Another day, another unconstitutional power grab.
Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways.
These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.
“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
“This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.
Much as I detest politics, this is the sort of thing that makes me want to run for office. Knowing that attempting to expropriate private property would generate a major public uproar (even among normally apolitical people), they instead use environmentalism as an excuse to do the same thing. Especially water. Most people don’t know that the water than runs off the roofs of their houses is considered a form of pollution, and and a while host of environmentalists stand ready to regulate it.
The water that runs off your roof runoff and your driveway are considered “Nonpoint source pollution.” An army of young eager beaver newly minted environmentalists need work, and they would love nothing more than to get government jobs so they can invade the privacy of each and every homeowner in the United States. In the name of “the environment” of course.
It’s not our environment, but theirs. This is profoundly undemocratic, but these people are true believers who don’t even see their mission as political. To them it’s a simple matter of right and wrong, not even open for debate.
I think they are deluded fanatics, but like most fanatics, they are blind to their evil.
They actually think they are doing good, and if you are one of the very few who dares disagree with them, you’re the one who becomes evil.
Comments
6 responses to “Occupy the environment!”
The trouble is not just the enviros. We have a whole host of folks who say “I believe in liberty, except for (names pet cause)”.
This is a short and not exhaustive list of pet causes:
1. Drugs
2. Abortion
3. Obesity
4. Corn syrup sweeteners
5. Meat
6. Hunting
7. Guns
8. Automobiles
9. Modern Chicken Farming Methods
10. Oil
11. Nuclear Power
12. Coal
13. etc. etc. etc.
And each of those factions takes the success of any other faction as reason to push on.
As I said in another venue in relation to the current political war going on in America between the communists and the fascists:
I will play ball with the victors. Either side. Why? Because I have ceased to give a rats ass about a people who WILLINGLY give up their liberty for what? For nothing.
Heretic! How dare you question the Established Faith. Know ye not that it is only by faith in the Holy Trinity, The Fed, The Treasury, and The EPA that we may yet survive during this great tribulation of Austrian Atheists, Tea Partiers, and those darkest of all the evil minions, Libertarians.
Have Faith and Fear Not for King ‘O’ shall call upon his Czar’s and the High Priest Bernanke shall speak. Then shall there be funds and great forces to subjugate unruly men and restore our beloved World to peace and a pristine and natural state.
So let it be written, So let it be done!
As Glenn Reynolds would say,
“Tar. Feathers.”
They are going to have a battle on their hands in Colorado. The state claims every drop that falls from a cloud within the state, to the point that in several areas individual home owners are not allowed to have cisterns – that’s diverting state water and it might affect in-stream flow guarantees and interstate compacts.
[…] was looking at some new water regulations regulating rain water puddles that amount to a taking of private property. Enviros gone mad. I left […]
I’m waiting for the day when walking is outlawed, because walking is not specifically guaranteed by the Constitution