Chris White Tech Reporter
January 23, 2020 3:53 PM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Thursday afternoon scaling back an Obama-era regulation farmers and energy producers said saddled them with unnecessary burdens.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rule change in Las Vegas, effectively hemming in a regulation restricting the use of fertilizers and pesticides. President Donald Trump promised to repeal his predecessor’s “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule when he was running in 2016.
Rolling back WOTUS saves landowners, farmers and businesses from being forced to hire “teams of attorneys to tell them how to use their own land,” Wheeler told reporters at a meeting of the National Association of Home Builders. The rollback is one of many the president is administering.
Trump rolled back more than 90 environmental rules and regulations during his first three years in office, The New York Times reported in December. The NYT relied on an analysis from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources to keep tabs on the president’s numbers.
The president often touts his record of nixing former President Barack Obama’s regulatory regime. (RELATED: REPORT: Trump To Roll Back Obama Rule On ‘Waters Of The US’)
“I terminated one of the most ridiculous regulations of all: the last administration’s disastrous Waters of the United States rule,” Trump told the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention Sunday. “That was a rule that basically took your property away from you.
The agricultural industry championed the move ahead of Wheeler’s official announcement.
“This is a big win for farmers, and this is the president delivering what he promised,” Donald Parrish, senior director of regulatory affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement to The New York Times, which reported Wednesday on the expected rollback.
Trump’s move to target another plank in Obama’s regulatory legacy comes as Democratic senators make their case for impeachment. The House of Representatives voted on Jan. 15 to send the articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate and approved the House’s impeachment managers.
I wish I could “like” this 100 times!
The reason the law says “navigable waterways” is that the Constitutional authority for federal regulation of those waterways is:
The legal theory is that navigable waterways are used for commerce, so regulating them is authorized by the power to regulate interstate and international commerce.
Note, however, that there is no Constitutional authority for the federal government to regulate intrastate commerce, nor non-navigable wetlands, nor farm ponds in Wyoming. The U.S. Constitution entrusts the States with those responsibilities, exclusively. The Obama WOTUS rule did not conform to the constitutional limits on federal authority, which restricts it to navigable waters of the United States that are usable for interstate commerce.
The case for extending federal control to Indiana swamps and Wyoming farm ponds (because they might be in some way be connected to navigable waterways, which could be used for interstate commerce) is exactly the same as the case for extending federal control to all roads and private driveways and garages and bicycle paths & sidewalks and hiking trails in America (because they are all connected & feed traffic to roads used for interstate commerce).
Follow that so-called “logic” to its logical conclusion and you end up with abominations like Wickard v. Filburn, and limitless federal governmental authority, and the Founders spinning in their graves.
The purpose the commerce clause was to promote trade among the several states and foreign nations. Under the articles of confederation each state had all kinds of taxes duties and tariffs that they levied against other states. Leave it to Obama and his gang to twist that backwards.
It was FDR who first bent those clauses beyond recognition. Obama merely extended the insanity.
It was the FDR court that ruled that a farmer growing corn to feed his own cows, was engaging in inter state commerce.
You are correct, Mark. That’s the Wickard v. Filburn travesty.
But President Obama’s WOTUS Rule and CO2 Endangerment Finding are much clearer abuses of power than anything President Trump is accused of.
Regarding the CO2 Endangerment Finding- climatologist Patrick Michaels in an interview on Fox- said that what triggered it was a suit by the state of Massachusetts which sued the EPA. I’m not surprised, living in Massachusetts for 70 years. It is a bureaucrat top heavy state which tries to regulate everything. I also found out recently that one of Michael Mann’s coauthors in his infamous hockey stick paper was a researcher at U. Mass. in Amherst. Massachusetts was started by the Puritans and they still run it. The Republican governor Baker is now supporting bills in the state legislature which will force the state to become “carbon free” by 2050- which of course is impossible. There is no viable Republican party in this state to balance the extremes of the Democrats. This state not only hates fossil fuels- they forbid the construction of a pipe to bring in natural gas from NY- they hate nuclear, they hate hydro because they say it damages rivers, they hate biomass, they hate pumped storage projects, and now some enviros here are saying they even hate large scale wind and solar- but they want to make the state carbon free by 2050! These crazy Puritans who once burned witches in Salem.
The three co-authors of the 1998 & 1999 “hockey stick” papers were Michael Mann, Ray Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. At that time, Mann & Bradley were both at U. Mass., and Hughes was at U. Arizona. Here are the papers:
mbh98: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/mbh98.pdf
mbh99: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1029/1999GL900070 or http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/ONLINE-PREPRINTS/Millennium/mbh99.pdf
Here’s the background for Michael Mann’s infamous “Nature Trick”:
It used to be that most scientists agreed that, over the last few thousand years, the Earth’s climate has oscillated, on timescales of a few centuries, between warm “climate optimums” and unpleasant cold periods: the long Holocene Climate Optimum (when temperatures were apparently substantially warmer than now), was followed by a cooler period, then the Minoan or Bronze Age Warm Period, then the Iron Age Cold Period, then the Roman Warm Period or Roman Climate Optimum (“RWP”), then the Dark Ages Cold Period (“DACP”), then the Medieval Warm Period or Medieval Climate Optimum (“MWP”), then the Little Ice Age (“LIA”), and finally the Current Warm Period (Modern Climate Optimum). However, that chronology represents a problem for climate alarmism, since it means that there’s nothing particularly unusual about the warming which occurred during the 20th century.
In a pair of papers in 1998 and 1999 (“mbh98” & “mbh99”), Mann, Bradley & Hughes challenged that orthodoxy with a new temperature reconstruction: their heavily-hyped “hockey stick.” It erased the MWP and LIA to create a nearly straight “hockey stick handle” from 1000 AD to 1900 AD, which was followed by a sharp “hockey stick blade” of rising temperatures in the 20th century.
A variant of the hockey stick graph from that paper, created by Phil Jones, also appeared on the cover of the World Meteorological Organization’s alarming 1999 Climate Statement. In that graph, at the suggestion of Tim Osborn, Phil Jones infamously used Michael Mann’s “Nature Trick” of splicing measured temperature data into a graph of temperature “proxies,” to “hide the decline” in climate proxies, which would have spoiled the “hockey stick shape” of the graph, discredited their tree ring proxy-based temperature reconstruction methodology, and undermined the narrative of alarming global warming:
https://sealevel.info/wmo_1999_climate_report_cover_hockey_stick_jones_bradley_mann_hughes_rounded_splice_points.html
Jones used identical colors for the proxy reconstruction data and instrument data, and rounded the three splice points to hide the splices. Despite the graph labels which claimed that the three traces were proxies, from 1981 on all three traces were actually real (instrument) temperature data (and the green trace was real temperature data from 1961 on). Yet the three traces of the same instrument data were slightly different, because, to hide the splice points, Jones had to bend the traces a bit, to make them line up with the three proxy traces. In this very enlightening video, Canadian mathematician and statistician Steve McIntyre explained it in more depth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqzcA7SsqSA
The Climategate whistleblower didn’t only release emails. He or she also released a lot of computer source code, and it is just as damning as the emails. Here’s a sample, and analyses by Eric Raymond and Robert Greiner.
The full collection of Climategate files is available here:
https://sealevel.info/FOIA
Press coverage of the scandal was predictably miserable, but Dr. Judith Curry has an excellent, balanced discussion of the “hide the decline” aspect, here.
The two best investigative reports on the Climategate scandal are probably this early one by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (“EPW”) Committee minority (Republican) staff, and this recent one by Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.
On the other side, here’s a 160-page report, commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia (UEA), purporting to exonerate the UEA CRU scientists of wrongdoing. It was the work of a five-man team led by Sir Muir Russell, who whitewashed the scandal.[alt] That very weak report raised eyebrows even at the left-wing Guardian.
The ultimate Climategate timeline poster, by Mohib Ebrahim, is hosted on Jo Nova’s site, here.
Journalist James Delingpole has followed the Climategate scandal closely, from the beginning, and he is very discouraged, because “the bastards have got away with it.”
The whisleblower’s “readme” manifesto explains why it is important that such scientific malpractice be exposed. He (or she) was motivated by his understanding of the tragic cost of climate disinformation. He wrote:
By the way, neither the modern UCC, nor the mostly irreligious Democrats who run Massachusetts now, resemble the Puritans who founded Massachusetts. (I write as a refugee from the far-left, nominally-Christian, United Church of Christ, which is what the Puritans eventually devolved into.)
Excellent re-cap, Dave!
I hadn’t seen that email by Osborn making the suggestion to Jones to hide the decline. Pretty damning, especially when Mann said no scientist would ever do such a thing.
“Here’s a sample, and analyses by Eric Raymond and Robert Greiner.”
Too bad the image links in the Greiner WUWT post are broken. I’m guessing the images were hosted on a third party site.
The logic used by the Supreme Court in that case was/is freightening. Essentially, they ruled if a person grew his own crop, then he would not be buying that produce in the marketplace, reducing the demand, and potentially the price. Since that product was transported and sold between the states, reducing the demand affected interstate commerce, so Congress could regulate the activity under the interstate commerce clause.
By that logic, everything we do, from cooking our own meals to how many squares of toilet paper we use per day, could be regulated by Congress. Virtually everything impacts interstate commerce, at least tangentially.
Thanks Dave.
This should be made a full post, as a reminder of the dodgy foundations that underly the entire Global Warming narrative.
Ralph
It was wheat – and it was wheat used in the farmer’s commercial dairy operation. Wickard was probably correctly decided. The problem in the opinion was that it was written with a lot of colloquial terms unique to the author’s region resulting in every subsequent court misunderstanding the holding & misapplying the holding. O’Connor was the only justice the got the holding correct in her footnote in raich. Unfortunately she was in dissent. Had she been in the majority in raich , then Roberts would have better precedent to overturn the aca case
Salute!
Thanks, Dave.
One local rag here in Florida had the headline claiming Trump “guts” the “clean water” provisions that a 50 or 60 year old law enacted. Sure enough, all the whining folks quoted were from splinter groups of the environmental movement to send us back to 1836 or so. The truth is that the unelected EPS agency folks act at the direction of the Executive branch secretaries, and then the POTUS can issue an order that does not even require congressional approval but uses all the $$$ that Congress has allocated and appropriated for the agency for good or for ill.
The intent of the various acts and such are not the problem. It’s the fact that the folks legislating are not being specific about what is gonna be regulated by the U.S. agency and what state and local entities regulate. In their wildest dreams the Senators and Reps that passed the “clean” water and air bills way back did not realize the door they had opened would result in federal regulation and such for things like cattle ponds, irrigation holding ponds and even natural spring water oozing outta the hillside.
The greenies are making outrageous emotional claims, but do not cite chapter and verse of all the regulatory issues the everyday farmer and rancher and homeowner face.
Gums opines…
There’s a reason why many constitutional scholars refer to the commerce clause as the clause that ate the constitution.
According to liberals, the commerce clause gives the federal government the power to regulate everything, with no exceptions. This power renders all the limits on government spelled out in the rest of the constitution meaningless.
And the replacement of 2 more liberal justices by Trump! could result in the beginning of the
end of the federal tyranny over the states.
Good comment, Gums. Obama’s revised WOTUS rule was strictly a power grab that was never implemented. To hear the greenies whine about the repeal, you would think this is a green light to start dumping raw sewage and toxic chemicals into all of our waterways. Typical hyperbole.
Excellent exposition, Mr. Burton. Now we just need Trump to replace Ruth Bader Gibsburg’s with a solid originalist and someone to challenge the egregious decision by the Supreme Court in Wickard v. Filburn that insinuated broad powers to the federal government that were not granted in the Constitution. Constrain the power of the federal government to its original Constitutionally-defined limits.
Oh you are Sooo wrong. Not about the Constitution mind you, but in your narrow view of “Navigation”.
I see ducks navigating in the cow ponds and temporary wet spots resulting from heavy rain all the time!
Seeing as how you completely ignore the rights of feathered water creatures…I declare you a DUCKIST!
(sorry for the use of such fowl language on this site)
Antiduckster. Adacktero. Duck and run.
Thank you Mr. Trump.
Go Trump Go !
…Winning !
The liberals won’t like that.
I would not like if the liberals liked it.
Does this mean that they are going to vote for impeachment twice?
Or maybe they will give Ted Kennedy dispensation to vote on this issue?
Yes two Schiff and Co
I’d say to not give them ideas – but they already had McCain “testify” from the grave…
This why Trump has to go even if it takes our politics closer to irreconcilable. They hate him. This isn’t Bush who they despised but also considered an occasional useful idiot. This isn’t Bush Sr. Who had no principles that he wouldn’t yield on. This isn’t even Reagan who they considered a lucky buffoon. Trump gores their most sacred cows and brags about it.
I have to admit I enjoy it so much I donate to his campaign via the annoying text messages they send me I feel like I should be paying a cover charge for this fantastic entertainment.
“……fantastic entertainment.”
Lol. I love it. My entire family thinks I’m nuts, but I’ve followed politics since Ike and Adlai and this is the greatest FU moment for me. Every day it’s a new trolling event and the other side is delirious.
I have long wondered at the expanded reading of the term “navigable waterways”.
… think “Jon boats and canoes ” …
“… think “Jon boats and canoes ” …”
It’s worse than that! Think getting the bottom of your shoe wet!
Waal, I s’pose you could flop a kayak in the ditch at the bottom of my field . . . 😉
When they started including ephemeral stream channels that only carry water in direct response to extreme rainfall, you would think the navigable part was questionable.
Question, when did the failure of recognizing private land constitutional rights occur? I know that agencies in the 70s, and at least for awhile in the 80s, respected and considered working with landowners and knew what navigable waters were. I’m guessing it changed circa 1990, maybe stretching (how fast?) from things like migratory birds and other crossings of borders as in the much older interstate commerce intrusion on farmlands telling them what they could plant, maybe related. Surely this has been researched.
I was mostly familiar with coastal laws, but it may be that this work covered it some. (Mitsch, W. J. and J. G. Gosselink. 1993. Wetlands. Van Nostrand/Reinhold) I have a 2nd edition (1993) around somewhere, but there was a 4th in 2007.
Isn’t the issue about where the line is drawn on individual rights? What happens when your right to do whatever you like on your land impinges on other people’s rights? Do you just say: It’s my land so if what I do here pollutes the water that you use on your land, tough! But what if you are on the receiving end? Are you really happy to have the privilege of putting up with pollution because you recognise this is individual rights in action?
Tom, are you serious? This regulation had little to do with pollution and everything to do with forcing landowners to kowtow to unaccountable bureaucrats. The previous administration wanted to tell farmers and ranchers that seasonal ponds were subject to stricter controls; most small ranchers and farmers are very good about limiting pollutants on their property because they LIVE there! The large agri-businesses are the major polluters and they have the money and influence to carry protection around in their back pocket in the form of bought-and-paid-for politicians. All regular pollution laws remain in effect so throw out that straw man!
“… What happens when your right to do whatever you like on your land impinges on other people’s rights? ‘
As in any common law country they can take you to court.
Which also has the virtue of having always been true.
Speaking of waters.. still lots of swamp that needs draining.. they fight back hard when you try to evict them.. Good Luck in 2020, USA. Keep on trucking.
Trump’s approval rating among farmers is up to about 83 percent. This latest ruling will send it even higher.
I remember not long ago the Leftwing News Media was claiming Trump was losing the farmers over his imposing tariffs on Chinese imports.
No, Trump isn’t losing the farmers.
Trump isn’t losing. His detractors are the ones who are losing.
Drat! I have some rainwater puddles in my yard I was hoping to have declared navigable so I could start booking customers for my toy boat cruises! Curse you, Orange Man! Always trying to make people work for a living! You know DemoKKKrats only like to make money by KRIME and KORRUPTION; they are largely allergic to work. That’s why they call us working class stiffs “deplorables!” We actually get dirty and sweaty on the JOB! Oh, the humanity!
Back when I was still sentenced to Commifornia I used drive around and check out the many beautiful houses I helped build; there is something intensely satisfying about seeing a visible manifestation of your labor! I’ll bet many engineers have similar emotions; bureaucrats not so much.
True! Remember, the Bureaucrats Creed & Religeous Mantra, ” I create hoops for people to jump through, & obstacles for people to struggle over, simply because I can!” When working for a vast guvment organisation that used to be World famous in Oxfordshire, UK, it was the bureaucrats who always had the last say, over & above scientists & engineers, because they knew best, & we technobods were just to mathematicky gobbledygook people no one understood! Because they were bureaucrats with no technical training that usually took years of study & training, they were always paid slightly less than we technobods in recognition of those skills. That all changed uner Thatcher bizarrely enough, being the only scientifically trained PM the UK ever had!
” Because they were bureaucrats with no technical training that usually took years of study & training, they were always paid slightly less than we technobods in recognition of those skills. ”
Alan. I think this point you made is very important and is the source of disstain that many Democrats have for anyone in a business that makes more money than they do. They think that they have this huge responsibility for many more people than business people and therefore should get more money. My reason for saying Democrats feel this way is my observations of the ones I know are pretty much the hooray for me and the he’ll with anyone else crowd. The Democrat leaders are the ones who take advantage of these short sighted type people and can get into office much easier by doing what these selfish people want rather than telling them that the things they want won’t be good for the group. I also understand that some democrats are concerned for the group and are easily mislead by their unscrupulous leaders.
Abolition Man – January 24, 2020 at 7:48 pm
You meant that as a joke but the fact is, the EPA has, for quite a few years, been prosecuting landowners, via the Clean Waters/Navigable Rivers statute, who have those temporary “rainwater puddles” if they correct or try to correct the problem by installing drainage tile or filling in the depression …. or for converting such “puddles” to a pond.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/279421-epa-settles-water-pollution-case-with-wyoming-farmer
Next President Trump needs to return most Federal lands to the States. The Constitution does not provide for Federal ownership of vast tracts of land, such as the 193 million acres owned (usurped) by the US Forest Service and the 247.3 million acres owned (usurped) by the Bureau of Land Management.
U.S. Constitution
Article 1 – The Legislative Branch
Section 8 – Powers of Congress
…To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; …
Most Federal lands were NOT ceded or purchased by consent of the State legislatures. The Acts of Admission of the western states specifically required Congress to “the primary disposal of the soil” to “bona fide purchasers thereof” which means Congress was supposed to sell those lands. But Congress never did. Instead the Federal Government kept them in violation of the Acts of Admission and the US Constitution.
Those violations have led to nothing but tragedy for the lands and the citizenry. It is past time to rectify the situation.
YES!!!!
Listen to Montana State Senator Jennifer Fielder, CEO of the American Lands Council:
Thank you Dave. I am having a hard time typing this because my eyes are filled with tears.
Mike, I googled you and found:
http://www.wfpa.org/news-resources/blog/restoring-the-legacy-of-our-forests/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150326201226/http://westinstenv.org/index.php?req=/
https://web.archive.org/web/20160328065843/http://www.giveusourlandback.org/
It looks like you worked very hard on this. I can only imagine your frustration.
This is wonderful news. I spent the last four years of my career working on a permit to fill some wetlands for a client with some low quality wetlands on their property. They had been farmed from the 1920s through 1975 when the client bought the property. Most of the land was left to go wild as a buffer from the local town.
2014 the client wanted to move a road and add some parking The state approved things in about 9 months with some suggested changes that were gladly incorporated in the plans. The feds dragged things out for 4 years with silly questions and demands that exceeded their authority.
I got paid a lot of money to get the permit but there was no job satisfaction. I was an engineer to solve problems and get things built to improve society. 2 weeks after the permit was signed I retired
I love the message this sends! While the feckless democrat political assassins continue their flailing and failing coup d’etat attempts on President Trump here at home, he guts another socialist power grab of the Obama regime, fearlessly speaks truth to the power brokers and climate change clowns attending Davos, and tells France they’re going to have to remove obstructs from US goods or he will place harsh tariffs on French products. Then he heralds the Brexit vote and tells the Brits we (USA) want to get mutual trade agreements in place with our staunch ally as soon as Great Britain is ready to negotiate. These are the actions of a Leader, God bless him!
In personal celebration, the next time I travel to Wisconsin, I will proceed with replacement of several corroded culverts under the driveway into a friends property, that flow creek water (the creek is less than 2.5 feet across and 6 inches deep in places, in summer) the Obama regime EPA declared ‘navigable’ and prohibited to ‘stream bed alterations’. Time to place the orders for larger culverts, bedding gravel, and get maintenance completed on the track hoe. I love it when a plan comes together!
Speaking of the “impeachment trial”. Who the heck watches that crap? After 1/2 hour sitting at my barbers waiting my turn in the chair watching it I decided I would rather have a root canal than sit through such bilge. Having been an SF soldier I have trudged through some pretty nasty swamps in my time but none made me feel like I needed a bath more than the short while I watched those swamp critters in action today.
Yes, it’s hard to watch. Not sure if what I am seeing from the Demcrats is delusional thinking or blatant lies. Probably a mixture of both depending on who we are talking about.
The good news is Trump’s defense gets its chance today starting in about 15 minutes. I think they are only going to go for a few hours today, then the Senate will be off on Sunday, and Trump’s lawyers will resume their case on Monday.
Well, I just watched Trump’s lawyers put on his defense in the U.S. Senate.
I think his lawyers case was a little plodding but they hit on every point and some of their rhetoric might have been a little too legalese for some people, but the people who that legalese was directed at, the U.S. Senators, understod the legal implications of what they were saying.
Trump’s lawyers have already proven that there was no “quid pro quo”, with today’s testimony.
The legal argument about whether Trump obstructed Congress is a slam-dunk for Trump to win. Trump has every right, even an obligation (to the Office of the President) to claim Executive Privilege. Congress then has the right to take that claim to the Supreme Court to have it decided, but this partisan Democrat Congress decided not to do that, instead they decided to charge Trump with Obstruction of Congress. The Democrats in the House are the ones abusing their power.
So, the U.S. Senators should take a vote on acquittal of Trump as soon as possible.
Trump doesn’t need to press for Joe Biden or Where’s Hunter to testify, or for any other witnesses to come forward, the case exonerating Trump has been made already.
Besides, trying to get Joe Biden or Where’s Hunter Biden involved would just result in Joe claiming Executive Privilege and Where’s Hunter taking the Fifth Amendment. So neither of them would be testifying any time soon.
I *would* like to have the whistleblower testify and Adam Shiff just to expose their corruption but it’s not necessary in order for Trump to win this case. I bet even Romney votes to exonerate Trump.
And don’t worry, the whistleblower and Shiff are not going to get off that easy. Senator Graham, Head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has plans for them. He might even bring ole Joe Biden and Where’s Hunter Biden in. The Judiciary Committee has plenty of time to wait on Supreme Court lawsuits being resolved.
And Btw, I checked out MSNBC and CNN after the president’s lawyers presented their case today and all the leftwing pundits looked worried to me. They should be worried. They just lost.
There is no indictable crime stipulated in either of the two charges and thus there is no impeachable offense.
Of course the Media Parry just lost its case. Now they’re kvetching about all the white men on Trump’s legal team, as though any statistically significant fraction of Americans cared about such racialist bean-counting.
“Of course the Media Parry just lost its case.”
Trump’s lawyers proved conclusively, imo, that Trump did not pressure the Ukrainians with the threat of withholding money from them unless they investigated corrupt Americans. It didn’t happen.
Now the New York Times claims the new Bolton book says Trump did try to pressure Ukraine. I doubt that Trump indicated that to Bolton but even if he did say something to that effect to Bolton, Trump never said anything to that effect to the Ukrainians. Trump never pressured the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians got their money without any strings attached. No “quid pro quo”.
It’s all over but the shouting.
They are in super-critical state of delusion-obsessive lying. At extreme lying pressure, there is no boundary.
The new rule and the rule it replaced had nothing to do with science. They are about the material scope of Federal jurisdiction. This is a purely legal issue. The EPA had lost a couple of Supreme Court cases where it asserted jurisdiction over non-contiguous or temporary bodies of water. Under Obama the EPA wrote a rule to assert a very broad jurisdiction, in an attempt to avoid those precedents. The Obama rule was probably invalid but it would have taken years and a lot of money to get rid of it. Opponents of the Trump rule will undoubtedly find some insane Federal District Judge to enjoin the Trump rule. But, I think it will eventually be upheld by the Supreme Court.
The sad thing is that the next Democrat administration puts all the rules and regulations back in 🙁
And the even sadder thing is that the next Republican administration after that probably won’t remove them. Supposedly right-wing administrations have a poor record of removing what left-wing administrations impose. In the 1950s we in Britain even had a name for it. it was called Butskellism – from Rab Butler (a Tory) and Hugh Gaitskell (a socialist). I reckon your Trump is a one-off. (Rather like Thatcher was for the UK.) Long may he reign over you. Pity about the two-term limit.
The hope is that the majority of Americans wake up to the dangers of socialism and their lies and distortions of reality, and reject it.
We’ll know the answer to that a lot better after the elections in November 2020.
Perhaps we can keep the socialists out of the White House for a few decades or more. Education of the population would be required for that but the radical Democrats are already giving us this education we need to see that socialism and radical Democrats are not the road we want to go down.
The radical Democrats are making a very good case for people not to vote for them.
Tom – be honest, you don’t know what Socialism actually is or does, do you? If you think the Democrats are ‘Socialist’, you’re so far off it’s incredible. If your idea of what Socialism is were to explode, a real Socialist wouldn’t hear the sound for three days – that’s how far off you are.
And who, precisely, is ‘We’? Do you now speak for the majority of Americans that didn’t vote for One-Term-Trump? Alba (one above) is right – Trump is an aberration. A nasty, ignorant, morally bankrupt, egocentric, narcissistic aberration that has turned the US into a laughing stock.
“Tom – be honest, you don’t know what Socialism actually is or does, do you?”
Of course I know what it is. Socialism wants to run every aspect of people’s lives. Socialists rule and the peons obey.
What I think is that socialism and communism are both authoritarian and intrusive, and I personally, don’t like arrogant, ignorant fools ordering me around, so I oppose political ideologies that do that..
Your opinion of Trump is noted. I will have a small amount of sympathy for you come November 2020. Be sure and get out there and vote. I’m going to.
“And who, precisely, is ‘We’? Do you now speak for the majority of Americans that didn’t vote for One-Term-Trump?”
It should be obvious from reading what I wrote that I was speaking for people who have conservative views and look at the world like I do. No, I wasn’t speaking for those who did not vote for Trump or who do not like Trump. I was expressing a desire that maybe some of those who did not vote for Trump will see just how radical the Democrats are, after watching this Impeachment Scam, and will decide that Trump is the better option.
Indeed, this has been a long standing problem. During the waning years of the Clinton presidency the administrative state went on a rampage of imposing environmental policies and specifically those limiting private property rights. Moreover, they encouraged and/or looked the other way as left coast states infringed more and more on private property rights. Bush did very little to roll back such policies. ( be it understood that such policies are in practice law, essentially short circuiting the law making process under the Constitution.)
They really intended this to just be a start and fully intended that Gore would follow through. They were chomping at the bit until 09. This is why they have been so alarmed by Trump’s victories, when Hillary was intend to finish a project 50 years in the making. This why they are hell bent on removing Trump now and not risking that he will likely get a second term. Trump is not like Bush or like McCain or Romney would have been. He actually does things instead paying lip service.
They are running scared of a second term because they know second term presidents don’t have to look at their reelection chances. That means Trump can really go wild on implementing changes and it’s not as simple as a stroke of a pen as Trump has found out. Implementing changes are years in the making and why I also expect an acceleration in Trumps second term. He and his team started working on them the minute he was sworn into office.
The other reason they are scared are because just how many judges him and the senate have been able to appointment. That means it will much harder to roll back Trump’s changes via lawfare.
When seasonal drainage that is so slight so as to not be able to float an inner tube, let alone a canoe can be declared to be a WOTUS, we have a problem of constitutional proportions. It is a coup against the very concept of a limited government of enumerated powers.
A business associate lived in a long-established subdivision. A rain runoff drainage ran diagonally through his back yard. A few parts were eroding towards his house. He sought to mitigate it and improve the property by slight diversion through a culvert that would also allow him better use of the back of his lot. Upon research he found that he would have to spend $10,000 on a study acceptable to some federal office and that it could only be performed by an approved engineering firm.
All of this because on the USGS topo map of the area, a dashed blue line comes up to approximately where his lot is.
Only after that study had been performed, could he hire another approved firm to propose a plan to “disturb” a “stream” that runs only a few hours after a sufficiently heavy rain. Through some accidental use of a Bobcat, some unknown party installed a culvert over a weekend and remediated the stream, and in the process substantially reduced the silting caused by the erosion. The unknown parties who did this escaped undetected by the ever-vigilant bureaucracy who survey the vast miles of stream under their weighty responsibilities.
Now that these bureaucrats are subscribing to satellite image surveys that highlight changes in land use, I don’t know if such an escape would be possible today.
Shameful tyranny. The only remediation we must seek is to remediate the respect the Deep State has for their relationship with those they are suppose to serve.
How do they deal with beavers?
Here is how one property owner handled it:
http://www.naute.com/stories/dam.phtml
Register them to vote as Dems then bus them to several polling places in states that don’t have Voter ID laws.
As a (small) landowner I was overjoyed that they got rid of the Waters Of The US (WOTUS) rule. I wrote a post over at my blog that might interest folks … and if not, there’re plenty more posts at my blog to interest or enrage people.
Here’s the money quote from my article:
Regards to everyone,
w.
Willis, next the EPA sends an armed agent to you he should be armed with replacement faucets and some tubes of WC outlet pipe “Sikkens Urethanekit 300 ml Elastic glazing and sealing compound”.
The one thing I truly love about Trump is his efficiency in dismantling the cobweb of insane regulations around everything. Just makes lawyers and consultants rich. Most of the time does not achieve anything worth having. Sure, some good stuff will go down the drain with the drivel but I would rather smash the regulatory layers of legalese concrete and crap to pieces and start from a clean slate. Too many special interests had their filthy claws on it.