Chapter 3
Was Silent Spring Too Loud?
Are good solutions always bad?
There is no question that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led to greater public awareness of pollution in the 1960s. Was there pollution? Absolutely there was pollution and there still is. Americans and other citizens of the world do need protection from dispassionate corporations who would unscrupulously create an environment in which carcinogens are produced in the industrial process, and there is no accountability. Can you be anti-EPA and anti-pollution and “trust but verify” on corporations all at the same time? Absolutely! The sins of the EPA are so egregious; however, it has outlived its usefulness.
The EPA as a response to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring has become the moral equivalent of killing a mouse with an A-bomb. Ironically, the EPA would fight for the mouse to be saved even if humans would die. The EPA is a plague worst than the worst delivered my a herd of mice and rats.
My position remains that we need to kill the EPA because it continues to work on the wrong problems. But, more so than that, the agency has little regard for humankind. They devise cures for prevaricated illnesses that are worse than the supposed diseases. The EPA is not a people-first agency. People do not even have a ranking in the EPA priority list. As nature first, people come last as the EPA is always concerned about what man is doing to nature and not whether man can survive in nature. One thing for sure, man cannot depend on the EPA for help in surviving.
Corporate thugs, union thugs, EPA thugs, government thugs, and all political thugs, must be kept tame by the people. Yes, it is a tough task but more and more people are signing up. More and more Americans have simply had enough. Many people I meet every day want to scream out loud, “Get off our backs!” How about you?
The truth about the lies of Silent Spring
Dr. J. Gordon Edwards notes in his powerful expose on Silent Spring, which he titles, “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” that despite environmentalists wanting so much for her words to be all true, Rachel Carson did not measure up. Her words were not true and in many ways they were intentionally deceitful. Rachel Carson is the patron saint of the EPA, and they take her lying license for granted in the major body of their work. If you are looking for nothing but the truth, do not read Silent Spring and do not visit the EPA web site.
Dr. Edwards and many environmentalists in his camp were delighted that somebody had finally addressed the environment in a meaningful way. However, as he was moving through Carson’s book, his enthusiasm diminished. He began to clearly see the big holes in Carson’s story.
Dr. Edwards is an environmentalist. He is not a conservative as many of us who read this book may be. He has been published by the Sierra Club, The Indiana Waltonian, Audubon Magazine, and other environmental magazines. A well-known entomologist, Edwards is not a lightweight on environmental topics.
The following are direct quotes of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards from the cover story in: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
“…As I read the first several chapters I noticed many statements that I realized were false; however, one can overlook such things when they are produced by one’s cohorts, and I did just that.
“As I neared the middle of the book, the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts and was also deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them. She was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad.
“I then took notice of her bibliography and realized that it was filled with references from very unscientific sources. Also, each reference was cited separately each time it appeared in the book, thus producing an impressive array of “references” even though not many different sources were actually cited. I began to lose confidence in Rachel Carson, even though I thought that as an environmentalist I really should continue to support her
“I next looked up some of the references that Carson cited and quickly found that they did not support her contentions about the harm caused by pesticides. When leading scientists began to publish harsh criticisms of her methods and her allegations, it slowly dawned on me that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about those topics, and that I really was being duped, along with millions of other Americans.
“As a result, I went back to the beginning of the book and read it all again, but this time my eyes were open and I was not lulled into believing that her motives were noble and that her statements could be supported by logic and by scientific fact. I wrote my comments down in rough draft style, and gathered together the scientific articles that refuted what Carson had reported the articles indicated. It was a most frustrating experience.
“Finally, I began to join the detractors of Silent Spring, and when hearings were held to determine the fate of DDT in various states of this nation, I paid my own way to some of them so that I could testify against the efforts to ban that life-saving insecticide.”
…
In coming chapters we examine much of the underlying evidence that proves Carson was well off the mark. Her main proof comes from begging the argument. Yet, the EPA continues to remain one of her devout disciples.
The quick case for the EPA
At 18,000 people strong, the EPA is dedicated to destroying the economy of the United States. The choice for those who love America is clear: “The EPA must go.” Let’s say for argument reasons that we keep the EPA, which is Obama’s primo regulatory instrument against the American people. What happens next?
The answer is clear. We would get 18,000 people working against John / Jane Q. Public. That’s us! How is that a good deal for any of us? Most American people would not even be aware there was a war going on between the EPA and the people. When you are unaware, you most often lose big time. Yet, the EPA would still get its $10.5 billion in salaries and costs per year.
The people would have to deal with things like large fertile farmland areas being banned from using available irrigation. We would get a few more endangered little fish and perhaps a few more bug species that we are prohibited from eating or swatting. And, we would get brownouts and a group of bureaucrats determining how much water, gas, and oil, we are permitted to use. They would also determine how much CO2 we could exhale.
In addition to Obamacare’s rationing, the EPA would see to it that a lot of other precious items on their lists were rationed. Forget about double dipping. The EPA might not let you get even the first dip.
As a bonus, we would get to turn off our lights because there would be no power available. We would get seven to ten percent more unemployment because businesses would have no choice but to close. We would find asthmatic children being denied the use of the best-made inhalers, while permitted to use sub-quality EPA approved inhalers that were just a bit more effective than a placebo.
Overall, we would get more than we bargained for from an agency commissioned to help the people. The more research I did for this book, the more I was convinced that this agency has no use for people. It is time to return the favor by electing representatives strong enough to take them on.
The quick case against the EPA
Now, if we get rid of the EPA, what do we get? We get a bunch of thick headed dinosaurs (the EPA staff) that immediately get pink slips. We also get a lot more happy and productive people (us). We get more jobs and we get businesses that can grow instead of being forced to stagnate and die.
We also get farmers who again can farm on rich, irrigated soil without requiring driver’s permits and major government tests to work with typical farm equipment. We get a country full of people who are permitted to heat their homes in the winter, cool them in the summer, and light them with Edison’s own incandescent light bulb any time when there is darkness.
And, on top of that, we get energy independence from people who want to kill us. Perhaps more importantly, we escape the outright tyranny of the EPA. How does that sound?
Corporations are not princes either!
For the rest of the Chapter until the Conclusion, we take a break from Rachel Carson and the EPA, and we examine the role of the corporation in government today. We also take a look at the major legislation such as The Clean Air Act, which brought about the EPA.
Life is a balancing act. Corporations were not even permitted to exist as we know them today in early America because they had previously worn out their welcome in old world civilization. Huge corporations such as the British East India Company had dominated trade in the new world before the revolution. Colonists had long decided from this experience that they wanted no corporations in the New World.
The colonists not only freed themselves from England; they got out from under the yoke of English corporations. You remember the Boston Tea Party and the British East India Company. Such corporations decreased the wealth of the people and controlled everyday activity. As you would expect, they were not held in high regard by early Americans.
The founders therefore had a healthy respect for the capability of corporations to dominate all business through ruthless, nasty practices. So, after fighting a revolution to end their exploitation by corporate powers and huge governments, the colonists wisely limited the role of corporations and governments in America. No longer were corporations permitted to have a role in elections, public policy and other aspects of life.
However, corporations were permitted to conduct business that benefitted the public. As for the government, legislators held fast to the Constitution so that bad men could never appear in the future and claim they were good men. Besides God’s Bible for “we the people,” the Constitution became America’s credo for all citizens, one by one. It is not for the powerful. The Constitution was created to protect us all from the more powerful.
To assure that citizens, not collectives or agencies or other artificial entities controlled our country, the founders carved out very limiting rules, which corporations were required to follow. In essence, they reluctantly permitted corporations to exist. The rules made corporations diminutive participants in US trade. They were not permitted to gain the power that they hold today.
You may know the story of the legal slippery slope. It also applies in most aspects of life. Any lawyer will remind us that once in, an entity can gains power, most often they become more and more powerful until eventually, their power is a burden on us all. Because of this fear, for the first 100 years after the revolution, corporations were kept in check by honest legislators. Today, most people think the term “honest legislators” is not much more than an oxymoron. Because we elect thieves and scoundrels into office continually, we do get the government we deserve.
The early public still had memories passed down about the issues with the English corporations and they wanted none of that for America. Citizens controlled corporations; and through their legislatures, they prohibited corporations from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.
Much control over corporations came from the corporate charters, which are still granted by the states and not by the federal government. It was the states, and not the federal government that were in control of corporations. The most effective tool in the early days was the notion of an expiration date or as it was called, a time limit. Corporations had an expiration date and were therefore forced out of business after being operational for a set time period.
They were chartered to exist for only a specific period of time and when the time was up, they ceased to exist. Their assets were then divided among the shareholders.
There were lots of other controls, which kept corporate power to a minimum. In many ways, they were the good old days. Greed, however, is a powerful force of change.
During the first half of the 19thCentury, the Supreme Court tried numerous times to usurp the power of the states’ charters in regulating corporations. The public was outraged and the states fought back with modifications to their Constitutions and other measures to assure that the federal government would not steal their power.
Eventually, it seemed that the Supreme Court had heard the people and the states. In the 1855 case of Dodge v. Woolsey, for example, the court reaffirmed state's powers over "artificial bodies." Of course these artificial bodies were known to the citizens as the corporations.
The Captains of Industry continued to expand their businesses by forming more and more corporations. They were not about to be stopped. They kept pressing in one way or another for politicians to view the corporate light in their favor, They worked subtly and openly with politicians and crooked legislators and eventually they were able to gain more power for their corporate entities.
Though It is unpleasant to consider, they gained more power through quid pro quo actions with those corrupt officials, which they could buy-off. These corporate moguls were able to “hire” legislators and judges who believed the limits of corporate power could be expanded. How convenient! Eventually, the courts and the legislatures acknowledged the power of the chieftains and granted their wishes. Corporate power was on the rise.
Why do people go bad?
Greed is a powerful motivator and lust for power is a close second. Early Americans had an America almost as exactly as they had wanted it, without major league important entities like corporations or huge government agencies. The early colonists were not interested in giving up the sovereignty of the people to forces more powerful than ordinary citizens. Once the powerful band together to control the people’s government, the people are inevitably left behind.
Without a vigilant watchdog in the government, corporations in the late 1800 period gained substantial power inch by inch. They grew stronger, and for the most part, ordinary people were unaware of the slippery slope of the power creep, and the nasty ways the titans used their power.
When power is not in the hands of the people, the government and the courts become easier prey. The industry captains about 100 years or more ago had their way. By keeping lawmakers and judges squarely in their pockets, corporate mahoffs were able to freely reinterpret the U.S. Constitution to transform the meaning of common law doctrines to suit their selfish purposes rather than serve for the common good.
Unfortunately for us all, it got even worse. In 1886, the Supreme Court stole more states’ rights when it noted that a corporation henceforth was to be treated as a “natural person.“
Once corporations had the right of personhood, they increased their control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law. For 100 years the corporate powers were kept in check but ultimately corruption and powerful corporate titans ruled the day.
Corruption of public officials is one of the most insidious enemies of freedom and liberty. Corporations have the resources to buy people who are weak. As the first means of preserving the Republic for as long as possible, the Founders protected the people against such huge sources of power. Unfortunately, the people’s representatives, the early Congresses of our nation sold out the people to the corporations and permitted the rich and powerful to gain control of the government. Today’s Congresses seem to continue the tradition that American is on the auction block.
As another means of guaranteeing the Republic, the founders provided elections to assure that the people were in control of the government. The Founders believed that the people would elect the best citizens to hold office for brief periods and that the citizens would come back to their farms or work places after serving in Congress. They did not expect that the people would reelect thieves into office.
The Founders perhaps did not realize that when the thieves have power, they can grant privileges to the commoners. A problem with human nature is that there are many people who like to pick the thief they know and permit them to represent their needs to the government. For helping the cheats get elected, the people are then rewarded by the thieves with largesse, such as jobs and other important benefits.
To keep such political favors coming their way, the people can become as corrupt as the rascals they elect to assure that spoils and largesse continue to come their way. It is a shame but we all know it is true. We get the government we deserve.
Giving up one’s vote and taking favors that are not justified is just as corrupt as politicians taking from the corporations. So, to straighten out this mess, and to defang the EPA, and the corporations and the causes the EPA represents, we must all become better people. Only then can we be worthy of better representatives. Only then will we choose the best for the country.
As another major means of assuring the Republic, the Founders gave us the second most profound document of all time after the Bible – the Constitution. Like other constitutions, the Constitution of the United States of America is a set of fundamental principles and/or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. Our Constitution is a most eloquent document and though short, it is very comprehensive. It has been amended twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments, including freedom of speech, are known as the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution, when strictly adhered to by government, is intended to control even the most corrupt of politicians. But, as we have seen, even with all these instruments of excellent government, as provided by the Founders, we continue to have greed and corruption because humans are not perfect, and are prone to sin. We must become better people to deserve a better government. I believe we can do that.
I introduce the rise of corporate power in this essay because if the corporations were not so powerful and so self serving, the people would be able to again control them and keep them from committing acts against the people, including acts against the environment.
Yes, the air must be clean and breathable
In the 1960’s in the post-war boom, more and more people were driving those magnificent automobiles of those times and the air quality, from exhaust emissions along with corporate smokestacks was becoming noticeably bad. In Los Angeles, for example, on a few particularly bad days, it was so bad that some people even died. They could not breathe with all the smog— (Smoke that hovered like fog).
Congress took action at the time. They passed the Air Quality Act first in 1967 and later the Clean Air Act in 1970. In many ways, enforcement of the Clean Air Act made the air much better though nothing good ever happens over night. It takes time for improvements. And, improvements did come and the air became very breathable in California again. The rest of the nation was not suffering as they were in California.
The formal objective of the acts were (1) to protect and enhance the quality of the Nation's air to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population; (2) to initiate and accelerate a national research and development program to achieve the prevention and control of air pollution; (3) to provide technical and financial assistance to state and local governments in connection with the development and execution of their air pollution prevention and control programs; and (4) to encourage and assist the development and operation of regional air pollution prevention and control programs.
Clearly the most important of these acts was # 1 and because of this act, the air today is much better. It got better fairly quickly in a five year period after the act had become law. Air quality can always get better but from this experience we learned that we must move in incremental steps.
For years now, people are no longer dying from bad air, even in Los Angeles. Consequently, it should not serve the EPA well to put farmers out of business and create food shortages; to put coal and oil and gas companies out of business and create energy shortages; or to wreak other havoc on Americans that is unjustified. Yet, because they seemingly have no constraints, the EPA believes there should be no countervailing authority to their power, and they simply do as they please. The needs of people do not matter to this agency.
The Clean Air Act
The Clean Air Act came out in 1970. It evolved from the Air Quality Act of 1967 and it has been “improved” by a series of detailed control requirement amendments in 1970, 1977, and 1990. The regulatory parts of the Clean Air Act are as follows:
(1) All new and existing sources are prohibited from emitting pollution that exceeds ambient air quality levels.
(2) Ambient air quality program is implemented through state implementation plans (SIPs).
(3) New sources are subject to more stringent control technology and permitting requirements.
The Act addressed specific pollution problems, most of which scientists agreed were real. These included hazardous air pollution and visibility impairment.
(4) In 1990, a fourth program was added - a comprehensive operating permit program to focus in one place, all of the Clean Air Act requirements that apply to a given source of pollution.
Man and Nature Together
A balance must be made between the requirements of environmental acts and the ability to live. When man and nature conflict, it is not man that should choose to die.
Please note this major Act was not passed by the EPA. It was passed by our Congress to help the people gain clean air. It was a good idea. We should not kill Congress, just the EPA, which has gotten out of hand. Congress is vital to our Nation’s health but we could use a nice new broom to sweep many of the most entrenched and corrupt politicians out the door.
Quite often we don’t know why the EPA does what it does. The clean air act was and continues to be good for America. Most of the good in the act, however, has already been done and it was done well. Having a group of guerrillas, such as the EPA using semi-terroristic acts to harass Americans at home or in their businesses is not a good idea and it was never the intention of the act or the EPA. That is the problem with the EPA. Now that the air is reasonably clean and states have huge environmental departments, the people can breathe without the job-killing EPA.
Corporations are built to survive!
So, now that we have defined the notion of a corporation and we looked at the general points of the clean air acts, why can’t everything just be OK? Left on their own, we know that corporations are beneficent citizens and will always do what they can to make America a better place – even if it cost them a bit of bottom line profits. Of course I am kidding. I sure wish that was the case but corporations have only selfish motives. Their most powerful motivation is survival.
Perhaps corporations are simply enterprises of self interest, whose one and only goal after survival is to increase shareholder profitability. I would agree to that if the corporate moguls would agree. Corporations are surely more like greedy collectors than beneficent benefactors.
Corporations do anything to survive. When environmental regulations come their way; for the sake of survival, and no other reason, corporations will do for the public only what is needed to survive, and typically not much more. When regulations are such that they are unreasonable and unwirkable, corporations as well as we the people will do our best to not comply so that we can all survive.
Are corporations really bad for the environment?
Yes, it is true that large unincorporated entities and large corporations have been documented to be some of the worst polluters of all time. Moreover, they have been documented to have been engaged in systematic cover-ups to avoid detection. Escape and Evasion has always been their best avenue for survival.
Corporate chem scams?
As you look for issues, consider that when the EPA guerillas are outside your fences, you are most typically inclined to hide your important stuff. Expect the same from corporations—even though it is not right. The US chemical industry, in particular, intrinsically believes that it can be put out of existence with one bad report. With today’s cutthroat EPA, they are correct.
So, before a chemical company concludes that it can ever comply with regulations, as a rule, it hides from regulations and the regulators using whatever escape and evasion techniques that it can invent. The companies in many ways are like kids that discovered they had actually eaten so many cookies that the bottom of the jar was beginning to show. Chem companies know when they are in trouble as soon as they get into trouble.
To protect themselves and to survive, chemical companies conjure plans over time to privately fund research. Their objective is not compliance but a desire to gain information needed to devise responses to any potential threat from agencies or environmentalists.
Perhaps if they thought the EPA was a fair and reasonable agency (not that they needed to jump in bed with them), corporations would spend their dollars incrementally improving their predicament, rather than paying tons of lawyers to make the problems go away on technicalities.
Industry understands the risks of pollution better than anybody but the leaders of the companies do not trust that they can share identified risks with the EPA or the public or their days would be numbered. “Guerillas in fatigues,” which is how I would characterize the EPA do not evoke the notion that cooperation is the best strategy. Therefore businesses, large and small, chose escape and evasion as their strategy and lawyers are very good at such techniques.
Company tactics were to release just enough information to reassure people of the safe nature of their products, and that they worked, and they would cover up any uncertainties or potential problems tirelessly, to stop any government regulation or intervention.
Plastics in the Food Industry
As you are sipping on your water bottle or a Gatorade right now, or drinking a nice cold cocktail in a huge plastic goblet, you may be oblivious to the possibility of toxins from the plastic seeping into your libation. Yet, we know from published reports that certain plastics have been found to be more toxic than others. In the 1970’s however, when chemical companies were all excited about the potential use of plastic in the food and beverage industry, the data was not always available that things were safe or unsafe. Don’t forget the Chemical Company’s credo of escape and evasion.
You may remember or you may have read that in the 1970’s negative data emerged from European investigators that certain plastics were linked to cancer. Can you imagine how this spooked the chemical industry? Plastics were becoming the most successful products ever produced from chemistry techniques. Yet, there were potential health dangers. What would you do if you knew there was even a potential risk of poison from a food container? That’s why chemical producers felt escape and evasion was their best tactic.
Companies were worried that the public might view all plastics as threatening to health if there was full disclosure, and so items like plastic wrap, hairsprays, floor coverings, and a ton of other consumer products would be at risk. So, the US chemical industry’s response was to deceive the government and mislead the public in order to hide the link between plastic and any potential for health dangers.
By the way, the EPA, persistently and religiously follows its “love nature first” agenda. Because of this, one might think that there was an EPA war against chemical companies. Contrary to popular belief, however, it was not the EPA agency that blew the lid on chemical company issues.
In 1973, the EPA was just a startup agency. It was the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that took on the chemical companies. Today, the FDA often is forced to take orders from the EPA. Back in the early 1970’s however, the EPA was the agency that learned that plastic liquor and wine bottles were leaching vinyl chloride into the liquor and wine. Ultimately the FDA banned its use for liquor bottles. Today, Boxed wines with the special plastic bag inserts are considered food safe as are specially made plastics for liquor containers.
The kind of plastic that booze comes in is polyethylene terephthalate (PET). This leeches much less toxin than the other types of plastic bottles.Most of who consume such products are noticeably still alive. Overall, the FDA considers them safe today but then again, there is nothing like glass.
There are some Seniors of today who are thankful that the FDA found the problem a long time ago. In the 1970’s many of today’s oldsters were just in their late teens and early 20’s. Looking back, however, the penniless college coed of that era would have not had a worry anyway as the popular beverages of the time for the “I’m broke, how about you crowd!” were Ripple and Swizzle and other potent “wine-like” products. These were packaged in glass containers.
Ripple and Swizzle were the lowest cost products (rotgut) that a young person with limited funds could buy. It seems the only ones whose brains were affected negatively now serve in Congress. We know it was not caused by the plastic.
One of the honest industry studies did find that vinyl chloride residues from bottles and packages had also migrated into vinegar, apple cider, vegetable oil, mineral oil and onto meats. Over time, after these variants of plastic products were withdrawn, better and safer food-grade plastic products were developed. The FDA is continually double checking that all is OK, and for that I am grateful. The FDA has its own issues but they actually do protect the people from the corporations.
Under FDA guidelines when new packaging materials are developed for food use, the FDA reviews the submitted test data and must be satisfied with the product for its intended use before it gives the OK.
The FDA checks out a lot of factors in its attempt to assure human safety. For plastics, it checks the migration potential and the substances with which they are made. The objective of course is for the packaging not to migrate into the food. Tests are conducted to assure that there is just a minimal amount of transfer between a plastic package and the food it contains and that any transfer does not pose a risk to human health. The FDA’s mission is to assure that humans are safe from factors that affect food and drugs. The rule of thumb continues to be that if you can taste the plastic, discard the container.
The EPA operates differently from the FDA. From my perspective, they work like a bunch of thugs, with their major purpose to assure that nature is not harmed by man. If it were up to the EPA, I would bet that the harmful plastic products would still be on the market as it would shorten human life. In this way, each human would have less of an impact on nature. Maybe that is too harsh a thought. Maybe not! I have no proof of this per se, just a conclusion formed by reading and observation. In summary, the FDA is mostly good; the EPA is mostly bad.
Conservatives are on fire
Conservatives on Fire at http://conservativesonfire.wordpress.com
...offer a smorgasbord of stories on the various government agencies. When I say, the FDA is mostly good; I think that is about right. The EPA is downright corrupt and very dangerous to the economy. The other agencies also get carried away sometimes with their excessive power but their adopted charters, unlike the EPA’s is not to mess up the country. Moreover, they typically like to help the people at large, rather than position people as subservient to nature.
Conservatives on fire (COF) is a group that is up in arms over the FDA, USDA, and EPA, who they refer to as “Obama’s Storm Troopers in Action.” They got their stories originally from the Daily Caller but their blog posts are ripe with comments about the government agencies under Obama. A commenter at the end of a number of stories noted the TSA also needs to be on the list of bad agencies and the COF agreed.
Conservatives on fire think that the governmental agencies charged with monitoring and “helping” us are all out of control and they picked these stories because they “make their blood boil.” At first, you will be inclined to laugh but please hold back the laughter because unlike some light-hearted stuff in this book, this is silly, but in a very hurtful way to those directly affected. In many ways, we are all affected.
“The first story has to do with the FDA and an Amish farmer.
“In April 2010, federal agents descended on the dairy farm of Dan Allgyers in Pennsylvania. The Amish farmer produces unpasteurized milk on his farm and sells it to families who prefer dairy products in their natural state.
“The sale of unpasteurized milk has been illegal under federal law since 1987, but that doesn’t keep clever farmers and customers from making it work, usually by forming private clubs where raw milk is a benefit of club membership. Selling unpasteurized milk is legal inside 10 states.
“So, back in 1987 the FDA determines that there is ‘some’ risk to consuming raw milk and writes a law prohibiting the sale of unpasteurized milk. But some people believe there are actual health benefits to drinking raw milk and they want raw milk for their families. To get around the law, these people have worked with dairy farmers to form private clubs, which allow club members to buy the milk they want. But the FDA Storm Troopers put a stop to Farmer Dan’s illegal operation. However, this time the Storm Troopers have stirred-up a hornets’ nest. “
The farmer joined a group protesting the FDA’s heavy-handed approach to raw dairy. Most of the protesters get their products from Farmer Dan, and are hoping a Ron Paul-sponsored bill will prevent the FDA from getting in theirs and Dan’s business in the future. --- http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/24/raw-milk-it-tastes-like-freedom/#ixzz1abTYQOf4
Ron Paul is the best person on freedom and liberty in the country from whom I think Farmer Dan could expect help.
“The second story has to do with the USDA and little bunny rabbits. Here are some excerpts from the story:
“It started out as a hobby, a way for the Dollarhite family in Nixa, Mo., to teach a teenage son responsibility. Like a lemonade stand.
“But now, selling a few hundred rabbits over two years has provoked the heavy hand of the federal government to the tune of a $90,643 fine. The fine was levied more than a year after authorities contacted family members, prompting them to immediately halt their part-time business and liquidate their equipment.
“A fine of over $90,000 seems a bit steep, doesn’t it? The family’s lawyer thought so too.
“ ‘My client rejects that proposal,’ wrote their attorney, Richard Anderson, in a May 19 letter, noting that according to USDA’s own literature, its 6,000 annual enforcement cases average ‘a penalty of $333.33 per case, and yet you contend it would be appropriate my client tender a penalty of $90,643.00.’
“From an average case fine of $333 to over $90,000, I’d say that is a bit of overreaching by the Storm Troopers. But here is what a USDA spokesperson had to say:
“USDA spokesman Sacks said the $90,643 fine ‘looks curious to say the least.’ But, he insisted it was necessary for USDA to punish violators to ensure businesses across the country register, putting them on the USDA’s radar screen for inspections and possible enforcement [in other areas besides milk.]”
Above is from Stormtroopers piece on Conservatives on fire; below is from a Commenter on Stormtroopers:
“May 25, 2011
“Don’t forget the TSA! They sent a letter to Texas saying that if they passed the law that would make some of the pat-downs illegal and a felony, that they would establish a no-fly zone over Texas. Re-blogged about it this morning. Can this possibly be legal?”
The moral of the story is don’t mess with Obama. He will get you with one agency or another.
Chapter Summary
This chapter contains peripheral and background information that will help in understanding how far out of the mainstream of rationale thought the EPA has drifted. From the Silent Spring days of Rachel Carson, Americans have been blessed by an attentive Congress and the Office of the President in keeping the air and the water safe for all humankind in the United States. As we move further on in this book, however, you will see that Silent Spring was way too loud in its prescription for overkill on the protection front.
Nobody thinks that America is not better off for the environmental protection that we have received over the years since the big smog episodes in LA in the 1960’s. Some of the help came from the EPA and lots came from the states’ Departments of Environmental Resources. With the plastics issues and food issues, a lot of good help also came from the F.D.A.
As you will see in subsequent chapters, when something gets so big like the EPA; it takes on a life of its own, and when it no longer works for the people, it is time for it to go. The EPA has long outlived its usefulness to the American people. It now appears that it is more powerful than the Congress that once drafted the legislation creating this agency gone wild. President Obama would like nothing more than to help marginalize the power of Congress through the use of his EPA.
The EPA over the years has morphed into something that is dangerous for Americans. Though we are all interested in clean air and clean water, it helps to remember that the Clean Air Act and other such positive legislation were enacted by Congress, not the EPA. They were well needed and they did their job for years. The EPA, as an agency of the US government, had a job to create regulations that were in the spirit of the laws created by the Congress. For awhile it did its job well, but as it got bigger, it decided that it would solve all of the problems of the planet, and along the way, it decided that mankind was the biggest problem.
As the Holiday Season has past us in 2011, it helps to recall that the EPA came up with just one clever wish for Christmas…if only it could do something about all the people who were exhaling CO2. Thankfully, the EPA is not powerful enough yet to actually take action to reduce the number of humans on the planet.
For the EPA, as we repeat often in this book, Mother Nature does come first. Humans have been documented for ages as the biggest polluters. So, why should the EPA like humans?