Tag Archives: Lisa Jackson

This Sounds Vaguely Familiar

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Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has lost text messages sent to and from the phone belonging to agency chief Gina McCarthy and former chief Lisa Jackson.

The article reports:

Justice Department lawyers said they will soon be telling a federal judge the EPA misplaced text messages sent to and from the phone belonging to agency chief Gina McCarthy and former chief Lisa Jackson.

“Defendant has decided to formally notify the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) about the potential loss of federal records relating to text messages,” DOJ lawyers admitted.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, has been pursuing EPA text messages since last year, after McCarthy was confirmed by the Senate to head up the EPA. CEI filed a case in 2013 to prevent the EPA from destroying agency text messages, a practice the think tank says it discovered through other government records requests.

It seems as if the EPA is taking lessons on computer technology from the IRS.

If someone doesn’t rein in the Executive Branch of our government soon, our representative republic will not survive. We need to elect a Congress that has the maturity to hold the Obama Administration’s feet to the fire. The Founding Fathers set up a system of checks and balances for a reason–it is up to Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive Branches to maintain that balance. When one branch oversteps its boundaries, the other branches should step in and restore the balance. It is time to elect a Congress that will do that.

The Environmental Protection Agency vs American Energy Independence

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not limited by scientific facts–they have an agenda to limit American energy production and they refuse to let facts get in the way of that agenda. A recent article at Investor’s Business Daily clearly illustrates that fact.

The article reports on the EPA’s study that attempted to link fracking to contaminated water in Pavillion, Wyoming:

In 2011, the EPA released the non-peer reviewed report on Pavillion in which the agency publicly linked fracking and groundwater contamination for the first time. However, then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson stated that there is “no proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

The article further reports:

First, the contamination was found in two “monitoring wells” drilled by EPA outside of town, not in water wells that actually supply residents their water. EPA use of “dense soda ash” to drill its monitoring wells into a hydrocarbon-bearing layer probably skewed the results.

According to the industry research group Energy in Depth, “dense soda ash has a recorded pH (11.5), very similar to the level found in the deep wells, creating the possibility that the high pH recorded by EPA could have been caused by the very chemicals it used to drill its own wells.”

What the EPA report doesn’t say is that the U.S. Geological Survey has detected organic chemicals in the well water in Pavillion for at least five decades, long before fracking was done. The deepwater wells that EPA drilled are situated near a natural gas reservoir.

The scientific method used in this study wouldn’t pass the scrutiny of a high school science student.

Oddly enough, the EPA has decided not to subject their study of the negative impact of fracking to a review by the scientific community.

Yesterday Hot Air reported:

Erika and I have been covering the Environmental Protection Agency’s, shall we say, “complicated” relationship with the truth under the Obama administration for some time now. One of the many tales coming out of that department was being featured as recently as Thursday, dealing with the widely panned study in Wyoming which finally sought to tie fracking (hydraulic fracturing) to ground water contamination. The study was due for scientific peer review, attempting to determine if the chemicals found in well water were truly the result of fracking in the area, but somehow the process kept getting delayed, over and over for a year and a half.

At long last the wait is over. As Investors Business Daily reports, the EPA has found a solution which will surely satisfy everyone. They just won’t do it.

The article at Investor’s Business Daily goes on to mention the links between OPEC and the recent anti-fracking film “Promised Land.” We need to keep in mind the earthquake that American energy independence would be to the politics of international relations. American energy independence would also give us the freedom to refuse to support those Middle Eastern governments that are not democracies and have no intention of granting freedom to their citizens. Obviously, OPEC is very threatened by that possibility. The best thing America could do right now to promote our own economic growth and to promote freedom around the world would be to become energy independent and to stop funding oil-rich countries that hate us and deny freedom to their citizens.

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Imaginary Employees At The Environmental Protection Agency

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I knew the federal government was out of control, but I didn’t realize that had taken to acquiring imaginary employees. The Washington Times reported yesterday that Richard Windsor, a fictional name used by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson on an email account in order to avoid Congressional scrutiny, was actually listed as an employee of the EPA. Mr. Windsor took the required agency computer training and was awarded the appropriate certificates stating that he had completed the training.

The article reports:

Windsor was also awarded the “scholar of ethical behavior” each year from 2010 through 2012. The only training Ms. Jackson appears to have done under her own name was for cybersecurity awareness in 2010.

“At least her alter ego was up on the law and ethics of federal record-keeping,” said Christopher Horner, the researcher and senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who made the open-records request that pushed EPA to release the certificates.

Mr. Horner first revealed the existence of the alternate addresses last year in his book “The Liberal War on Transparency,” and since then has pushed for more disclosure about the practice.

I have no comment.

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EPA Transparency

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Yesterday the Washington Times posted an article stating that the House of Representatives science committee has asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to turn over all information related to an email account under the name of “Richard Windsor.” The charge is that Ms. Jackson used an email alias to try to hide correspondence from open-government requests and her agency’s own internal watchdog.

The article reports:

The researcher who uncovered the “Richard Windsor” alias email, Christopher Horner, has repeatedly battled the administration over its global warming efforts.

Earlier this year he his colleagues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute sued to demand the release of emails from “secondary” accounts from EPA, and cited a memo saying the practice began during the Clinton administration under then-administrator Carol Browner.

Mr. Horner uncovered the existence of the secret emails while researching a book, “The Liberal War on Transparency,” published last month. Mr. Horner said after the book came out, two former EPA officials told him about the “Richard Windsor” email and said it was “one of the alternate email addresses she used.”

Using an alternate email address is contrary to the federal open-records laws. These laws are designed to make information available in the present time and in the future for the National Archives.

The article points out:

There are strict rules on the use of email addresses, and the rules prohibit using private emails to try to circumvent open-records laws.

There are differing opinions as to whether or not global warming is being confused with normal global climate cycles. The emails of the EPA regarding global warming should be part of the public record.

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The Continuing Attack On Domestic Energy Production

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I’m not quite sure why the radical environmentalists (and the Obama administration) are so opposed to domestic energy production, but their actions indicate that they are. The recent postponement (read that as opposition) to the Keystone Pipeline is one example. Now they are attempting to stop hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). Fracking is the process being used in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. I need to mention at this point that the development of the Bakken oil fields has resulted in an unemployment rate in North Dakota of 3.5 percent in October 2011.

On Thursday the Washington Examiner posted an article on some of the latest attacks on the process of fracking.

The article reports:

Fracking was first used in Oklahoma in the 1940s and in the years since has been employed in more than a million oil and gas wells across the nation. There is not a single independently documented instance of groundwater contamination by fracking anywhere in the country, a fact that was confirmed as recently as May by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson during congressional testimony.

However, the EPA is not deterred by mere facts. On Thursday the EPA announced that they had found chemicals “likely” associated with fracking at a drilling site near Pavilion, Wyoming.

The article further reports:

“EPA also re-tested private and public drinking water wells in the community. The samples were consistent with chemicals identified in earlier EPA results released in 2010 and are generally below established health and safety standards.” By “below,” the EPA means that chemicals in the groundwater do not exceed acceptable health and safety standards.

Please follow the link to read the entire article to discover what the EPA really found and what it means. At some point you have to wonder why the EPA and the Obama administration are working so hard to eliminate a domestic energy program that has the potential to provide jobs for Americans and to turn the economy around.

 

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