Posted on 07/10/2014 4:31:29 PM PDT by jazusamo
Big Government: The EPA is now claiming the authority to bypass courts and, on its own, garnish the paychecks and attach the assets of those it accuses of violating its rules. And, as with the IRS, its hard drives also crash.
The Environmental Protection Agency's insatiable lust for power has now gone beyond being the pen and the phone for President Obama's climate change, bypassing both the Constitution and the Congress in enacting rules and regulations that the American people and their representatives did not enact or even support.
Through an announcement in the Federal Register, the agency is claiming that existing federal law allows it "to garnish non-Federal wages to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order." It claims such authority under the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996.
These non-tax debts are fines and penalties that the EPA has levied against alleged polluters who often are innocent — farmers, for example, making common-sense decisions in running their daily lives and businesses, who discover a ditch that they dug is now considered a wetland because rainwater occasionally fills it.
"The EPA has a history of overreaching its authority. It seems like once again the EPA is trying to take power it doesn't have away from American citizens," Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, said when he learned of the EPA's wage-garnishment scheme, according to the Washington Times.
The EPA authoritarian edicts include recently slapping a $75,000 a day — yes, a day — fine on Wyoming homeowner Andy Johnson for building a pond on his rural property to provide water for his cattle where the Six Mile Creek runs across his land.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Got to give Cong Sensenbrenner credit, he’s called to abolish the ATF.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/rep-sensenbrenner-abolish-the-atf/
Think of the money saved if enough of the unconstitutional,useless, & criminal government agencies are abolished.
IBD EDITORIAL PING
I heard some of the possible “penalties” and how they would get to you yesterday. WHAT! Attach your bank account, garnish your wages for violating something they don’t have to tell you or obtain a court order? What’s wrong with this picture? I’m getting purty tired of these govt agencies enacting rules and regs that carry the weight of law when no law has been passed. I guess it’s in the power that the legislature gave them at their inception. Disgraceful.
BLM part deux.
i can hear the future glenn Becks saying the rancher needs to follow the rule and pay his fair share.
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