Noem: EPA Must be Held Accountable for Breaking the Law
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Kristi Noem today released the following statement after the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the EPA violated federal law in promoting the agency’s controversial “waters of the United States” rule on social media:“The ‘waters of the U.S.’ rule could be the largest federal land grab in our lifetimes. Ranchers have raised concerns. Farmers have raised concerns. Homeowners, construction teams, and state governments have all raised concerns, and yet, the EPA has pushed the rule forward,” said Noem. “When they couldn’t find enough supporters, the EPA resorted to what the GAO calls ‘covert propaganda’ to create the illusion of grassroots backing. Not only did that violate the public trust, but they broke the law. The EPA must be held accountable for their actions.”
The GAO found that the EPA’s use of Thunderclap, an application that allows a social media message to be shared across multiple Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts, was an unauthorized use of the EPA’s appropriations. It also found the agency in violation of a grassroots lobbying prohibition. To read the full GAO analysis, click here.
Accountability is not something this administration is known for. In my opinion, this EPA is doing only what they know will meet this Presidents approval. This EPA treats wishes of Congress and objectives of States, whether singly or grouped together as obstacles to get around on the road to fulfill Obama’s agenda. When Obama was first running for office, in discussions with admirers, he referred to “negative freedoms” in the Constitution. What did he mean by that? The Constitution is filled with prohibitions that restrict what the Federal Government can do. His mission is to broaden the powers of the Federal Government and to continue to clamp down on individual liberty.
Obama and his minions know that they do not need the czar’s permission to do these kinds of things.
While there’s no “direct order”, everyone knows that Obama sanctions this kind of lawlessness.
Anyone else actually read the report? It does look like the EPA violated the rule of the law in question, but the GAO seems to waffle a bit on whether the spirit of the law was violated. Either way, this isn’t the smoking gun you’re looking for. Turns out that it’s all a rather technical violation, and that at the end of the day, the GAO recommends the EPA comply with its obligations under the Antideficiency Act (who comes up with these names?) and report the violation to the President, Congress, and the Comptroller General. After that, my reading of said statute seems to indicate that not much else happens – no heads rolling, no money paid back, etc. I suppose it could cause some political haymaking (right Kristi?), but not much else.
Boils down to this: EPA takes a slap on the wrist and a note home telling us that they promise to be more careful with 3rd party social media apps, and whom they hyperlink to in the future.
Crossgrain,
Technical? I guess every violation of the law is technically illegal. A business who got audited by the US Department of Labor regarding their overtime. After it was done, they threw away the old records even though the techically had to retain them for 3 or 5 years. They thought since they got a clean bill of health the records were surplus. When they got audited again, they got clean bill of health again EXCEPT they didn’t have the records prior to the first audit. They got fined for the technical violation. Same rules don’t apply to our government? Sheesh.
Yeah, technical. Nobody is going to jail or getting fined over this. A scapegoat’ll be found and we’ll be done with it. Meanwhile, this does nothing to move the ball on the WOTUS. I guess our elected beauty queen gets to piss and moan some more about ‘criminals in the EPA’, but that’s about it. Lap it up, dogs!
Private sector, jail time and large fine. Government corruption, shame, promotion, bonus and job security.
It amazes me that things like gun running, IRS corruption and the VA is just government mistakes and nobody loses their jobs. But heads must role for the actual job creators. Getting in the mind of a democrat can really drive one mad. Their are no core principles or honesty. Just moving the goal posts to protect their ideology. Disgusting and immoral. If republicans did the same thing the above would be furious.
After picking through your word salad, ignoring grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation mistakes, I can safely conclude that you’re nuts. Read the report. This is roughly the equivalent of the EPA getting a parking ticket. Heads don’t need to roll, fines needn’t be levied, and no incarceration will happen. This is purely white noise that our Snowdeo Queen is manipulating into a high-pitched dog whistle – and just look at you bark!