The EPA: An Out of Control Government Agency

As the EPA tries to systematically impose their will on every aspect of your life in trying to make air and water cleaner than God himself ever intended - it appears these out of control green energy goose-steppers stepped into a knee deep pile of their own!

Coming out at a recent congressional hearing we see that not only are their policies a fraud, but the whole agency is an out of control fraud!!!

From USA Today -- 

For years, a senior Environmental Protection Agency employee viewed pornography at work for up to six hours a day. Managers entered fraudulent pay records for work-from-home employees who did no work. A top EPA personnel manager arranged for paid internships for friends and family — and bonuses for her own daughter. Another employee was paid for more than a year after moving to a nursing home.

Those are among the allegations aired Wednesday at a congressional hearing into whether the EPA is capable of policing itself in the aftermath of the John Beale case.

Beale, a former deputy assistant administrator, was convicted last year of theft after he took an EPA paycheck and travel expenses for 13 years while falsely claiming to be out of the office serving as a CIA agent.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Beale's deception was "just the tip of EPA's fraudulent iceberg" and convened the hearing to figure out whether there are systemic management problems at the agency.

The most serious allegation came from investigator from the inspector general's office who testified she was assaulted while questioning an employee of the Office of Homeland Security, an EPA unit unrelated to the Cabinet department. Special Agent Elisabeth Heller Drake said Steven Williams, an EPA senior intelligence adviser, physically obstructed her as she attempted to investigate and that she would have arrested him if he wasn't a government official. Williams did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called the October 2013 incident "one of the most disturbing things I've heard in 17 years in Congress. ... This is not part of your job description to go through that kind of hell."

The U.S. attorney's office declined to bring assault charges, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy put a halt to the inspector general's investigation four days later, citing "discord, distrust and conflict" between the two offices. She also asked an outside inspector general to investigate the incident.

EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said the incident "is an isolated instance and does not represent the manner in which the EPA and its Inspector General work cooperatively on a daily basis." She said the administrator called off the investigation "to ensure the safety of all EPA employees" and consult with outside agencies.

EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe told the committee that the EPA has cooperated with 2,600 inspector general audits and investigations since 2009. "The overwhelming majority of the approximately 16,000 EPA employees are dedicated, hardworking, professional public servants — a point on which I know the Inspector General agrees with me." He said he would instruct the Department of Homeland Security to turn over documents related to the investigation Wednesday.

Among other incidents the committee is investigating:

• An unnamed high-level civil service employee had 7,000 pornographic files on his work computer and visited pornographic websites two to six hours a day since 2010. The Justice Department is investigating.

• Office of Administration Director Renee Page sold jewelry and weight loss products from her office during business hours, according to an inspector general's report. The report said she also hired 17 family members and friends as interns, and that she arranged for her daughter, also an EPA employee, to get a cash bonus out of her budget. Page did not return an e-mail seeking comment.

• An EPA employee with a work-from-home job did no work for five years — and still earned a total of $600,000 and performance bonuses. She retired after an inspector general investigation.

• Another unnamed employee kept getting regular paychecks for more than a year after moving to an assisted living facility. The Justice Department is investigating.

Action Alert: Repeal the 16th Amendment

Earlier this week the House voted to hold former IRS gestapo Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for her refusal to answer questions in regards to her role in using the IRS to target Liberty & Tea Party groups.

One of the most destructive forces in America emerged 101 years ago when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect. It gave Congress the ability to levy taxes on the income of working Americans and in the process, gave us the Internal Revenue Service, the most widely reviled agency in all of government.

The IRS was spawned by the need to enforce the income tax and the only way to eliminate this agency is through constitutional change.

If the IRS was just collecting taxes, that would be one thing. But we now know the IRS has engaged in a systematic campaign of intimidation against us and like-minded Americans. It’s time to Dump the IRS.

From Tea Party Patriots --

Will you join with us in calling for the repeal of the 16th Amendment?

The amendment, which went into effect in 1913, gives the federal government power to levy an income tax. Yet the Internal Revenue Service has time and time again, abused that power to harass law-abiding citizens with opposing political beliefs – including Tea Party Patriots.

It’s also clear that the federal government cannot be trusted to responsibly and efficiently spend our hard-earned tax dollars. We believe there is simply a better way for Americans to pay their taxes. We believe the tax code shouldn’t be so rife with opportunities for fraud and the IRS is an agency with too much power and a demonstrated willingness to abuse its authority. The current tax system is an antiquated model that has no place in the 21stcentury or a free society. All it does is breed corruption and waste – not to mention rampant inefficiency.

Congressman Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma has already introduced legislation to repeal the 16th Amendment. He believes, as we do, that real tax reform won’t happen until Congress loses its constitutional authority to impose an income tax. Let’s help get Rep. Bridenstine’s bill the attention it deserves, and call for full repeal.

It’s time for a change! It’s time for Americans to have more control over their own money, but we need your help.

Visit www.teapartypatriots.org/repeal16/ to sign our petition to repeal the 16th Amendment! There, you’ll also find other resources to help you in the fight for a fair, fixed and flat tax system. With your help, we will make it happen.

To get your Repeal the 16th Amendment Tool Kit and to find out how you can help stop the abusive IRS, click here.

Why Operation American Spring is Unconstitutional

H/T Trevor Loudon for reposting the following article on his web page regarding the upcoming Operation American Spring....

By Jude Eden, Jane of Trades 

“It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.” – Publius, Federalist Paper No. 9.

For those who haven’t heard, Operation American Spring is a group of so called patriots led by retired Col. Harry Riley, who are planning to demonstrate in Washington on May 16th. Their announced aim is to oust politicians they deem corrupt, and to replace them with politicians they like. OAS is claiming the authority of the Constitution and Declaration, to “throw off the bonds” of an unjust government and to redress grievances. There’s just one problem. Transferring power by these methods is totally unconstitutional. If we follow this lead, we can forget elections and voter sovereignty.

Any group of citizens can collect in public to air grievances and urge a course of action. They can speak to create a tension in the mind of the community. But OAS can’t claim to be restoring our constitutional republic by inviting ten million people to show up in Washington to throw people out of office outside the electoral process. Be they ten or ten million, no one voted for them to represent America; and they certainly do not represent the Tea Party, which has from the start been a constitutionalist movement. Riley and OAS represent only themselves.

In the Federalist Papers, Publius warned against exactly what OAS is, a faction: “…a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens…” (Federalist Paper No. 10).

PubliusThe Founders took great pains to create a government that would prevent the changeable passions of a group in frenzy from imposing their will on the rest of the country.

Dr. Mickey Craig of Hillsdale College, puts it succinctly:

“The Constitution, while it is a popular government, it is a form of popular government which recognizes the disease of popular government, and has put in place institutional arrangements that will make it less likely that a factious or tyrannical majority will form and lead to the loss of liberty for the country.”

Operation American Spring is taking its cues from the populist Occupy and Arab Spring movements. The first brought destruction and anarchy to the streets of New York City and elsewhere. The second lead to the installation of one of the most tyrannical, fanatical leaders in Egypt’s recent history. This is horrifying enough. But more, they are preying on the well-meaning patriotism of many in the Tea Party movement, trusting that these same folks won’t see that OAS is completely antithetical to how we change power in America.

They are using the genuine and understandable frustrations of patriots who are fed up, citizens who see government out of control and want to do something to bring us back from the brink; from unsustainable debt, a government that won’t enforce our laws, a tyrannical health care policy that infringes on our liberties, and an economy and foreign policy that are in the toilet. They want to do something – something with faster results than our republican form of government allows. So here comes OAS with a call to action, miming Constitutionalism and encouraging the people to rise up and kick the corrupt bastards out via Washington sit-in.

constitution imaeThe slow, deliberative nature of our electoral process exists to temper the passions of just such a furious mob with its great potential for violence and anarchy. The constitution guarantees the peaceful transfer of power through the consent of the governed. It doesn’t matter how many papers OAS submits to Congress to get the Obama administration and John Boehner to resign. They can’t usurp and disregard our electoral process. To do so is to destroy the civil rights of the rest of the country who voted in 2012 and who certainly have a stake in November, 2014.

As Publius says in Federalist Paper No. 54, “This constitution will only work if the people choose men of wisdom and virtue to occupy the offices.” Where there are corrupt politicians, it is our duty as citizens to vote them out and vote in better representatives. Where there is voter or election fraud it is our duty to expose it and to stop it by requiring the same government-issued photo IDs we need to do everything else in our lives. Where millions are persuaded to vote for corrupt politicians and destructive policies, it is our job as citizens to persuade them otherwise. Where these problems are addressed we can begin to right the ship and save our country, no revolution needed.

Either Col. Riley and OAS are totally ignorant of what they are claiming to represent, or they are deliberately hijacking constitutional patriotism to enact what comes down to a coup – and mere months before our next election. Isn’t it ironic that a group claiming to restore our constitutional republic won’t use constitutional methods to do it?

Patriots from coast to coast should soundly reject Operation American Spring for exactly what it is: a tyrannical faction that is illegitimate, destructive, and unconstitutional.

Jude Eden is a Hillsdale College grad, a Jewish Marine Corps Iraq War Veteran, cancer survivor, musician, conservative activist and the wife of a legal immigrant. Follow on Twitter at @Jude_Eden

Voters approve the Sin Tax extension

Art credit: CNBnewsnet.com

From Cleveland.com

Voters have chosen to extend Cuyahoga County’s sin tax for another 20 years.

The issue passed a 56 percent to 44 percent margin, or by nearly 23,000 votes, according to final but unofficial vote totals reported by the county board of elections. 

Another set-back for the taxpayer. Too bad. 

Cast your votes in the Tuesday primary

Art credit: westbendnews.com

Cast your votes in the Tuesday primary

Besides Issue 7, the Sin Tax, there’s another issue on the May 6 ballot, ISSUE 1, to amend the Ohio Constitution. It is analyzed by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law :

State legislators voted, at the end of 2013, to place State Issue 1 on the May 6, 2014 ballot through passing Joint Resolution 6 ("SJR 6").  

State Issue 1 proposes to amend the Ohio Constitution "to fund public infrastructure capital improvements by permitting the issuance of general obligation bonds." Essentially, the state seeks to borrow and spend money it does not currently have to build roads, bridges, wastewater treatment systems, water supply systems, etc.

On its face, this sounds complex. And indeed, the Joint Resolution placing the issue on the ballot, is no pleasure to read. However a careful reading of the measure, placed in proper context, reveals that the proposed Constitutional Amendment that Issue 1 would usher in is inordinately poor public policy.

Bullet points are below. Click here for all the details.

1. State Issue 1 would mandate an additional $1.875 Billion in spending at a time when Ohio has just implemented a state budget that is the largest in its history, and growing significantly larger each year.

2. State Issue 1 undermines Ohio's constitutional Balanced Budget requirement by unbalancing the Budget.

3. Passage of State Issue 1 is likely to create perverse political incentives that further escalate state spending in the future.

4. Passage of State Issue 1 would almost necessarily result in a tax increase.

5. Passage of Issue 1 will not "create jobs" because government spending does not create jobs.

6. State spending associated with State Issue 1 could be susceptible to improper political considerations.

7. The Passage of State Issue 1 is likely to require middle-class Ohioans to subsidize wealthy investors.

8. The Ohio General Assembly has already considerably cluttered the Ohio Constitution through spending earmarks.

There has been next to no public debate on this amendment, and WHY is it an amendment to the Ohio Constitution instead of a proposed law? Read the chapter and verse on Bullet point #8 for more on this.

Most importantly, VOTE!

American Veterans Deserve Better Health Care

From Tea Party Patriots --

When it comes to health care for veterans who have fought around the world defending our freedoms, it is our duty to provide the best treatment and the best resources in a timely manner. Anything less than that is nothing short of failure. President Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs is failing our veterans with dozens dying before receiving necessary medical care.

In Arizona, the Phoenix Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System is under fire for covering up evidence that links the deaths of veterans to prolonged waits for necessary medical care. Florida Rep. Jeff Miller, who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, says his staff has proof the Phoenix VA system secretly keeps two sets of records in order to hide information about prolonged waits that veterans must endure for treatment.

“It appears as though there could be as many as 40 veterans whose deaths could be related to delays in care,” said Miller during a hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Miller’s revelations follow VA whistleblower reports that raised red flags about VA’s record-keeping practices, as well as veterans’ deaths and mismanagement.

One doctor who retired from the Phoenix VA Medical Center last year sent a letter to the Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney, among others, claiming the Phoenix system is afflicted with “gross mismanagement of VA resources and criminal misconduct” that resulted in “systemic patient safety issues and possible wrongful deaths.”

“Possible wrongful deaths.” Welcome to Obama’s VA.

There are several lessons to be drawn from the VA problems in Phoenix; the least of which being that the federal government isn’t optimized for administering health care. Bureaucracies don’t run like private markets do. In one, misconduct, fraud, and corruption are inherently discouraged by criminal prosecution, fines and prison. In the other, mismanagement, secrecy, and the concealment of failure is rarely deterred or detected. It’s not difficult to figure out which is which.

The current problems at VA demand reform and involve more than just medical care. Nearly 600,000 veterans await a decision on their disability claims. Worse yet, VA data suggests that the backlog of claims more than 125 days old has fallen because of suspect denials. In Obama’s VA, the number of appeals following a denial of benefits has soared to more than 274,000, leaving those veterans waiting more than 400 more days to have their disability claims reviewed.

VA health care is available only to a fraction of veterans and is not an entitlement; it is an earned benefit provided to those who were wounded or otherwise disabled during their time in uniform. They deserve better than what Obama is delivering.

Reason #7,392 to Vote No on Issue 7: Cuyahoga County Council Admits They Do Not Know How Sin Tax Money Will Be Spent!

Amazing!  

Confirming the elected officials on Cuyahoga County Council were derelict in duty regarding Issue 7 the Sin Tax extension - you will see below - even though they did not know how the funds for the Sin Tax extension would be spent - they voted to put it on the ballot anyway. 

From Cleveland Magazine --

If the “sin tax” for stadiums passes May 6, who decides how much will go to the city of Cleveland, and how much to Gateway?

Who’ll decide what gets replaced first — the Quicken Loans Arena roof or the ramps at Progressive Field or the seats at FirstEnergy Stadium? Can any of it go to pay off construction debt, or will it all go to repairs and new scoreboards?

We don’t know. No one does. The city and Cuyahoga County still have to negotiate how they’ll share the alcohol and cigarette tax money. The negotiations won’t be easy. And they don’t intend to hash it out until after voters approve the tax. 

“We do recognize that this is a gap in the legislation,” county councilman Dave Greenspan told me recently. “It is an issue we will need to deliberate on.” 

The “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes is a county tax. So if voters extend it, the Cuyahoga County Council gets to decide how it’s spent. But city, county and business leaders say the extension is meant for repairs at all three publicly-owned sports facilities. (You can see the Indians' and Cavs' wish lists and a report about the Browns' stadium here.)

The city owns the football stadium, while the public Gateway corporation owns the baseball stadium and basketball arena. How will the money be divided? 

“I think it will probably be even,” Mayor Frank Jackson said at the February press conference that kicked off the pro-sin tax campaign. Jackson wants the tax revenue, a projected $260 million over 20 years, to be split equally among baseball, football, and basketball. 

But at a January meeting, Greenspan and three other Cuyahoga County council members warned Jackson’s chief of staff, Ken Silliman, not to expect an even split. 

“A third, a third, a third is not something I am interested in,” Greenspan tells me. “I’m a big believer that the money follows the need. If in one year, Progressive Field has greater needs than the other two, that’s where money will go.” 

The city and county haven’t had to share stadium money like this before. The first stadium sin tax, from 1990 to 2005, was earmarked for Gateway, to build Progressive Field and the Q. When the tax was renewed for 2005 to 2015, the first $116 million was earmarked for building and repairing FirstEnergy Stadium. (The last year or so of the tax will go to the county.) 

But if the tax is extended to 2035, the city and county will have competing interests for the same pot of cash. The Jackson and FitzGerald administrations want to negotiate a cooperative agreement to figure out how to sort through those interests. 

It’ll be tough. The Browns’ lease is more complex and vague about what the public has to pay for than the Indians’ and Cavs’ leases. The football stadium is newer and is used less often, but it’s bigger, and it’s battered by lakeshore winds. Gateway already has a system for weighing Progressive Field’s repair needs versus the Q’s. But that doesn’t help any with the football stadium -- unless Gateway were to take it over too. 

The county will have the upper hand in negotiations with the city, because it levies the tax. But the cost of public stadium ownership is falling harder on the city right now. Cleveland is still paying off $13 million a year in construction debt on the football stadium, while the county is paying off $9 million a year in debt from the Q. 

Could any sin tax money go to those old debts? City councilmen Brian Cummins and Mike Polensek have asked that question, and Jackson has entertained the possibility. But it seems unlikely. The county council sounds unwilling to hand over a straight third of the tax money to the city, and the county seems entirely focused on future repairs, not past debt. 

Why wasn’t this all figured out before the tax went on the ballot? Greenspan asked that question at the January meeting. 

“Those discussions need to happen, in my opinion, before the vote in May,” he said then, “so that the voters understand the complexity and understand the fundamental decision-making process as to how these funds are going to be used.” 

He was ignored. Our elected officials would rather present a united front to get the tax passed, then argue about the messy details later.

And as we see - even though County Councilman Greenspan's concerns were ignored - all members of the County Council, including Greenspan - voted to put Issue 7 the Sin Tax extension on the ballot.

This is the same Cuyahoga County "take the money & run" attitude that has plagued this area for far too long!  So much for the County Reform as it looks more like the status quo of weak and spineless elected officials unwilling to stand up for the people in Cuyahoga County!

By Voting No on Issue 7 - you will simply be forcing the elected leaders of this area to do the job they were elected to do!