Posted on 03/20/2014 6:47:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
Two years ago, I shared a video about the Environmental Protection Agency’s brutal and thuggish tactics against an Idaho family.
That story had a very happy ending because the Supreme Court struck a blow for property rights and unanimously ruled against the EPA (too bad that similarly sound analysis was absent when the Justices decided the Kelo case).
Now we have a new example of the EPA running amok
Let’s look at a horrifying report about another family in the cross hairs of a rogue bureaucracy.
All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a stock pond on his sprawling eight-acre Wyoming farm. He and his wife Katie spent hours constructing it, filling it with crystal-clear water, and bringing in brook and brown trout, ducks and geese. It was a place where his horses could drink and graze, and a private playground for his three children.
Sounds like the American dream, but also responsible stewardship since ponds usually have a positive role in limiting erosion.
Unfortunately, the EPA’s pinhead bureaucrats saw an opportunity for pointless and destructive intervention.
But instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor, the Wyoming welder says he was harangued by the federal government, stuck in what he calls a petty power play by the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims the agency is now threatening him with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $75,000-a-day fine. …The government says he violated the Clean Water Act by building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Further, the EPA claims that material from his pond is being discharged into other waterways. Johnson says he built a stock pond — a man-made pond meant to attract wildlife — which is exempt from Clean Water Act regulations. The property owner says he followed the state rules for a stock pond when he built it in 2012 and has an April 4-dated letter from the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office to prove it. …But the EPA isn’t backing down and argues they have final say over the issue. They also say Johnson needs to restore the land or face the fines.
As you can imagine, this was not exactly good news for the property owner.
Johnson says he was “bombarded by hopelessness” when he first received the administrative order from the EPA. …The EPA order on Jan. 30 gave Johnson 30 days to hire a consultant and have him or her assess the impact of the supposed unauthorized discharges. The report was also supposed to include a restoration proposal to be approved by the EPA as well as contain a schedule requiring all work be completed within 60 days of the plan’s approval. If Johnson doesn’t comply — and he hasn’t so far — he’s subject to $37,500 per day in civil penalties as well as another $37,500 per day in fines for statutory violations.
But kudos to Mr. Johnson. Unlike so many others, he’s not going to roll over and acquiesce to EPA brutishness.
Let’s now read about the thuggish actions against blueberry growers by the Department of Labor.
Bureaucrats from that entity decided to launch a legal jihad against some growers and they relied on bad numbers and grotesque strategy.
Another example of big government run amok.
In late July 2012, officials from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division visited Pan-American Berry Growers, B&G Ditchen and E&S Farms for spot inspections. …the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour division district director, Jeff Genkos, accused the growers of minimum-wage violations and declared the blueberries “hot goods” under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. This charge is usually reserved for, say, T-shirts sewn by child laborers. The effect was to stop the fruit from being shipped to customers. He then ordered the growers to pay back wages and penalties and asked them to sign away any right to appeal the deal.
What was most shocking about the DOL’s actions is that they engaged in Mafia-type tactics and “made an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
This put the growers in an impossible spot. Either they could collectively pay $240,435 or let millions of dollars’ worth of berries rot. And they only had a day or two to make a decision. They did what any prudent employer would do: They paid the money, and the hot goods order was lifted.
And you won’t be surprised that the bureaucracy cooked the numbers in the first place.
It turns out that Labor’s bureaucrats had divined that the average worker could only pick around 60 pounds of blueberries an hour, some 30 pounds below what workers usually pick. They then counted the number of workers employed and concluded the growers must have had workers employed off the books. …In January, Oregon magistrate judge Thomas M. Coffin ruled for the growers. “In essence, to avoid the potential loss of millions of dollars worth of berries, defendants had to agree to the DOL’s allegations without an opportunity to present a defense or confront the DOL’s evidence in an administrative or court hearing,” he wrote.
I’m glad at least one court has ruled against the Department of Labor. Let’s hope that the final result is positive when all the appeals have been exhausted.
Both of these stories belong in my collection of “Government Thuggery in Action.”
Previous examples include:
Cops legally stole $17,000 from a man who committed no crime.
A local government in Virginia unfairly trying to destroy an organic farmer.If you peruse those examples without getting angry at big government, you probably need a lengthy bit of soul-searching.
If you’re a normal person, you’ll want this t-shirt (and don’t be a perv, just the t-shirt!).
A friend of mine bought a small house on a large property here in northern NJ, and was told years later when he wanted to build a larger garage and expand the house that he couldn’t build on the property because it was a “wetland”. He lives in the mountains along Route 80, but because the town representative could point out certain plants on his property it is a “wetland”. His family has outgrown the home, and he can’t afford another larger one at this point (he’d have a hard time selling this one now due to the economy), so he’s stuck.
Housing in NJ will never recover because of this BS, coupled with very high property taxes for the privilege of living here.
The lot near Priest Lake in Idaho is still vacant. The piles of dirt and gravel, unmoved.
“Maybe the weeds might be a little taller," Mike Sackett says, "but it just basically looks the same.”
I reached Sackett in North Dakota, where he's now working for a gravel company. He visits Chantell back in Idaho about once a month. The Sacketts are back in court. They're arguing about the next step with the EPA.
“You would think that after beating them 9-0 that they would want to negotiate and get the thing done and let us get on with our life, but instead, we're still dealing with the EPA in our life.”
The reason has to do with the very crux of the original case. The issue before the Supreme Court wasn't whether the Sacketts land contained wetlands. It was whether the Sacketts should have a chance to argue whether the Sacketts land contained wetlands. And that's exactly where they are now.
It’s a slow process … which brings us to the question of what the Sackett case means for environmental regulations. Conservationists worried the Clean Water Act would be far weaker if the EPA had to defend its compliance orders against polluters in court.
But the agency may have a way around that. If you go back and listen to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia, in a quick aside, even predicted an alternative to compliance orders.
“They'll just issue warnings is what they'll do,” said Scalia. Warnings -- like a sternly worded letter.
“If the agency's smart, he's dead right, frankly, and I don't say that very often about Justice Scalia in the environmental realm. But I think he understands the agency has other mechanisms at its disposal to threaten people,” says Craig Johnston, an environmental law professor at Lewis & Clark in Portland.
Another sad example of Herr Obama’s war on Americans
1. marxists hate private property and want all of it.
2. The USA has a long tradition of private property and pride of ownership.
3. They knew it was going to be difficult to seize all private property. Just yet.
4. They passed various laws that declare private property no longer private, but under the domain of the state.
5. They knew that would not look good, so they gave the laws sweet sounding names, like “clean water act.”
6. The public, walking around with its finger up its nose, thought those laws were real nice, and didn’t realize that they had just lost some of their rights.
7. The state moves forward and invalidates private property every chance it gets.
Another sad example of Herr Obama’s war on Americans”””
Don’t forget his best co-conspiritor: Holder.
It should be a priority for every American who believes in the right to own property to work on ending the EPA completely. Local environments should be locally controlled.
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