SOCIAL ISSUES AND CULTURE REPORTER
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan requested $375 million and 265 new full-time employees to promote “environmental justice” in his Wednesday testimony to the Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works while defending the agency’s budget.
The EPA established the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (EJECR) in September and is now seeking a cash influx to expand those efforts through support for community organizations, according to Regan. About one-third of the funding would go into grants to outside groups, and the newly proposed budget would approximately double the agency’s funding for civil rights issues.
“In fiscal year 2024 EPA requests more than $375 million and 265 [full-time employees] for the Environmental Justice Program. The funding will help to expand support for community based organizations, indigenous organizations, tribes, states, local government and other territorial governments so that they can identify and develop solutions to their environmental justice concerns through multi partner collaborations,” Regan said.
“The development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies has not always ensured the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income,” Regan said. “In the long term, the vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws will address historical and systemic barriers that contribute to the environmental injustice affecting vulnerable communities.”
The funding request was originally included in the agency’s 2024 budget proposal.
“The FY 2024 Budget will expand upon the FY 2023 enacted budget to enhance the Agency’s ability to develop, manage, and award new competitive grants to reduce the historically disproportionate health impacts of pollution in communities with environmental justice concerns,” the budget reads.
The EJECR will already be distributing about $3 billion in environmental justice grants to minority and low-income communities the EPA believes have been disproportionately harmed by pollution and other environmental problems.
The EPA did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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More people working for the state dedicated to hindering commerce instead of conducting it. Will really help with inflation.
But then again, I doubt that the people they hire for these positions had any interest in participating in the productive economy. Academia can’t absorb them all.
if you can’t do it- teach it- if you can’t teach it- regulate it
EJ is now a big money game. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act and the Inrfastructure Act both include big bucks and set asides for EJ “communities”, which still have to be defined.
It is true that we have tended to build highways and stuff in poor neighborhoods because the real estate is cheaper. That this is unjust is not obvious.
‘It is true that we have tended to build highways and stuff in poor neighborhoods because the real estate is cheaper.’
Who do you mean by ‘we’?
Let’s not forget that ‘Urban Renewal’ was a huge part of the progressive agenda. Many ‘blighted’ areas that had well served previous generations of immigrant families on their way to the middle class were obliterated by central planners in order to build Interstates through the middle of cities, while displacing the residents into public housing towers to culturally and economically rot.
Urban Renewal had nothing to do with ‘cheaper’ real estate in particular, or bona-fide economics in general. It was just one other example of the use of collective force to achieve an outcome desired by our progressive elites. And the fact that these self-righteous elites also made more than a few bucks on the deal made it especially shameful.
I think every major city’s citizens suffered from the programs you mention.
Remember, many of the urban areas that are now populated by PoC were occupied in the late 50s and early 60s OTHER ethnic groups (Irish, Italian et al).
Eventually EJ communities will be defined as any community that reliably votes Democrat.
The Office of Environmental Justice should be based in Chicago.
Time to leave momma’s basement, and see the world. Highways are planned decades in advance. The land to be used, is then put under servitude, meaning nobody builds permanent structures, as the land belongs to the state, and you cannot buy it. Go see the maps at your local city engineer’s office, they are all marked.
Nobody plans a highway down Main street, they are access routes, coming in from the countryside, usually via the poorer neighbourhoods who could not afford land on the fresh hills or coastline.
It really is not about dissing the poor…unless America has more primitive planning habits than the average African country?
J#&%”F?%##C¡#&&, you can shoot yourself in the foot, you don’t need to pay $375 million for somebody else to do it! What could 265 eager bureaucrats, working on “environmental justice” possibly do other than gum up the already faltering world economy? Beam me up…
I know what they can do: find Environmental Injustices in need of payoffs. And invite friends, relatives and children to get jobs as Environmental Justice Warriors. Forever and ever.
Does this program have a kill switch?
Didn’t think so.
Every Third Reich kind of dictatorship needs its form of Gestapo.
instead of the word “bureaucrats” I use the word “burros”
Another name for reparations
Another name for bureaucratic expansion and corruption.
It’s time to cut the U.S. budget, not increase it.
It’s time to get the lunatic Democrats out of power. They are destroying this country.
There is no valid link between a healthy, productive environment and “race, colour and origin” of people living in it.
There is a connection with wealth. It has long been agreed that high environmental health correlates positively with high national wealth.
If the EPA has a need for a goal, that goal should be to help increase national wealth. Presently, they are trying hard to decrease it. What a balls-up!
EPA top management needs an overhaul because they are harming the country. Geoff S
“Keelhaul” is more appropriate.
“There is no valid link between a healthy, productive environment and “race, colour and origin” of people living in it.”
That doesn’t matter. To the radical Democrats *everything* is about race. They make their living pretending to represent minorities.
race and gender and “carbon pollution”- a trifecta
The EPA budget needs to be reduced by a lot until all of their science has been released and every action they have taken has been justified by that science. They are liars and cheats, they need to stop lying and cheating or be disbanded.
Just like the (not) Federal Reserve. (The Wizards behind the curtain)
I would like to ask Regan to define environmental justice. And I would then ask how that was justified by the black letter law establishing EPA.
And then cut EPA funding, anyway, for using bafflegab in a funding request.
And all of those environmental warriors think there are too many of you and me on this planet. There is the real danger when putting people with this mindset into power. For them we are just numbers and numbers have no human rights.
“And then cut EPA funding, anyway, for using bafflegab in a funding request.”
I was going to call it gobbledegook, but bafflegab is good, too.
No. Need to fire 265 EPA employees, starting with him and go down the list of all senior leadership across the board. At same time strip $500 million out of their budget and use it for forensic audits of ALL of EPA’s budgetary records.
No matter the issue, true justice is not possible, when partisans control the narrative and obscure the whole truth.
It is frightening to think of what kind of authority these ‘Environmental Justice’ Bureaucratswill have. What violations will they be looking for? What new regulations and policies will they develop to help enact their agenda? This would be the very definition of fascist.
EPA Greenshirts.
Recruited from the Climate Jügend.
“If you tack the word “Justice” onto everything to justify what you want to do without having a clue what justice means,
you might be a Green Shirt”.
What violations? They don’t like you breathing to start with.
Non-GMO, BPA free, gluten free, recyclable, certified vegan Kristallnacht
At least these will be good paying “green jobs”. Squeegeeing solar panels and picking up birds at wind farms only pays minimum wage.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see even one example of how they intend to throw our money at their friends? We are left to imagine how their banalities and meaningless prose turn into corrupt government handouts.
Simply tagging the word ‘justice’ can automatically forjudge any issue.
How about unborn child justice or sportswomen with x-x chromosomes justice or people who have been bypassed for jobs or promotion because of skin tone or gender justice, to name but a few.
EJECRS? Really? These w4nk3rs are calling themselves EJECRs?
I am now convinced these autoeroticist self-abusers are hell-bent on disturbing our sense of reality. They don’t care about truth, as long as you don’t have it.
What bureaucrats do, is create empires with nothing to do. Then the devil makes work for those idle hands.
No equally idle bean counter ever asks “what value do you add?”
I knew it, $1.5 million per person! Now that is a really good “compensation”!
If all is so clear, with a 97% consensus, that we are in a climate crisis, why all that time and effort, all that propaganda to persuade so many people ?
Seems they have no real base in their belief… 😀
WTF? FFS!
You are so eloquent (;-))
we re watching in real time the destruction of the only nation that has protected and brought stability to the world over the last 100 -120 years. but liberal progressives don’t see it that way. So they set out to “fundamentally change…. well everything” They are going to be in for a big surprise when the well of other peoples money dries up.
I really believe radical progressive liberalism is a sign of mental illness. Take AOC for instance- most people when exposed to the fundamental principles of economics develop an appreciation for the incredible dynamics and benefits in , productivity and innovation that results from a lightly regulated predominantly free market economy. When I discovered that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez actually has a degree in Economics from BU I was shocked. There is definitely something wrong with these peoples brains.
There are 400 plus elected national figures in the US government. How did now second term AOC become the most prominent and quoted of these DC phenoms?
Up to $520bln in debt write-offs needed for emerging nations’ climate goals “story tip”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/up-to-520bln-in-debt-write-offs-needed-for-emerging-nations-climate-goals/ar-AA19xIHf
(Reuters) – Up to $520 billion in debt needs to be written off to help developing nations at greatest risk of default return to a sounder fiscal footing and meet climate and development goals, according to a Boston University report released on Thursday.
The haircuts on debt owed to public and private creditors by 61 of the nations that are already in or are at most risk of debt distress are essential to avoid “cascading defaults,” according to calculations from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and the Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery (DRGR) Project.
BU Economics – so they are in favor of giving away all our money. “Economists “ that don’t understand that that debt represents the work product in labor and business productivity of millions of citizens over the years . And we have no say in any of this .
It costs $375 million for people to “identify concerns”?
Shut it down
“…the vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws…”
What the ‘bleeping-blap’ is the EPA doing enforcing “civil rights” laws. Is that activity included in the departments mandate from Congress?
A substantial portion of the “Anti-Inflation” bill was green projects and funding for “environmental justice” (apparently “racist bridges” are getting unruly) in disguise.
But to the Left, “more” is never enough.
The $375 million will be an annual minimum budget request, before considering vehicles, buildings, laboratories, etc.
The 265 full time employees will be eternal, working their careers at the EPA, then retiring and enjoying their government pensions.
Many government bosses promptly seek to expand their fiefdoms. Hiring new employees is a first step to building fiefdoms.
Human Resources will need to be expanded to handle the new employees as will facilities, network administrators, procurement, inspector general maintenance, etc. etc.
Regan’s plan is a boondoggle.