Landowners, homeowners, business owners, home builders, construction companies, the forestry and mining industries, and just about everyone else engaged in productive activities in the United States are in the crosshairs of the most far-reaching power grab the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ever undertaken.
The dramatic transformation of America’s energy outlook brought about by the shale revolution was underscored Sept. 2 with the official unveiling of a plan to build a $5 billion, 550-mile gas pipeline through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Wyoming ranchers are suing the Western Watersheds Project for trespassing for gathering water samples on private and state land without permission. WWP's stated mission is to rid public lands of all grazing leases. Writer Ron Arnold says their activities constitute "rural cleansing."
If its Clean Power Plan rule is allowed to go into effect, EPA will subject the country to a wrenching transformation of its energy sector that cannot be justified by the available scientific evidence or the damage it will inflict on ordinary citizens and the environment.
$54 billion for new transportation schemes to make Washington, D.C., a more "sustainable" city means pushing out the automobile in favor of bike lanes, buses and railcars, and, yes, water taxis. And, yes, tolls on motor vehicles entering the city. First off, the plan suggests the city will be adding 200,000 jobs -- presumably mostly in the federal government or in the massive lobbying community that surrounds officialdom. That alone should be cause for the panic button.
Voters in northern Virginia are thinking twice about spending unlimited sums for "smart growth" features like streetcars, "super stops" for buses, and even bicycle lanes -- especially bike lanes that "sharrow" lanes with automobiles. Talk about a revolution, when the people who make a living out of quite often wastefully spending other people's money balk at wastefully spending their own money.
The "plantocracy" [plan-tocracy] is a new term CFACT coined to describe the woes about to be unleashed upon American citizens through the grand designs of unelected bureaucrats hell bent on massive social engineering schemes, regardless of the cost to or convenience of -- or even the willingness of -- local citizens of all persuasions. Worse, this Frankensteinian, corporatized nonsense is being paid for by the very citizens who are going to be harmed by it.
What was once largely the domain of far-away UN conferences and obscure academic journals has now made its way to Main Street.
Thanks to a grassroots outcry against injustice, Virginia lawmakers passed a new law, signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, that protects family farmers from encroachment by local governments. Martha Boneta had been barred by her county government from selling produce, fined for hosting a birthday party, and threatened with the loss of her entire farm. Environmental groups and county governments provided the major opposition to the bill.
Sign the petition! The public comment period ends Thursday. Study after study gives the Keystone XL pipeline a safe, clean bill of health. Stop the delays, start the jobs and ensure this vital artery of energy flows to the U.S., not China. Read CFACT's latest comments to the State Department.
Isle of Wight County (Virginia) officials decided to play rough with a local farmer whose "crime" was kindness to a disabled friend who wanted to go hunting. County goons swarmed in and declared the presence of his friend's RV made his farm an unauthorized "campground.' Landowner Joseph Ferguson then called the Rutherford Institute for help. The case is pending.
In yet another example of a busy-body local government harassing a law-abiding citizen, officials in Isle of Wight County, Virginia are trying to prohibit a farmer from allowing a disabled friend to stay overnight on his property in an RV.
Radical environmentalists, including many who see humans as a plague upon the Earth, have succeeded in nearly totally destroying the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, and they used the spotted owl as their primary weapon. Now the government is killing barred owls -- the spotted owl's larger cousin, the barred owl, which had been migrating westward into spotted owl territory. This is something akin to the NLRB outlawing football players over 250 pounds so that smaller, weaker would-be players have a better chance at making a team.
Yet another effort to take away the mineral wealth of the United States in looming in Colorado, thanks to Sen. Mark Udall. Even worse, the Obama Administration could just speak the Browns Canyon National Monument and Wilderness Area into being, just as President Clinton robbed Utah of much of its mineral wealth via the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Plans by PolyMet Mining Corp. to open a copper and nickel mine in Minnesota are putting Governor Mark Dayton on the hot seat and dividing the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party just months before Gov. Dayton faces a reelection campaign in 2014. Green DFLers oppose the project, whereas Iron Range DFL members are among its strongest supporters. Demand for copper and nickel is soaring, and despite U.S. financial support for the Roy Hill Mine in Australia, the PolyMet mine would likely stimulate the local economy.