard Windsor” instead of something like headadmin.internal@internalmail.epa.gov
2. Why there’s no “Richard Windsor” listed at EPA
3. The reticence at making emails public, as required by law.
The EPA has failed to convince.
See this new post where Horner responds here:
To fredb:
The original comment from John Marshall is somewhat of an overreaction. The EPA is not literally trying to kill US industry.
However, the current administration has been levying more restrictive rules at the rate of some
17,000 per year. (source: George Mason University Mercatus center http://regdata.mercatus.org/ ).
The burden of these regulations falls disproportionately on smaller businesses. Larger businesses can better absorb the cost of the regulations. This is one of the reasons why small businesses, faced with high and rising costs, have not been creating jobs at the rate expected. Small businesses in the US have traditionally created between 50%-70% of new jobs during economic recoveries.
The net effect is not to “kill” US industry, but it does curtail economic growth. Large businesses are generally more mature and do not grow quickly. Why has the current administration more or less deliberately adopted policies which slow growth? Perhaps they believe that slowing US economic growth will slow the growth of all those evil CO2 emissions….
I can’t wait for the bidding war on Presidential pardons to begin in the final year of BO’s term. Bill and Hill set the standard for sleeze and now the Chicago gang will dwarf them.
Me post landed in the bin
Because I wrote the word “sin”
So please check there
To see of my error
Then release my post to appear herein.
How do we know she’s not been using it to cover up an illicit love affair or selling secrets to foreign agents or rigging the market or…..
Nothing will happen. Nothing happened when Hugobama illegally screwed the bondholders in the motor industry takeovers, nothing happened about the Fast & Furious gun running scandal, nothing happened about the Solyndra scandal, nothing has or will happen about the Libya scandal.
EPA running a rogue operation? meh…
fredb says:
[…] I fail to see the logic here.
*******************************************************
That’s because there is none. We’re talking about people who believe that carbon dioxide is the devil, and will somehow catastrophically heat the earth so that the oceans boil away.
You just have to ignore earth’s history, your knowledge of science, and that little voice in the back of your head whispering and pleading for a return to your sanity, and it all makes sense.
I wonder if she chose the name to sound like a member of the British royal family?
fredb: “I fail to see the logic here.”
Hi fredb
Welcome to the club!!!!!
Larry and most all of the WUWT reader community.
Well, if EPA is running a black ops. program, the surely it is just a sub-program of this one? ;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/20/another-indicator-that-climate-is-falling-off-the-threat-radar-cia-shuts-down-center-on-climate-change-and-national-security/#more-74570
Big D in TX says:
November 20, 2012 at 8:53 am
fredb says:
[…] I fail to see the logic here.
*******************************************************
That’s because there is none. We’re talking about people who believe that carbon dioxide is the devil, and will somehow catastrophically heat the earth so that the oceans boil away.
You just have to ignore earth’s history, your knowledge of science, and that little voice in the back of your head whispering and pleading for a return to your sanity, and it all makes sense.
No, they believe that man is the problem and man must be eliminated from the face of the earth.
If want to see if it is above board, we just need two FOI requests One of EPA sourced emails sent Richard Windsor. Second to or from Richard Windsor with the key words FOI or FOIA or server or USB.
“The EPA has failed to convince.”
That’s pretty much a general statement about them – on any subject. 🙁
She cannot stop Freudian slips.
RICH…..HARD…. WINNER (with the byline “of royalty”)
Maybe she uses the account to communicate to her lovers.
Maybe she is having an affair with a married man and sending him emails as RW is easier.
Maybe her lover’s gender suggests she should have a man’s name.
I wonder what’s there but until I read it in the National Enquirer…..I’ll hold judgement.
cn
Regarding failing to see the logic:
The problem is not a lack of apparent logic – – the problem is a misapprehension of the actual goals of the EPA & the people running it.
Their goal is not to promote business, nor even to promote the advancement of the principles or interests of the United States as a nation, nor the people thereof. It’s not even the typical misguided goal of preserving their stake in the bureaucracy, since political appointees have none.
Their expressed goal is the protection of the environment, not the nation or the economy… and their actual goal as formulated by the zealots currently in charge of it carries the unspoken subtext of, “regardless of consequence.” Which includes acting directly contrary to the purposes of the nation or the populace, or their Constitutional mandate.
Since their putative overseers in the Administration are willing to run interference for them due to commonality of goal, they feel free to operate with impunity.
Once you understand their actual goals, their behavior becomes perfectly logical. Ruthless and unacceptable to most people, but nonetheless logical.
It’s much easier to make the trains run on time if you don’t care who suffers in the process.
fredb: “I fail to see the logic here.”
——————————————————-
The “logic”, what little of it there is, is to pick winners and losers and by doing so reward one’s campaign donors, and often oneself (if one can hide the gain well enough). Coal = loser, so we regulate it as hard as we can. Solar = winner (read “our donors are heavily invested in solar”) so we regulate coal, oil and gas as heavily as we can.
The tragedy is that many of the “workers” in these organizations honestly believe that their work is to help clean up pollution, etc. While at the top the work is all about driving dollars to donors.
By the way, this is true for all administrations, whether Republican and Democrat. The only difference is one of degree. And the Chicago boys and girls have set a new standard. I’ll let each judge whether it’s a new high or low.
Just note that since 1961 four Illinois governors (including the two most recent) have gone to jail for bribery, fraudulent loans, conspiracy, fraud, perjury, and tax evasion. For those keeping score: three Democrats and one Republican.
Can anyone spot the pattern? Oh, and for those who always scoff at conspiracy theories… well here we at least one of the four who was convicted of conspiracy.
and
– – – – –
fredb & Larry Geiger,
I found that John Marshal gave a generic statement of the irrational / illogical nature of some of the more fundamentalist and radical intellects of ideological environmentalism.
Do you doubt that a significant number of that genre of intellectuals advocate against all modern technology per se? A little googling would be your friend to decide for yourself. N’est ce pas? It is hard stuff to give credence to unless you see for yourself because of its bizarre nature.
Is it reasonable to expect that the US EPA, because of some of its ideological appearing missions, has necessarily attracted some staff in admin positions that are deeply committed to the fundamentalist / radical intellects of ideological environmentalism? Again Google is your friend. See for yourself. You could only accept it if you see for yourself. Right?
John
@fredb
OK, to add to the responses above.
1. It’s ideological, only Green energy must be allowed.
2. It works well with crony capitalism. While denigrating large corporations, one can favor them in the market place by snuffing out the small competitors. Statism does not like variety, harder to control. See Dodds/Frank.
Maybe I should’ve added a /sarc tag
cn
@fredb
If you think that killing the coal-industry isn’t economic warfare against people, than you will continue to fail to see the logic of the remark. And they will not make themselves unnecessary, since oil and gas are next on the list, until there is no industry left. After that they will regulate anything you do when you work in your own garden or in your own barn to make a living. It will be a North Korean style society with ruthless supervision and regulation on anything.
Open your eyes!
So the EPA closely monitors WUWT, and responds within hours to the story?
I’d like to know whether a paid employee is monitoring, their name, who else is being monitored and how much it is costing taxpayers.
fredb says:
November 20, 2012 at 6:43 am
….Can someone please explain to me what the EPA has to gain in killing the backbone of a nations existence, and hence destroy its own existence? I fail to see the logic here.
____________________________________
The answer I am afraid delves into “Conspiracy Theory” territory.
In order to create a new society/government or whatever you first have to destroy the old because people just are not going to embrace something new until you move them out of their comfort zone, and you have to make them VERY uncomfortable.
We can go to one source who was a founding member of the Club of Rome, the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, attended the Bilderberg meetings (see p. 410) and lunches with the IMF and World Bank leaders in private on a yearly basis.
In his autobiography Memoirs on page 405, he plainly states:
David Rockefeller is a graduate of the London School of Economics whose founders were the founders of the Fabien Society (I suggest you learn about them and LSE)
Bill Clinton who gave the United States NAFTA, WTO, China’s entry into the WTO, the export of US jobs(unemployment now ~23%) and a climbing trade deficit is also a graduate of LSE.
Bill Clinton mentioned his much admired professor at Georgetown, Carroll Quigley at his Inaugural Address and thanked him.
In his history book, Tragedy and Hope Carroll Quigley says:
Quigley also states in his book:
In the article From Carroll Quigley to the UN Millennium Summit Steven Yates goes over the question ” Does such an agenda really exist, or are statements about conspiracies to create world government nothing more than “right wing” paranoia?”
You can also look at what Pascal Lamy, a former EU bureaucrat and now Director-General of the WTO has to say about ‘Global Governance” (Just ‘google it’ ) Lamy goes on in many articles about what it will take to set up an overarching world government, though he prefers to call it a global governance system. He talks about ‘legitimacy’ he says a governance system needs to provide legitimacy, which is essential to ensure ownership over decisions which lead to change — ownership to prevent the built-in bias towards resistance to modifying the status quo. This is where the financial crisis and global economic crisis come in. To get rid of Nations as independent entities you have to have a reason.
Lamy also make it clear he thinks National Sovereignty is old hat and holds the EU up as a template for the direction modern society should go. (see Of What Use is Global Governance?)
The last question of course is why ‘Global Governance’? The answer is the transnational corporations want it. Borders, tariffs and local laws, officials and politicians are a royal pain in the rear. They cost time and money. You have to bribe not one set of officials and politicians but a set for each country. There is always a chance a greedy politician will ‘nationalize’ your business holdings. So something like the EU makes a lot of sense IF you can get American citizens to go along with it.
OT, but the BOM Nino 3.4 SST index is currently 0.12 degrees and falling, for more than a week:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
The Nino 3 index has just fallen below zero:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
But the WUWT ENSO dial shows the value just increased from 0.5 to 0.7 degrees. Do we have a closet warmist controlling this dial?
“Federal law prohibits the government from using private emails for official communications unless they are appropriately stored and can be tracked. Because things look suspicious at the EPA, the House Science Committee is investigating the possibility that the agency has conducted business it doesn’t want the public to see.”
I think we can expect a huge crowd trying all at once to hide behind the word “official.”
Gail Combs says:
November 20, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Gail, there are lots of things wrong with the national state. And lots of good things. I see nothing wrong with trying to do something with the wrongness within.
The Steel-Union and EU is exactly a try at that. No wonder, after the West-Goths and the East-Goths has chrashed together twice now. ( French and Germans ). We are tired of it.
So after the US and British flattened the East-Goths the last time, maybe it was time to do something about it?
The people in North America already has the US. You can travel around within that territory freely with the same currency and no passport. Good for you. I think you see the benefit.
The Europeans could do that too before all the states popped up in Europe. Would be nice to get that back, me thinks. And international trade is the best peace keeper. Hence WTO.
There is no right wing against it. It’s the Statist’s who is against it. Those who like a strong national state. Per definition, that is the left wing, not the right.
The right wing, like me, wants individual freedom, democracy, free trade. No passports, no national currency, no borders to bother you when you travel. Don’t mix up what is left, and what is right.