Maryland Taxes Rain – as mandated by the EPA

Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has instituted a tax on citizens for the amount of rain that falls on their property.

This goes to prove that elections have consequences. We were warned what the EPA had in mind to finish off our country. This will bankrupt our cities. The Maryland Dems are just going to do it the old fashion way, Churches and business goes first. Enforced by “surveillance”

Last October 2012 I ran a post EPA turns on the cities – Storm Water Tax coming our way.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Behold the Obama Administration’s new public works plan. Sue cities for polluting waterways and then as part of a settlement require them to spend, er, “invest” billions in extraneous sewer improvements. The White House doesn’t even need legislation to pour this money down the drain. The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have taken enforcement actions against 25 cities over the last four years for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act, and there are another 772 on their list. In addition to imposing millions of dollars in penalties, the feds have forced these cities into consent decrees that will cost their local taxpayers $21 billion. The decrees spell out in detail what capital upgrades they must undertake—everything down to the size of their pipes. The EPA says this extraordinary intrusion on local sovereignty is justified because cities are discharging waste into waterways during heavy rains. Many older wastewater systems include a safety valve that releases untreated stormwater and sewage into lakes and rivers when underground tunnels are flooded. This is to prevent waste from backing up in basements. The EPA has ordered cities to limit such wet weather overflows to four per year, regardless of how much rain they receive or how little muck they discharge. Many cities have already taken concrete steps to reduce such overflows by developing “green infrastructure” (i.e., permeable pavements, rain gardens, catch-basins) that soaks up and diverts stormwater. Such solutions are easier and less expensive to implement than reconstructing their underground systems as the EPA wants them to do.

Back to the Maryland Fiasco:

The tax, officially known as a “storm water management fee,” will be enforced in nine of the state’s counties. The state legislature passed it in 2012 purportedly to “raise revenue to cleanup [sic] the Chesapeake Bay,” according to MarylandReporter.com.

Former 2012 GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino bashes the tax in a Wednesday afternoon press release. The law “requires individuals, businesses, and even charitable organizations and houses of worship to pay a tax based on the amount of rain that falls on their property and the ‘impervious surfaces’ on their land,” he says.

The tax, mandated by the EPA and enforced locally, will be calculated “through satellite surveillance of your property,” the statement claims.

H.T: Breitbart

DOT and HHS conspire to ‘reduce’ driving

Update:  looks like this was written as of April 1 apparently a joke but who would know?

but here we go. I guess we could say we knew this was coming. All of the LaHood’s previous statements would lead us to this. The mandate for those new Black Box requirement sure should have given us a heads up. But to put this together with DHS? They want us to “narrow our streets”?? Not one new road will be funded. Not one. Back in May, 2010 I posted: LaHood: “We are going to coerce people out of their cars”

On May 21, 2010 LaHood told reporters at the National Press Club that the “Partnership for Sustainable Communities’ his department had formed with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing—sometimes known as the “livability initiative”–was designed to “coerce” people out of their cars.

The moderator later asked: “Some conservative groups are wary of the livable communities program, saying it’s an example of government intrusion into people’s lives. How do you respond?”

“About everything we do around here is government intrusion in people’s lives,” said LaHood. “So have at it.” -(an honest man).

As we know, elections have consequences, the wish now comes true. Withholding funds to States until they come under the boot of our infamous leader. Here we go:

LaHood and Sebelius used the press conference to release a proposed set of actions their agencies and Congress can take to advance the health initiative. Congress could withhold federal transportation funds until states develop and implement aggressive vehicle miles traveled reduction goals and public engagement campaigns highlighting the health impacts of automobile use. State DOTs and legislatures could also levy a health excise fee on auto purchases to fund cycling, walking and transit infrastructure. As the nation’s largest insurer, HHS would revise underwriting standards to reflect the risks of high-mileage communities, and pair medical treatment with interventions to introduce customers and communities to non-auto transportation. Tax benefits for automobile parking would be rescinded, and the NHTSA would move immediately to require automakers to install ignition interlocks on all new vehicles.

Ignition interlocks? We are all going to have to breath into a machine before we can drive. Are you nuts? The cost of this? Use a treadmill for 30 minutes before the lock opens? Where does this end?

Standing side by side with many state DOT heads, US DOT Secretary Ray La Hood and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced a new public safety campaign to encourage less driving, lower speeds, and encourage more cycling and walking to meet the nation’s transportation needs.

“The use of motor vehicles, like smoking, heart disease and other public health threats, pose a grave risk to our children, friends and neighbors,” said Secretary Sebelius.

“For too long, the assumption has been that the negative impacts of auto travel are just the price we must pay for modern life”, said Secretary LaHood, “Well, no longer. It’s time to build a people-centered transportation system. We have the tools and policies to make change now, and we need to get to work.” LaHood urged DOTs and municipalities to begin immediately by reducing speed limits on residential streets, narrowing streets, and installing protected cycling facilities. LaHood also pointed to the benefits of the change, citing the continuing decline in vehicle travel nationwide. “Cities, counties and states no longer need to pour money into new infrastructure that will serve fewer and fewer drivers while their existing roads crumble. We’ll be doing our pocketbooks and the climate a favor while we reactivate our streets and improve public health”.

Secretarys LaHood and Sebelius tour a road ready to be retrofitted with a cycletrack

H/T: Streets.Mn and  News Alert

Obama’s EPA Nominee Not ‘To Sit Around and Wait for Congressional Action’

If we thought that Lisa Jackson was bad, we have another one that is sure one crackerjack of a nut case. Let’s hope before she is confirmed we get all of the Jackson alias ”Richard Windsor” faux e-mails she wrote. Check out the video, and slide over for the short version:  Here at News Alert.

President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Gina McCarthy to replace Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

McCarthy, who currently heads the EPA’s air and radiation office, has vowed “not to sit around and wait for congressional action” when issuing environmental regulations.

On May 1, 2010, in the keynote address for the Green Education Celebration at University of Massachusetts in Boston, McCarthy said she did not go to Washington to wait for congressional action and she said she did not intend to do so in the future.

“I love listening to Sen. Kerry. I love listening to Congressman Markey, because they talk funny and they talk real,” said McCarthy. “They tell it like it is and they make things happen. I am so proud that we have them in office so they can push us to face reality that one needs to face and to move forward with legislation that is absolutely essential.

“But I will tell you that I didn’t go to Washington to sit around and wait for Congressional action. Never done that before, and don’t plan to in the future,” said McCarthy.

“EPA’s Administrator Lisa Jackson didn’t sit around so that she could look at the law and decide it was inconvenient to follow it. Or listen to the science and say, ‘You know, that might get me into trouble, so I ain’t going where the science tells me,’” said McCarthy. “What she actually said when she got there is that I’m going to listen to the law and I’m going where science is driving us, and that is why the EPA put forward just last December what we call the endangerment finding.”

McCarthy suggested that the volume of lawsuits against the move is a sign that the EPA is on the right track. And, she said the EPA has a legal mandate to regulate – and it’ll do so with, or without, Congress:

“Now, it doesn’t sound that exciting. But I will tell you that 320,000 people felt the need to comment at the time, and since we passed it, 15 entities have decided they want to sue us about it, so it must be pretty cool. It actually is a statement the administrator made that said, ‘You know, carbon dioxide and all these greenhouse gasses actually do pose a danger to public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act,’ and lo and behold, we’re required under law to regulate it. That is, indeed, what we are going to do whether Congress moves forward or -and- whether it doesn’t.”

Continue at and a H/T:CNS  Shorter version link of video: Here at News Alert.

 

EPA scheduled to release ‘Richard Windsor’ aka Lisa Jackson E-mails

Why wasn’t she hauled before Congress regarding her Medical Experiments? Do you think any of these e-mails will be released? I can’t find anything about them, but they were to be released yesterday, the usual Friday dump.This should be bigger than Benghazi and Fast and Furious. See previous post:

The suit accuses the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,” was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its “permissible limit.”

Milloy added some historic perspective to the mix. “In the context of rules established after scientific horrors of World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the notion that EPA would pipe high levels of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust into the lungs of unhealthy people to see what would happen is simply appalling,” he said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.

“Unhealthy” is an accurate assessment. The 41 subjects who took part in the experiment included people who were elderly or suffering from asthma, hypertension or metabolic syndrome. One of them, an obese 58-year-old woman with a history of health problems and family history of heart disease, experienced an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and had to be hospitalized as a result. Another subject developed an elevated heart rate.

Then again, the study subjects really weren’t “asked” to risk their lives, since the EPA researchers failed — and, in fact, refused — to warn them that PM2.5 could kill them. At the very least, exposing study subjects to a dangerous and deadly toxin without their consent is also known as “assault and battery.”

Weasel Zippers: is there anyone in the Obama administration who isn’t crooked? They even create secondary personalities to be crooked.

Via The Daily Caller:

President Obama says his administration is the “most transparent administration in history.” Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency has made a mockery of this claim.

Former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson officially stepped down yesterday, but her legacy of obfuscation lives on. Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) expects the second of four promised batches of “Richard Windsor” emails from the EPA. Richard Windsor, as most of D.C. knows by now, was Jackson’s chosen alias for her secondary email account during her tenure as administrator. CEI began to investigate Jackson’s use of this account over a month before she announced her resignation in December. Now, we’re receiving the fruits of our investigation — but so far, the results have been less than satisfying.

If today’s delivery of emails from the EPA is anything like the tranche CEI received in January, it will not provide any valuable information about how Jackson employed her Richard Windsor email account. Indeed, the delivery we received in January — 2,100 emails total, significantly shy of the promised 3,000 — consisted entirely of Google news alerts and press clippings.

Keep reading…

Lisa Jackson & EPA conducting illegal human medical experiments

Lisa Jackson otherwise to be known now apparently as the German Josef Rudolf Mengele-  the Angel of Death during Nazi Germany, faded abruptly into the sunset post-haste a month ago. Perhaps now we know why.It was learned that she had been using e-mail addy’s under a fictious name and there were those who wanted to read them. She was conducting medical experiments that harken back the a dark period from the last century. We do know where this playbook goes don’t we. Even more disturbing is the ruling in the case. Not because of the horrendous action, but some small legal point. Wait until we have Obamacare. Let the chilling video below be a reminder and a warning what happened just decades ago.

“This is a complete link between the Windsor email address and Jackson,” a source with direct knowledge of the agency said in an email.

Last week, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that Jackson was allegedly using a secret “alias” email account under the name “Richard Windsor.” On Monday, The DCNF confirmed that the Windsor account was in use, citing an email released by a liberal group from earlier this year  Daily Caller

A federal judge decided to shut down the lawsuit rather than the government’s human experimentation program.

To Judge Trenga, however, the important thing apparently was to nitpick to death the effort to stop the experiments with a narrow reading of the federal rules of civil procedure.

Judge Trenga determined that the EPA’s decision to endanger the lives of its study subjects, including inducing them to sign a fraudulent consent form, did not constitute a “final agency action” under the Administrative Procedures Act. Judge Trenga also determined, as the American Tradition Institute was not being harmed by the experiments, it didn’t have standing to pursue the case. Now the story:

The suit accuses the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,” was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its “permissible limit.”

Milloy added some historic perspective to the mix. “In the context of rules established after scientific horrors of World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the notion that EPA would pipe high levels of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust into the lungs of unhealthy people to see what would happen is simply appalling,” he said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.

“Unhealthy” is an accurate assessment. The 41 subjects who took part in the experiment included people who were elderly or suffering from asthma, hypertension or metabolic syndrome. One of them, an obese 58-year-old woman with a history of health problems and family history of heart disease, experienced an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and had to be hospitalized as a result. Another subject developed an elevated heart rate.

Then again, the study subjects really weren’t “asked” to risk their lives, since the EPA researchers failed — and, in fact, refused — to warn them that PM2.5 could kill them. At the very least, exposing study subjects to a dangerous and deadly toxin without their consent is also known as “assault and battery.”

Given that the EPA long ago determined that any exposure to PM2.5 could cause death (as well as a host of other serious health consequences) within hours or days of inhalation, the experiments are fundamentally illegal. Federal regulations and the Nuremberg Code strictly prohibit scientists from treating human subjects like expendable guinea pigs. In the experiment in question, the study subjects were asked to risk their very lives for $12 per hour.

The American Tradition Institute sued the EPA in October to stop an ongoing experiment in which the agency was exposing elderly study subjects (up to 75 years of age) to concentrated levels of a deadly (according to EPA) air pollutant known as PM2.5 (soot or dust much smaller than the width of a human hair).

The lawsuit claimed the experiments were illegal in that they blatantly violated virtually every major standard developed since World War II for the protection of human study subjects used in scientific experiments.
Given that the EPA long ago determined that any exposure to PM2.5 could cause death (as well as a host of other serious health consequences) within hours or days of inhalation, the experiments are fundamentally illegal. Federal regulations and the Nuremberg Code strictly prohibit scientists from treating human subjects like expendable guinea pigs. In the experiment in question, the study subjects were asked to risk their very lives for $12 per hour.

The EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” said Milloy.

Full story atFront Page Mag and  Washington Times

 

EPA defies court order- increases ethanol mandate

Totally lawless. Totally. We knew it was coming. Was this Lisa Jackson’s swan song as going out the door. We can only hope the court imposes consequences. Anarchy begins. This blend can be only used in cars 2002 and newer and harms smaller engines such as lawn mowers.  Americans can go to H*ll as far as this President is concerned. And corn prices skyrocket.

Officials at the Renewable Fuels Association, representing the ethanol industry, said ethanol fuels can be safely used in old cars if owners adapt the fuel systems with new parts. Thanks a bunch guys!

Just one week after a federal court rebuked the Environmental Protection Agency for mandating biofuel standards based on “wishful thinking,” the EPA responded by raising those standards to even more unattainable levels.

The EPA called for refiners and importers to mix 14 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels (ethanol) into fuel in 2013. “EPA calculates a percentage-based standard for the following year,” the agency explained in an announcement today. “Based on the standard, each refiner and importer determines the minimum volume of renewable fuel that it must ensure is used in its transportation fuel.”

This projection ignores last week’s ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down a rule requiring gasoline blenders to use 8.65 million gallons of the cellulosic biofuel because the mandate “was based on wishful thinking rather than realistic estimates of what could be achieved,” as The New York Times explained. Per Consumer Energy Report notes, the fuel isn’t commercially available.

The judges faulted the EPA for effectively saying, “Do a good job, cellulosic fuel producers. If you fail, we’ll fine your customers.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., faulted the EPA for ignoring last week’s ruling. “The EPA continues to make up unicorn-like standards in this area of renewable fuels production, as emphasized by last week’s appellate court ruling,” Vitter said in a statement this afternoon. “Increasing the standard after their 2012 requirements were vacated is beyond ludicrous, and they continue to force refiners to either purchase even more gallons of product that doesn’t exist or pay a fine.” Washington Examiner

From am earlier post Recall this? EPA expected to OK more ethanol ? It will destroy many older engines.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to raise the maximum amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline for vehicles manufactured since 2007.

According to people with knowledge of the announcement, the EPA may say as soon as Wednesday that the newer vehicles are able to handle 15 percent ethanol, up from the current maximum of 10 percent for the corn-based fuel.

But the auto industry, environmentalists and a broad coalition of other groups have argued against an increase and called for more testing.

Opponents argue that the increase in production of corn and its diversion into ethanol is making animal feed more expensive, raising prices at the grocery store and tearing up the land.

Manufacturers of smaller engines – used in everything from lawn mowers to boats – also oppose increasing the use of the fuel, saying those engines are not designed for the higher concentrations.

Then there is this Lahood: ‘We are going to coerce people out of their cars - apparently after they destroy our cars or make them prohibitively expensive to drive.

EPA wanted to ban ammo

Government cannot control and confiscate our weapons, the next step is controlling ammo. I read where a congressman said, ok, we can’t ban guns, but the Second amendment didn’t say anything about ammo. That rang a bell, so I went to my “way back”machine and got this post from August 2010. It didn’t go anywhere, but you bet this will be back on the front burner.

A gun without a shell is useless.. Bring it on EPA. Just in time for the November Election.

 

EPA considering Ban on lead based ammunition

Remember this is a no-win situation for us, because bullets made of materials other than lead are often considered armor piercing by law. Copper is your basic material, and copper is expensive, and has much poorer performance properties than lead.

 

From The Wahington Examiner:

Here’s an astounding bit of government overreach:

NSSF [National Shooting Sports Foundation] is springing into action, as the public comment period opens on EPA considering a regulation that will ban all traditional lead ammunition. This would basically end the shooting sports as we know it. Remember this is a no-win situation for us, because bullets made of materials other than lead are often considered armor piercing by law. Copper is your basic material, and copper is expensive, and has much poorer performance properties than lead.

You can read the petition in favor of banning ammunition here, and if you can leave a public comment on it here. The EPA will be taking comments on this through October 31 to coincide nicely with the November 2 election. After health care and immigration, apparently the White House doesn’t feel it has sufficiently irked voters enough. Bringing the NRA and upset gun owners into the mix should really do wonders for Democrats at the ballot box. And we sure told them in 2010 didn’t we!

Bonus time. Two posts today!  A list of the newspaper folk’s location that posted gun owners locations.

E.PA. turns on the cities – storm water tax coming our way

I am amazed that there has been little attention given to the massive over reach of the EPA into our lives by the GOP campaign.References to energy but few concrete examples that folks can wrap their mind around. Gas prices through the roof, and yet no outrage. We hear that there are massive regs coming down right after the election, but here is a story going down as we wait the outcome of our election. This has to be the most sinister part of Obama’s agenda. While we all know that most cities are on their last legs, this will cut the last vestige of hope of any recovery. Unfortunately, one has to pay for the full story at the WSJ, but enough is here to get the gist. I would be interested in which cities are on their agenda.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Behold the Obama Administration’s new public works plan. Sue cities for polluting waterways and then as part of a settlement require them to spend, er, “invest” billions in extraneous sewer improvements. The White House doesn’t even need legislation to pour this money down the drain. The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have taken enforcement actions against 25 cities over the last four years for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act, and there are another 772 on their list. In addition to imposing millions of dollars in penalties, the feds have forced these cities into consent decrees that will cost their local taxpayers $21 billion. The decrees spell out in detail what capital upgrades they must undertake—everything down to the size of their pipes. The EPA says this extraordinary intrusion on local sovereignty is justified because cities are discharging waste into waterways during heavy rains. Many older wastewater systems include a safety valve that releases untreated stormwater and sewage into lakes and rivers when underground tunnels are flooded. This is to prevent waste from backing up in basements. The EPA has ordered cities to limit such wet weather overflows to four per year, regardless of how much rain they receive or how little muck they discharge. Many cities have already taken concrete steps to reduce such overflows by developing “green infrastructure” (i.e., permeable pavements, rain gardens, catch-basins) that soaks up and diverts stormwater. Such solutions are easier and less expensive to implement than reconstructing their underground systems as the EPA wants them to do.

H/T: News Alert

Lisa Jackson’s EPA puts $220 Billion of investments at risk

Having just concluded a mini-vacation which ended up costing me more is filling my gas tank than the vacation itself, I wonder to myself, are we just sheep? Where is the outrage? We all lined up like good foot soldiers at the gas pumps, no complaining, but I did leave a package label titled “Thanks Obama”. I encourage everyone to print up a bunch, and the next time you fill up, leave a label.  So Lisa Jackson continues unabated. Right in Sarah’s home turf. Hey, Mitt, how about letting us hear from the gal at the convention? How about talking about  this gas business?

“To be stopped before the process begins and subject it to a hypothetical is a new wrinkle, and that can chill capital, that can chill investment, and the jobs, in this particular economy, that we want to see,” he continued. “It’s going to have a very negative effect on the manufacturing process in the U.S.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) preemptive assessment of the Pebble Mine in Alaska could have a “chilling effect” on $220 billion in investments, according to the Brattle Group, an economic and financial consulting firm.

In May, the EPA released its watershed assessment of large-scale mining by Pebble LP at Bristol Bay, which could be one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, and expressed concerns over impact the mine would have on local salmon habitats and surrounding wetlands.

Under the Clean Water Act, operations that dump “dredge or fill materials” into wetlands, rivers, lakes, or streams are required to obtain a Section 404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The EPA can revoke this permit if there are “unacceptable adverse impacts on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas, wildlife, or recreational areas.”

Read more: Daily Caller

Top EPA official Obama’s “coal regs will be painful all of the way”

Weasel Zippers gives us ”The march forward must continue” video from the EPA as they admit to destroying whole communities. Onward with Statism.

Who needs a proven fuel source like coal when we have algae?*

Via Fox Nation: 

A YouTube video released by Senator Jim Inhofe’s office shows a top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official admitting that the whole point of President Obama EPA’s air regulations was to kill coal and that this decision was “painful” because it causes coal communities in states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia to “go away.”

In this video, EPA Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding tells a Yale University gathering that, “Lisa Jackson has put forth a very powerful message to the country,” that “if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.” Spalding goes on to explain that the decision was “painful” because “you got to remember if you go to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and all those places, you have coal communities who depend on coal. And to say that we just think those communities should just go away, we can’t do that. But she had to do what the law and policy suggested. Sure she did. And it’s painful. It’s painful every step of the way.”

Keep reading…