The Patriot Post® · The EPA, Government, & 'Environmentalists'

There is a small but strident politically-correct minority impeding the national economy by locking up federal lands from economic development. The federal government owns and controls fully one-third of our country – as much as two-thirds the areas of four western states whose economies could be turned loose by judicious use of these lands. Most of these lands are by law open to multiple use including mineral development and energy, yet so-called “environmentalists” treat them as off-limits to productive development. These small but vocal groups use EPA and other complicit administrative agencies and the Department of the Interior in their (almost always successful) efforts to stop or greatly delay economic development on their own terms. They do this by suing the government agency, which in turn not only settles out-of-court in the group’s favor but pays the group for its complaints. If it sounds like a racket, it is, and it severely curtails employment, economic progress, and development of resources indispensable to state and national growth. All this is done under the guise of “environmental protection” and the auspices of the Administration, the deliberative/legislative part of government (Congress, where the people have a say) being excluded completely from the system.

These machinations have nothing to do with ‘protection.’ The agencies use their executive power to prevent (or delay for long periods, some more than 5-years) many potentially productive projects under the guise of defending usually bogus ‘endangered species’ and/or broadly re-defined (in their own terms) ‘wetlands’ and other water ‘resources.’ The results? Massive million-acre fires caused by failure to clear and maintain forests; irrigation privation of farm communities by diverting water elsewhere to ‘protect’ heretofore nameless fish species and a reliance on foreign oil and other critical minerals when these resources are readily available in and under our own federal lands, and more.

The most recent blatant violation of our economic rights is the EPA cap on carbon dioxide emissions under the guise of preventing destructive ‘global warming.’ This politically-correct maneuver will artificially inflate the cost of electricity and threaten our ability to meet future power requirements, at the same time holding down employment and generally stifling our economy.

It’s time that government is returned to the people. It’s our land, and our resources, and our country. Politically-preferred special interests have been impeding our economy long enough, and the results are demonstrably harmful. The politically-correct Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations are largely responsible, the sources of the political correctness that is strangling our nation.