Posted on 01/04/2013 11:30:18 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The odd-year gubernatorial election of what now feels like a solidly purple Virginia (…dagger) could potentially serve as a bellwether of which way the national attitude is trending after almost a year into President Obama’s second term, and conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will be facing former DNC chief Terry McAuliffe in what will likely be a pretty rough race.
One of the items on which the Obama administration has already started moving “forward” in the more politically safe second-term-secured atmosphere is all of the regulations on which they were rather conspicuously holding back before the election, with the Environmental Protection Agency’s many determinedly zealous ideas for regulating our air and water figuring largely among them. The Clean Air and Water Acts have so far been some of the biggest legal boundary-busting culprits employed by the Obama EPA, and AG Cuccinelli just pulled out a major victory leading a case in which he argued that the EPA was trying to categorize water itself, rather than just the sediment in it, as a pollutant in order to further expand their authoritative whimsy over both it and us. Winning:
A federal district judge Thursday shot down a “novel” EPA attempt to regulate the flow of water as a pollutant, stopping dead in its tracks what otherwise would have been a major regulatory expansion. …
Cuccinelli personally argued the case before O’Grady on Dec. 14, warning the EPA’s attempt to regulate the flow of water into state waterways would amount to a “tremendous expansion” of its regulatory power. …
Assuming the judgment withstands appeal, it would spare Fairfax County an estimated $300 million in compliance costs. Nationwide, three other lawsuits against the EPA’s recent assertion of its authority to regulate water flow are pending. …
“EPA’s thinking here was that if Congress didn’t explicitly prohibit the agency from doing something, that meant it could, in fact, do it,” said Cuccinelli in his statement. …
“You know it’s bad when a partisan Democrat board of supervisors, like Fairfax County, will join us to sue the EPA,” he said. “That’s how bad it’s gotten.”
Governor McDonnell was definitely on board in support of both the lawsuit and Cuccinelli’s efforts:
Speaking about the ruling, Governor Bob McDonnell said, “The Commonwealth has just saved taxpayers an estimated more than $300 million by prevailing in a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for unlawfully attempting to regulate water itself as a pollutant. The EPA tried to regulate water as a pollutant in the Accotink Creek watershed. This would have required the Virginia Department of Transportation to spend at least an additional $70 million to retrofit its existing facilities and redesign new projects to comply with the regulations. Fairfax County would have had to spend more than $300 million to comply with the EPA mandate. Over time the regulation would have impacted numerous other projects, costing even more and having a negative impact on future job creation. …
This ruling today is a testament to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s good work to fight back on economically harmful, and unnecessary, regulations. The ruling will save millions of dollars now and much more in the future. It is a positive victory for the taxpayers of Virginia.”
If there’s anything that can get grassroots conservatives fired up for an election, it’s the federal government’s persistent displays of simply trying to do what they want, when they want, the economic and personal costs be damned — and Cuccinelli having spearheaded takedown will almost certainly be an excellent selling point on his gubernatorial-race resume in the coming months. The EPA is constantly raining (reigning?) down on businesses and communities with their bureaucratic ambitions that are based not so much on accurate science as political science, and a local-level example with bipartisan support like this isn’t a bad win to have in your back pocket.
fyi
We WERE a nation of laws before the coronation of Emperor Obama.
No we’re not.
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“EPA’s thinking here was that if Congress didn’t explicitly prohibit the agency from doing something, that meant it could, in fact, do it,” said Cuccinelli in his statement. …
Interesting development. Nixon’s ghost must be forever twisting and turning about, as he looks into what horror story the EPA has become.
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Meaning what?
“EPA’s thinking here was that if Congress didn’t explicitly prohibit the agency from doing something, that meant it could, in fact, do it,” said Cuccinelli in his statement. …
This outcome,...victory...could catapult a politician onto the National Stage.
No-—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr and the John Austin ideology that ejected Truth and God from our Legal System-—destroyed Rule of Law (the concept of Higher Power and Absolute Truth no longer exist in our law schools— where arbitrary laws now are the “Rule”).
Man-made up laws without “Right Reason according to Natural Law” are unconstitutional according to our Supreme Law of the Land (Locke/Blackstone/Reid/ Common Law philosophy).
Irrational “thinking” is now the Rule of (no) Law. Truth (God) was totally ejected for Marxism—there is no God—no Absolute Truth-—just arbitrary (whoever is in power gets to legislate what is “Truth”—like Sodomy is a Right—Abortion is a Right—although it comes from Satan and is unnatural and, therefore, unconstitutional. There is no Reason allowed—just irrational “thinking”.
Then there is the removal of all our God-Given Rights-—because the State is the dictator of our “Rights” now and have thrown out the concept of God (which is unconstitutional—but most judges are trained Marxists now because of our brainwashing in universities and “Law” schools. They force fundamental lies and flaws into “law” students and destroy integrity—teach how to obfuscate and get around Truth and deny the Laws of Nature and nature’s God.
This (non) thinking is why we have useful idiots who elected such a degenerate as barry. There is no Truth—Reason—God in public schools. He was removed in the 50’s. The schools destroy intentionally all logic and the belief in God and God-given Rights so the State becomes god.
“We WERE a nation of laws before the coronation of Emperor Obama.”
This EPA garbage started LONG before Obama.
Good luck to him. He’ll need it.
Yeah, this was Nixon's baby. I often wonder how many dedicated lefties/enviro-wackos know that Richard Nixon was the person who started the EPA.
You might have noticed that laws do not apply to dems, libs, and certain protected groups.
Very true. The people voted an end to the rule of law last November. Previous to that we had mistakes and corruption in our government, as all governments do, but now lawlessness has the consent of the governed. Or the ruled as the case is now.
Virginia ping..........
Bump
IMO, Cuccinelli is the best of the McDonnell team. He's done good work for Virginia.
EPA agents live in nearby Maryland ~ and they know that Fairfax has a fairly hilly terrain ~runoff down through the centuries has been fast and furious around here ~ we even have the second largest waterfall (by volume) in the United States, plus we border the Potomac River AT SEA LEVEL for a considerable distance.
This area is also raked by hurricanes FREQUENTLY.
What all of that means is that we could not possibly serve as a catchment for all the water flowing through, near, around, over, or under us. We can only slow down some of it, and then only with what are called Storm Water Retention Basins or Ponds, or catchment easements, or assiduous use of grass and other plants to slow down, delay, or even impound extraordinary water runoff for short periods of time.
EPA's little gnomes did some basic computations and came up with the idea of turning every little valley in the county into a catchment ~ which would permanently retain storm water runoff until it was all absorbed into the ground.
We already have about 500 of these basins. Local zoning and development codes requires them to protect Cheseapeake Bay, but EPA's plan would have added thousands and literally stopped all runoff.
Since the day John Smith sailed up the Potomac to meet Pocahontas on the Virginia side at Great Falls, the runoff on this side of the river has always ultimately gone into the Potomac, at sea level. Only a minor portion of it has managed to get absorbed into the hard clay, iron ore and disaggregated schist that make up our subsurface structures.
EPA's mind boggling and useless plan to create all these many thousand more catchments would have given us innumerable unguarded, unprotectable drowning ponds in a densely populated urban area! And they knew that. The leftwingtards who run that agency like to murder children. Thank goodness The Cooch caught them in the act and sent them packing back to their rat warrens in Maryland. We don't need any of their kind around here.
“We WERE a nation of laws before the coronation of Emperor Obama.”
We haven’t been a nation of laws since Lincoln refused to recognize the rights of sovereign states to secede. It’s been all about power and force ever since.
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