Politicizing the EPA

One of the really infuriating things about the Left is how they really perpetrate the crimes that they blame on others.

For example, Fascism is an inherently Leftist phenomenon because it is an openly statist phenomenon. There is nothing conservative (in the sense of American conservatism -- not neo-conservatism, which is just Right-Liberalism) about Fascism. The common understanding of Fascism, however, is that it is inherently conservative -- and this is because the Left has spread this lie for the past 60 years. The Left created Fascism and openly promoted it for a generation. Then, when the Nazis made Fascism politically radioactive, the Left started a blatantly revisionist campaign to distort the popular understanding of Fascism. The Left did it, but they blamed it on conservatism.

Another example of this phenomenon is the "politicization of science". It came out last week that much of the data on which several key studies claiming to prove the reality of anthropogenic (that is, human-caused) global warming (AGW) was fudged. Tree ring data from Siberia (played up because it tracks the changes in global climate over tens of thousands of years) indicating that modern temperatures were much higher than the have been in millions of years were blatantly cherry-picked from a much larger data set. The scientists who had this data were, in a stunning failure of the peer-review process, never asked to disclose their data so that other scientists could test it.

The IPCC (the UN commission studying climate change), made up almost entirely of Leftists, based its recommendations in large part on these flawed studies, but apparently didn't even question whether they were legitimate. Why? Because the studies reinforced their own political beliefs. In other words, because they had no problem politicizing the relevant science -- a frequent accusation by the Left about conservatives. Again, the Left did it, but they blamed it on conservatism.

Now comes word from the Journal that the EPA is working in concert with Democrats to twist the arms of big business to promote the Left's "cap-and-trade" program currently up for debate in Congress.

"How else," says the Journal,

to explain the coordinated release on Wednesday of the EPA's new rules that make carbon a dangerous pollutant and John Kerry's cap-and-trade bill? Ms. Jackson is issuing a political ultimatum to business, as well as to Midwestern and rural Democrats: Support the Kerry-Obama climate tax agenda—or we'll punish your utilities and consumers without your vote.

Even better, the EPA is ignoring the plain meaning of laws like the Clean Air Act (CAA) to focus its partisan ire on larger companies.

The CAA was clearly not meant to regulate CO2, a fact that Democrats and Obama's EPA are ignoring. Their ignoring that fact puts them in trouble, though, because the CAA requires that the EPA regulate any entity emitting more than 250 tons of any hazardous gasses covered by the act. This would require the EPA to directly regulate tens of thousands of businesses, though, from major factories to your local Starbucks. The EPA only wants to target the major factories, however, so it's issued a new rule that only entities that emit 25,000 tons of CO2 will be affected -- something it has no statutory authority to do.

This is about as blatantly partisan as a regulatory agency can get, folks.

• The EPA intends to regulate CO2 because of Leftist ideology, not sound science.
• So, even though it doesn't have authority to do so absent an act of Congress, it issues a revisionist interpretation of the Clean Air Act to include CO2 (which was intentionally left out of the Clean Air Act, both in 1970 and when it was revised in 1990).
• Then, when its revisionist interpretation would lead to an impracticable policy situation because of the plain language of the CAA, the EPA ignores that plain language and comes up with its own standards.

And yet, in true Leftist fashion, the EPA is blaming politicization of the EPA on conservatives.

Just last week the EPA chief, Linda Jackson, gave a speech in San Francisco where she said, "In recent years, many Americans have had cause to wonder whether decisions made at EPA were guided by science and the law, or whether those principles had been trumped by politics."

We can answer that question for Obama's EPA very easily. Those principles have been trumped by politics. Such is the case with the Left.