Watch the first installment as Senator Johnson explains the cost and expense of one man who tried a common sense approach to stop flooding in his neighborhood only to be thwarted by agency upon agency. Now more than 20 years later the man has spent all his money, is still waiting on permits. . . and there is still flooding.

Share this with your friends who don’t understand the problems of mismanagement within the giant self serving government bureaucracy.

Read the press release below:

Washington, D.C. – Senator Ron Johnson (WI), Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting and Oversight today announced the release of the first installment of his Victims of Government project. The series will perform oversight of the cost and impact of unnecessary, ineffective, and excessive federal regulations. Johnson also invited anyone who has been dealing with excess regulation to submit their stories on his Senate website.

“The root cause of our economic and fiscal problems is the size, the scope, and the cost of government – all the rules, all the regulations, and all the government intrusion into our lives,” Johnson said. “The Victims of Government series is designed to demonstrate that – in a very personal and powerful way. Over-regulation consumes massive amounts of the people’s money, too often lacks common sense, has no heart, costs jobs and economic growth.”

Today Johnson released a video explaining the case of Steven Lathrop, a resident of Granite City, Illinois who has spent more than 20 years attempting to comply with federal wetlands regulations. That video can be viewed on Senator Johnson’s website here.

Johnson also announced that he and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) have sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, seeking to clarify the regulations with which Mr. Lathrop has been attempting to comply.

Johnson said, “I am pleased that Senator McCaskill has joined me in writing to the Corps of Engineers to request their assistance in addressing Steve Lathrop’s situation. Hopefully shining a little light on this awful mess will lead to a resolution that allows Steve to get on with his life, and recover some of the investment that federal involvement has cost him.”

More information regarding the Lathrop case will be available at the Victims of Government blog on Senator Johnson’s website. Senator Johnson encourages people dealing with burdensome and intrusive regulation to share their stories, and anyone interested in the cost of regulation to check the website in the future.

The Land Stewardship Project is funded by the Joyce Foundation and billionaire George Soros and claims to promote “sustainable agriculture.” The group’s spokesperson wouldn’t disclose the cost of the busses or the number of passengers.

As reported by KMSP Fox 9 News, “a temporary statewide moratorium on frac sand mining in Minnesota passed the Senate Energy and Environment committee by an 8-4 vote Tuesday.”

Should the proposed legislation pass the democratically-controlled state house and senate, the very liberal governor, Mark Dayton (who benefited from a Soros-hosted fundraiser for his campaign), will promptly sign it into law, sending thousands of jobs and millions of dollars into Wisconsin and surrounding states.

“It will lock Minnesota out of the energy revolution that’s going on in the country,” says Scott Sustacek of Jordan Sands.

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To learn more about fracking, what it really does, who’s making money from it, and what the real environmental & economic impacts are, watch FrackNation.

Read the FIVE REASON YOU MUST WATCH FRACKNATION here.

Follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/erinhaust

Furthermore, as Peter D. Robertson, former chief of staff and deputy administrator the EPA during the Clinton Administration, wrote today on The Hill that ”the signature scene… shows a man lighting his tap on fire. What the film’s director didn’t show the audience was that the man’s water well had been drilled through four pockets of shallow naturally-occurring methane. State regulators determined well before the movie was released that the flaming tap water had nothing to do with natural gas development.”  In all, Robertson is exposing Fox’s hack job.

Furthermore, he states that:

According to an EIA monthly report, for the first time ever, natural gas produced as much electricity as coal. And that’s not all. The safe and responsible development of this vast resource drives economic growth; provides generations of workers with good-paying jobs; produces affordable, clean electricity; and contributes to revenue used by communities and states across the country… the industry is responsible for nearly 3 million jobs and $400 billion in economic activity. Thanks to low natural gas prices, the average U.S. household is expected to have an extra $926 in disposable income each year for the next three years.

Ann McElhinney, the scourge of the Environmental Left, is also known for exposing environmentalist  lies and has a highly anticipated documentary, called FrackNation, due out later this summer.   Flammable water has also been reported in areas of West Virginia, New York, and Kentucky where natural gas bubbles up into the water making it flammable.  That’s a good thing.  It means your land is filled with natural gas and you probably have a prosperous future ahead of you.  

I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. McElhinney at AFP’s RightOnline in Las Vegas last June.  She brilliantly detailed the lies in GasLand.  She travelled to Dimock, Pa, the epicenter of this whole debacle, and discovered that the news outlets only used eleven people to build a narrative that fracking was an evil venture.  Besides finding 1500 residents, most of them senior citizens, who said that the water was never good, the EPA released a statement on July 25th stating: 

…It has completed its sampling of private drinking water wells in Dimock, Pa. Data previously supplied to the agency by residents, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Cabot Oil and Gas Exploration had indicated the potential for elevated levels of water contaminants in wells, and following requests by residents EPA took steps to sample water in the area to ensure there were not elevated levels of contaminants. Based on the outcome of that sampling, EPA has determined that there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency.

Overall during the sampling in Dimock, EPA found hazardous substances, specifically arsenic, barium or manganese, all of which are also naturally occurring substances, in well water at five homes at levels that could present a health concern. In all cases the residents have now or will have their own treatment systems that can reduce concentrations of those hazardous substances to acceptable levels at the tap. EPA has provided the residents with all of their sampling results and has no further plans to conduct additional drinking water sampling in Dimock.

Dimock,Pa doesn’t have great water, but surely not a major health risk as many on the environmental left like to advertise in association with fracking. It was here that McElhinney did the math.  Eleven divided by fifteen hundred is less than one percent, therefore, she decided to make a film for the ninety-nine percent who were marginalized by the media.  An initiative that collected over $200,000 from Kickstarter to start production.

In all, Dimock is not a wasteland, Fox’s lies were also exposed by a former Clinton administration official, and Ann McElhinney continues to do her job in debunking the myths environmentalists use to flood the airwaves to curb economic activity. I think GasLand 2 could be a good piece of comedy at best and left wing drivel at worst.  I’m betting that the latter will be the case.

Barack Obama in January of 2008 stating his policies will bankrupt coal

As conservatives recover from the Supreme Court ruling, we cannot let Obama off on his unrepentant assault on American coal.  Obama’s war on coal is killing job throughout the country and it was disappointing that the Senate  failed last week to block the new EPA regulations that could bring the destruction of the entire industry one giant step closer.  As reported by Human Events:

Legislation to defeat an EPA emissions rule that critics say would kill thousands of jobs and raise electricity rates for consumers was killed in the Senate Wednesday. A handful of Republicans sided with Democrats to block the measure on a procedural vote of 46 yeas to 53 nays, including Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of Maine.

Democrats who crossed over to vote with Republicans included Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia. Republicans say the mercury emission rules for coal-fired plants are the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s war on coal.This effectively kills coal in America, said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), author of the measure. Republicans said the regulations are the most expensive rules ever created by the EPA, and will cost consumers $10 billion a year in addition to killing 50,000 jobs.

This comes after the closure of ten power plants in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic last February. A move that will increase the cost of electricity.  As the Washington Post reported at the time:

Jeffrey Holmstead, who headed the EPA’s air and radiation office under President George W. Bush and now represents utility companies, wrote in an e-mail that new wind projects coming online cannot simply substitute for coal plants because wind power generation is intermittent. And gas units, according to Holmstead, face pipeline supply constraints that can “take years” to resolve.

“The cost of electricity will go up — and in some places (including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania), it will go up a lot,” Holmstead wrote. “Existing coal-fired plants — even the old ones that don’t run very often — play a major role in controlling costs because they keep the marginal costs down during peak periods.”

It appears that this is one of the few pledges Obama has kept concerning bankrupting new coal plants. A promise he made back in January of 2008.  In the video the president states ”So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”  As Hot Air reported last March:

GenOn Energy Inc. plans to close five of its older coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania over the next four years.

The company, based in Houston, said Wednesday that tough new environmental rules make it unprofitable to operate the plants, which generate a total of 3,140 megawatts of electricity. The plants are in Portland, Shawville, Titus, New Castle and Elrama. Two plants in Ohio and one in New Jersey will also be closed. The company said the timeframes are subject to further review based on market conditions.

The Sierra Club cheered the announcement, of course, claiming it will prevent 179 premature deaths a year.  The Sierra Club is located in San Francisco, California, of course, and not in Pennsylvania, which will have to find some way to replace the production of 3140 megawatts of electricity each year.  The lack of production will make electricity even more expensive in the Rust Belt state where unemployment is 7.7% (about midrange for the US) and rising fuel prices will hammer the middle class already.

In addition, West Virginia placed three plants on the chopping block, which was probably a factor, besides distancing himself away from this toxic presidency, in Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.V.) decision to skip this year’s Democratic National Convention held in Charlotte.  As Gateway Pundit reported via Metro News:

Ohio based FirstEnergy Corporation announces it will close three coal fired power plants in West Virginia by this fall. The closings come directly from the impact of new federal EPA regulations.

The plants to close are Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and the Rivesville Power Station. The company says 105 employees will be directly impacted.

The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of peak demand for power.

The plants operated under subsidiary Monongahela Power. Mon Power recently finished a study of unscrubbed coal fired plants in the system to determine the potential impact of the most recent environmental regulations from EPA. Company officials determined the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) made it unfeasible to retrofit or continue operating the three plants.

“The high cost to implement MATS and other environmental rules is the reason these Mon Power plants are being retired,” said James R. Haney, regional president of Mon Power and president of West Virginia Operations for FirstEnergy.

Obama’s reckless policy of destroying affordable energy should be another issue in the Romney camp’s arsenal that could be used to hammer the president as anti-job and too beholden to the environmental left.  The war on coal continues and the fate of 100,000 jobs and the price of electricity hang in the balance.  Does anyone want to pay the Obamatax on top of a higher electric bill?  And that’s not counting federal and state income taxes, social security taxes, and medicare taxes. Feeling taxed enough already…you’re not alone.

Mike and Chantall Sackett and Pacific Legal Foundation’s Damien Schiff on the couple’s battle with the EPA over the agency’s claim their property was a protected wetland.

EPA! EPA!

As the EPA continues to run amok, especially in their stance towards coal, three congressmen have formed a bi-partisan alliance to rein in this leviathan of regulation.  According to Audrey Hanson of Human Events, the EPA is trying to stretch the Clean Water Act to absurd limits by seeking to “control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways. These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say:”

Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.

The unusual alliance of the powerful House Republicans and Democrat to jointly sponsor legislation to overturn the new guidelines signals a willingness on Capitol Hill to rein in the formidable agency.

The Obama administration is doing everything in its power to increase costs and regulatory burdens for American businesses, farmers and individual property owners,” Mica said in a statement to Human Events. “This federal jurisdiction grab has been opposed by Congress for years, and now the administration and its agencies are ignoring law and rulemaking procedures in order to tighten their regulatory grip over every water body in the country.

Twenty-six Republican senators have drafted legislation to curb the new CWA regulations.  In addition, sixty-four Republican AND Democratic members of the House have sponsored similar proposal. Hanson quoted Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming),  who captured how most conservatives feel about the EPA, declaring that “President Obama’s EPA continues to act as if it is above the law. It is using this overreaching guidance to pre-empt state and local governments, farmers and ranchers, small business owners and homeowners from making local land and water use decisions…our bill will stop this unprecedented Washington power grab and restore Americans’ property rights. It’s time to get EPA lawyers out of Americans’ backyards.”

“EPA’s mandate is out of touch with reality and forces refiners to pay a penalty for not using imaginary biofuels,” said API Director of Downstream and Industry Operations Bob Greco. “EPA’s unrealistic mandate is effectively an added tax on making gasoline.”

The Clean Air Act requires EPA to determine the mandated volume of cellulosic biofuels each year at “the projected volume available.” However, in 2011 EPA required refineries to use 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels even though, according to EPA’s own records, none were commercially available. EPA today denied API’s 2011 petition for reconsideration of the mandate and continues to mandate these nonexistent biofuels this year.

“The fact that EPA continues to mandate these biofuels that do not exist is regulatory absurdity and bad public policy,” Greco said.

API represents more than 500 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America’s energy, supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers more than $86 million a day in revenue to our government, and, since 2000, has invested more than $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.

The White House press secretary has tried to say that the Obama administration does not agree with these tactics, but you have to wonder, especially considering that a Candidate Obama said his plans would make American energy prices “sky rocket”.  Chickens coming home to roost, indeed.

Lord Moncton summed up the CCS technology Obama’s EPA is using as it’s main weapon in their war on affordable energy today as follows:

There are clear remedies that could be applied to conventional pollutants. The particulate issue can be rectified by covering stockpiles of coal, dampening and more efficient transportation. The toxic trace elements issue could be resolved by the introduction of ultrasuper-critical coal technology. This technology is not only greatly more efficient than all other forms of energy production but because it operates at such high temperatures it eliminates most of the real pollutants such as the oxides and mercury.

Coal companies are making a strategic error here. They should acknowledge and rectify the well-known coal-related pollutants, and argue the lack of merit of AGW theory, instead of hiding behind the chimera of Clean Coal or carbon capture technology [CCS]. The problems of CCS are obviously insurmountable: the energy required to capture the CO2 emissions when the coal is burnt requires about as much energy as the coal produces. Secondly, the final sludge containing the captured CO2 requires a storage space about 30 times the size of the quarry from which the coal was mined. To date CCS has cost the Australian taxpayers and the coal industry about $400 million. The coal industry could have solved the particulate problem and made a start on introducing ultrasuper-critical technology.

 The White House claims that the new rules will impact only new plants. But in fact, in the past three years, the Obama administration has hit the utility industry with new regulations on mercury emissions and cross-border pollution as well. This latest episode is just one of the many elements of the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy that will snowball into extremely expensive energy prices for the entire nation in the next decade. The Extreme Political Activists of the Obama administration must be reigned in immediately by the currently irrelevant [supposed] lawmakers of Congress. That starts with defeating Barack Obama in the November elections, and electing new members of Congress that will take a stand against the EPA’s unconstitutional mandating of Cap and Trade laws that were voted down by Congress in 2009.

The ill-considered, tough new rules on coal use could potentially impact one out of every five Teamsters Rail Conference members and as Pierce said “ it is not likely that new business generated on our nation’s railroads will ever make up for the loss of coal.”

The EPA had announced that up to 40% of the nations coal plants did not meet its tough new standards. Instead of granting energy producers more time to comply with the regulation, the regulatory body took a tough stance forcing electricity generators to announce the shuttering of their plants as they could not meet the rules in the time given.

Pierce also mentioned in his letter that in these tough times, America needs more jobs, not less – a fact not well understood by the current administration as it seeks to achieve Obama’s self-stated goal of making electricity rates “skyrocket”.

Pierce asked the administration to support the petitions for reconsideration of the new source emission limits that will be filed with the EPA. “We also ask you to include coal in your ‘all of the above’ plan for America’s energy future so that a balanced energy policy can be maintained,” he said.

As President Obama is relying heavily on Union backing for his re-election bid, the pressure coming from the Rail Conference may be well-timed. The White House has today announced that Obama will sign an executive order to grant permits to the lower half of the XL pipeline – perhaps this latest salvo from the unions will grant electricity producers a similar reprieve.

Never mind that America is currently drowning in $15,386,147,538,129  dollars of national debt the minute that total was written down here. The average American can not even compute what a trillion dollars of debt looks like, let alone the repercussions of the U.S debt to GDP ratio exceeding 100% for the first time in history. ( check out the chart in that link)

President Obama wants the American people to believe that he is holding true to his promises he made back in the 2008 campaign that he has refused to raise taxes on the middle class, and therefor he deserves another four years in the White House. He constantly spews the Socialist-designed rhetoric about folks needing to pay their fair share, while denying the fact that almost 50% of Americans pay no income taxes whatsoever. The problem inherent in Obama’s false campaign rhetoric can be found in the truth about the stealth tax increases that will hurt every single working and non-working American starting Jan. 1st, 2013. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence that the bulk of the Obama administration’s middle-class-crushing tax increases and vastly- expensive-to-businesses regulatory policies will go into effect after the 2012 presidential elections?

According to the article, The Coming Crash of 2013, written by Peter Ferrara back in the summer of last year, Americans are going to get a very harsh lesson in the reality of Obama-nomics and feel some very serious financial pain starting in the year 2013. For example:

Already scheduled now under current law in 2013 is the expiration of those Bush tax cuts, which President Obama has refused to renew for single workers making over $200,000 a year, and couples making over $250,000. Also scheduled to go into effect in 2013 under current law are all the tax increases of Obama-care. Together, these job killing tax policies would result in a sharp increase in the tax rates on the nation’s small businesses, job creators, and investors for virtually every major federal tax. (emphasis added)

Many of the hidden tax increases in Obama-care have been put on the shelf during 2011/2012 by the granting of temporary ”special waivers” due to the proven cost increases to businesses that were written right into Obama-care. Those waivers are temporary, and without major changes to the new health care law,  they will result in the tax man coming to collect major tax increases from all businesses small and large due to the tax hikes in Obama-care in… 2013.  For a complete look into the tax increases inherent in Obama-care please see the Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare.

Mr. Ferrara further explains some of the other economy-crushing tax increases implemented by Obama and his Liberal Democrats that are sneaking up on Americans in 2013:

 Taxpayers would see their income tax rates jump by nearly 20%, the capital gains tax rate increase by nearly 60%, the total tax rate on corporate dividends increase by nearly three times, their Medicare payroll tax rate increase by 62%, and the death tax rise from the grave with a 55% rate. This would go way beyond the outdated Obama talking point about returning to the Clinton tax rates, adding up to a top federal tax rate of 44.8% on wage income alone, besides all the tax increases on capital income, on the way up to a 62% top federal tax rate.

Can Americans consider the U.S.A. to be a free Republic when the tax man can lift a whopping 55% of a person’s entire life’s savings [through the estate tax, which is more aptly called the death tax] out of their family wallet simply because a family member has passed away? Yes they can, starting in 2013, unless people wake up to the realities that the Death Tax Man is coming in 2013 and he means business. Meanwhile Congress and Barack Obama have also reduced the revenue of the Social Security program by billions of dollars a year to score reelection points,while also adding to the national debt by refusing to offset the recent tax cut extension. Do Americans not understand what that means to anyone currently, or soon to be relying on SSI checks to survive? How about the young and middle-aged Americans who can look forward to paying into SSI for decades without any chance of ever getting a dime back out of it? That spells taxation without representation, any way you slice it.

Mr. Ferrara further explains the hidden taxes that will drive up the cost of everything due to unconstitutional laws being passed by executive branch fiat under the guise of ”rules changes.” (emphasis added)

Besides this tax tsunami, President Obama is implementing another trillion dollar plus cost burden on the economy through the EPA’s cap and trade tax policy. That is one central feature of President Obama’s war on production of traditional, low cost, energy, shutting down drilling, extraction and pipelines from the northern tip of Alaska, down through Canada, to the energy rich Western states, through Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico. Obama keeps issuing statements that he is opening drilling or permitting or exploration here and there, only to have it shut down by his bureaucracy soon thereafter. All of this will only raise energy prices higher and higher through to 2013, squelching the economy still further.

How many Americans know about the Cross-State Pollution law/money grab/tax hike that was passed by the EPA? That illegally-implemented tax increase on “certain states” went into effect this year. Check it out here.  In that Democratic party/ EPA extremist-mandated new “rule” California, the most polluting [and Democratic party stronghold] state in the country isn’t included in the Cross State Pollution law, as can be seen in the map of affected “certain states” in that article. How tyrannical and ludicrous is that? The  Cross-State pollution tax man  is already implementing that money grab right now in 2012. In 2013, all of the States under that new “rule” will feel the pain, one way or another.

Finally, Mr. Ferrara goes on to question just how an increased $2 trillion dollar tax burden will bear down on all Americans in 2013:

This is just the beginning, however, of President Obama’s re-regulation burden on the economy, which is estimated to be rapidly rising towards $2 trillion, or over $8,000 per employee, in annual costs even before EPA’s calamitous cap and trade really begins. That is close to 10 times the corporate tax burden, and double the individual income tax burden. With another 4,225 federal regulations already in the pipeline, and the new regulatory burdens from Obama and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill still to come, how high will that burden be by 2013?

After the tax man gets through grabbing a much bigger share of Americans salaries, savings, and cash on hand  in 2013,  the next biggest thief to reach into their wallets in the very near future, will be The Inflation Man. After all the hidden taxes and regulatory burdens are felt in the wallets of all Americans in 2013, the eventual economic inflation due to the Federal Reserves increased printing of U.S. dollars, [also known as QE2], will hammer American family budgets, as the dollar loses it’s value and therefor buys a lot less than it used to. Do Americans really want Four More Years of Barack Obama’s economy-crippling wealth redistribution, tax increase-inducing, and overbearing regulatory policies?

The comments were made by NADA director Forrest McConnell in testimony today at the final hearing on proposed fuel economy rules held by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in San Francisco.

McConnell, a Honda and Acura dealer in Montgomery, Ala., said the EPA’s projected $3,200 increase in vehicle prices over model year 2010 will also limit the ability of many other consumers to buy the vehicles they want or need.

McConnell’s testimony stressed the importance of credit availability to auto sales, noting that with most consumers, if they don’t qualify for an auto loan, they can’t buy the vehicle. However, because he is unaware of any lender who will “fund an auto loan based on promises of fuel savings,” McConnell expressed concern that the proposal’s vehicle cost increases would significantly dampen sales. And, McConnell warned, “if new vehicles don’t get sold, their fuel saving or environmental benefits won’t materialize.”

McConnell also explained that a 2011 U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis found that if the rule takes effect, cars under $15,000 will no longer be available in 2025. He underscored that these least expensive cars are the only option for many college students and working families looking for a new car.

“How is a rule that eliminates the most affordable new cars on the market pro-consumer?”  McConnell asked the EPA and NHTSA officials who are considering a new mandate to increase fuel economy to 54.5 miles-per-gallon by 2025.

“America’s auto dealers support continuous improvements in fuel economy,” McConnell added. “Instead of fighting the consumer, NADA urges the administration to act in a manner that will leverage consumer demand, thereby maximizing fleet turnover and ensuring maximum feasible fuel economy increases.”

They are looking to hire an additional 18,000 people for jobs today.

North Dakota is investing in an infrastructure overhaul to repair, replace and upgrade schools and roadways to the tune of a whopping $1.2 billion dollars. Public schools will also receive $340 million dollars in the next two years, while the state will also pump up the disaster relief fund and lower property taxes.

Welcome to North Dakota, the boom-town of the new millennium.

Are the massive infrastructure spending projects, the improvements to the schools, and the state’s future financial security being paid for by taxing the successful businessman and entrepreneurs, as President Obama and the Liberal Democrats are demanding today? Not in North Dakota they aren’t. Is this massive increase in State revenues that is leading to prosperity and jobs for all the citizens of North Dakota due to big government meddling and the oppressive regulations coming from the unelected radical appointees of the EPA? Not even close. As a matter of fact, the current resurgence in increased state revenues that are benefiting all of North Dakota’s citizens are happening despite the overbearing regulations being imposed on America by the EPA. The wonderful increase in North Dakota’s economy and state revenues is in fact, due to one thing and only one thing: Oil production.

If the EPA is allowed to continue unchecked by the United States Congress in passing laws posing as new regulations such as they did with the cross-state pollution farce, North Dakota’s booming economy could come to a screeching halt in no time flat. The thousands of jobs, the new schools and roadways, the billions of dollars being put into the Legacy Fund, and the increased prosperity of North Dakota could disappear at the snap of a finger! It could disappear under the weight of the EPA and environmental terrorists posing as lawmakers, through their current attempts to stop the process of what is known as fracking, which is when they use hydraulic fracturing techniques to extract shale oil. This is what happens when radical political appointees are permitted to create laws that have not been approved by the only legislative branch of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Congress.

We the people need to apply extreme pressure to our elected officials in Congress, and demand the EPA be reigned in from passing unconstitutional laws onto the people through fiat, or under the guise of “new rules and regulations.” The time is now to stop the EPA before the wonderful prosperity we see in North Dakota today disappears under a cloud of EPA-regulated dust.

The petition notes that EPA’s monthly summary of available volumes of cellulosic biofuels shows that no cellulosic biofuel was produced in the United States from July 2010 through October 2011.

The volume of cellulosic biofuels that EPA required refiners to use in 2011 was 6 million gallons. NPRA and API sent a petition to EPA in February 2011 to reconsider that mandate, but EPA has not yet announced a final decision on the petition.

“Refiners are being ordered to do the impossible – use large volumes of cellulosic biofuels even though none have been being produced,” said NPRA President Charles T. Drevna. “Because they can’t use something that doesn’t exist, refiners are being told to pay $6.8 million to EPA. We don’t even know how the proceeds of this hidden de facto gasoline tax will be used. This mandate is excessive and harmful to consumers and will undoubtedly raise energy costs and could have a negative impact on fuel supplies. The time has come for EPA to approach this issue rationally and use good judgment when making a decision.”

Although the EPA must act on the petition within 90 days, NPRA requests the agency make a more expeditious decision based on NPRA’s prior requests for adjusted cellulosic biofuel targets.

The case involved Benjamin Bluman, a Canadian citizen who attended Harvard Law School and now works as an attorney for a New York law firm. He has lived in the United States since late 2009 and can remain in the country until November 2012.

The U.S. Justice Department said Congress adopted and then amended the law over the past 50 years in response to specific incidents of foreign interests seeking to spend money to sway American elections and government decisions.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the Supreme Court that invalidating the ban would allow millions of foreign nationals in the United States to spend unlimited amounts on election advocacy and contribute money directly to candidates, even at the behest of hostile foreign governments.

In addition to seeking to make campaign contributions, Bluman wanted to spend money to express his political views, seeking to print flyers that support Obama’s re-election and to distribute them in Central Park.

 

Note the key information in the above paragraph: A foreign citizen that graduated from Harvard simply wants to donate money and distribute fliers to Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, so the Supreme Court has to spend valuable time reaffirming that no foreign money from non-U.S. citizens will be allowed  to sway American elections and also sway…  .government decisions.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court refuses to be bothered with such trivial cases as to whether the POTUS is actually qualified to be president according to the Unites States constitution, as can be seen here.  Seems like someone has gotten their priorities backwards there, as far as the Supreme Court’s actual sworn duties are concerned.

Also on Monday the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in the case of an Idaho couple that has been maliciously bullied and threatened with huge fines by the EPA simply because they wanted to build their dream home on a property they had bought years ago. An article at cnsnews.com has a complete rundown of this situation here. The lot they had purchased is bordered by houses on the north and south sides of the lot, is 500 feet from the shore of Priest lake and contains not one drop of standing water, yet the EPA has denied them usage of their own land simply because it has been deemed “wetlands.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing the Sacketts, who have been given the run-around by the EPA in attempts to resolve this issue for going on four years now. The Sacketts filed suit in 2008 seeking to establish that EPA “wetlands” designations are subject to judicial review. Both the federal district court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the EPA. The court held that the Sacketts could not seek judicial review of the EPA “wetlands” designation until after they had restored the land to its original status and had applied for and had been denied a wetland permit. The wetland permit application is much more expensive and time consuming than local permits. The hidden message in the court decisions denying the Sackett’s due process in a court of law? The EPA is the federal government and the taxpayers have no right to question their decisions, ever.

Let’s hope the Supreme Court will put a stop to the EPA’s tyrannical unconstitutional law-making political agenda in this situation and that they set a precedent to reign in their power grab. Denying the Sacketts usage of the land they purchased hinges on the most ludicrous example of government stupidity to ever have to go before the Supreme Court: The supposed “wetlands” actually is as dry as a bone. The lake is across the road. There are already houses to the north and south of their land.  Is this what our founding fathers meant when they said a government of the people by the people and for the people?  Not even close. This is a very small case that has huge implications for all landowners in America.  What are the consequences of the Supreme Court refusing to stop the unconstitutional law-making of big government power-brokers in the near future? We then get things like Barack Obama, with help from the EPA and the Interior department banning uranium mining on 1 millions of public land outside the Grand Canyon for 20 years, as  can be seen here.  Here are a few facts from the CFP article :

Most people will be surprised to learn that nearly 30% of the 2.63 million square miles of the United States is directly owned by the federal government.

This federal land is located primarily in the West. For example, 69.1% of Alaska is owned by the federal government and 84% of Nevada. More than half of both Utah and Idaho is owned by the federal government. Other western states such as Arizona, California, Wyoming, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado have from 53.1% to 36.6% of their land allocated to the federal government.

Check out the complete CFP article to see how the U.S. Congress in 2010 took more steps ( while under control of Democrats) to keep stealing taxpayer dollars to put into shady “trust funds” to take State land and to control every drop of water in the United States.  

The Supreme Court will also be reviewing three separate Texas redistricting cases this week which may be reviewed here. These disputes are, at their core, a fundamental test of historic questions about federalism — that is, the roles of federal vs. state governments in managing election processes. With the U.S. Justice Department infringing on State’s rights more every day today, all of this week’s Supreme Court decisions will have huge implications for all Americans in the very near future.

 Pay attention America, 2012 is here, and with it could come  four more years of Barack Obama and his radical power-brokers that are indeed, already transforming America.