Tag Archives: government

Dysfunction and the EPA

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Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and the attorneys general of 11 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday, demanding that the agency turn over documents the states allege will show the agency cooperates with environmental groups as part of a “sue and settle” legal strategy to develop regulations.

And

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, alleges that binding consent decrees between the EPA and environmental groups that have sued the agency over the years have led to new rules and regulations for states without allowing their attorneys general to defend their interests and those of its businesses and consumers.

Pruitt noted,

The EPA is picking winners and losers, exhibiting favoritism, at the expense of due process and transparency.  They are manipulating our legal system to achieve what they cannot through our representative democracy.  The outcomes of their actions affect every one of us by sticking states with the bill and unnecessarily raising utility rates by as much as 20%.

Then there’s this:

[Des Moines Water Works] General Manager Bill Stowe has said if…water goes over the EPA safe limit and Iowa policymakers fail to sign off on a plan to regulate farm runoff, Des Moines Water Works may file a lawsuit asking a federal court to force the EPA to establish standards limiting runoff and enforcement.

The environmental groups also are prepared to sue the EPA for unreasonable delay if the agency doesn’t push the state harder to begin cleaning up livestock operations.

Exactly.

A Measure of Responsibility

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The House plans to take steps to curb the power of federal agencies and impose more checks on them in response to recent scandals emanating from the Internal Revenue Service.

Here are the bills the House plans to introduce before the August recess next month—and hopefully pass and send up to the Senate for passage in September after the recess.  The several bills would

  • bar [the IRS] from implementing and enforcing Obamacare
  • make it legal for citizens to make recordings of any conversation they have with a federal enforcement official
  • necessitate[] the approval of the leadership of the agency for conferences held by government officials
  • [give] Congress…final approval of any regulations that would seriously impact the economy
  • mandate the creation of a customer service system at agencies
  • let agencies place “senior career officials on investigative leave, with or without pay, when they are under investigation for serious abuses.”

Will the Democrats in the Senate support this, or will they block the bills, favoring, instead, continued (Democrat) Executive Branch abuses?  Will the House actually pass this legislation, or is this just a Republican version of Obamatalk?

We’ll see in a bit.

Another Harebrained Idea

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Congressman Eric Swalwell (D, CA) and two colleagues, Steve Pearce (R, NM) and Cynthia Lummis (R, WY) actually think this is a good idea.  They want to

amend House rules so lawmakers can vote remotely through a secure communications system[.]  The resolution would allow lawmakers to vote on bills that require a two-thirds majority in the House to pass, meaning they are being considered under a suspension of regular rules and are typically noncontroversial….

Further,

Under the proposed resolution, lawmakers and witnesses would be allowed to participate in committee hearings held in Washington via secure videoconferencing technology….

No.  This defeats a major purpose and a major advantage of requiring an in-person quorum in order to conduct business and to vote on that business: getting our elected representatives in the same room together for face-to-face interaction.  No matter how good the virtual links get, they cannot be the same as being there in person, seeing, hearing, and interacting with everyone and everything on the floor and not just with the parts conveniently within camera or microphone range.

Also, it overstates the noncontroversial nature of votes requiring a two-thirds majority: little things like a veto override, or an impeachment vote.

It also overstates the noncontroversial nature of bills needing a suspension of regular order to pass, including a vote on the suspension of the rules.  As recently as the 108th Congress (the 2003-2004 session), for instance, the House considered some 920 bills under suspension, and only about 620 achieved final passage.  That seems a shade controversial to me, especially those 300 that failed.

Leave things alone, guys.  It won’t hurt you to show up in your place of work and do a little work there.

A Little Bit of Cynicism

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The Supreme Court has agreed to take up, in its next term, the question of recess appointments and of what is a “recess.”  The DC Circuit had ruled, in the case being appealed, that certain NLRB appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid because they had occurred while the Senate was in session and not in recess.  That court also held both that an actual recess could only occur between the year-long sessions of a Congress and that a recess appointment could be made only for a vacancy that originated during that recess.

President Barack Obama’s Solicitor General, Donald Verilli, in his filing before the Supremes argued with a straight face that were the Court to uphold the DC ruling, it would restrict the president’s power.

To which I ask, “Yeah, and…?”

Verilli also argued with similar seriousness that upholding the DC ruling

…would deem invalid hundreds of recess appointments made by presidents since early in the nation’s history[.]

Umm, no.  It would deem invalid the appointments on appeal and possibly the appointments made under similar circumstances since the NLRB appoints at the start of 2012.  Verilli knows better.

Rakoff Was Both Right and Victorious

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Recall Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff’s decision a while ago rejecting an SEC-Citibank settlement, in which Citibank agreed to pay an enormous vigfine to the SEC in return for the latter’s desisting from harassinghectoring the former any further.  Rakoff’s heartburn concerned the lack of statement by either party of guilt or innocence by Citibank—Citi would simply pay the protectionfine and the SEC would stop its threats.

Now there’s an update to the SEC side of this.

The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to make companies and individuals admit wrongdoing as a condition of settling civil charges in certain cases, or be forced to fight the charges in court, the agency’s Chairman Mary Jo White said Tuesday.

Is this a direct result of Rakoff’s rudeness in holding out for actual culpability before a fine gets assessed?  Maybe, but not directly.  This change didn’t occur until after a review of the overall situation initiated by SEC Chairman Mary Jo White when she took over last spring.

It does, though, come after Rakoff’s argument that the ability to avoid admitting liability allows companies to treat settlements as just a “cost of doing business.”  He didn’t argue this explicitly, but I do: it also allows government agencies to extort money and other…concessions…from businesses and individuals with whom those agencies have a disagreement of any sort.  Sort of like the IRS and the DoJ do.

“Victorious” may be too strong, but this clearly is a step in the right direction.