The big story of the day is the news, broken last night by the New York Times, that Hilary Clinton exclusively used private email accounts to conduct official business while she was Secretary of State. This apparent gross violation of federal recordkeeping laws provides the perfect segue to….The Top Five Transparency Abuses at Obama’s EPA. I’d be remiss if I failed to note that all of these outrages were unearthed by my colleague Chris Horner, who literally wrote the book on how to use the Freedom of Information Act.
#5: EPA’s Routine Egregious Censorship
The Freedom of Information Act allows citizens to petition federal agencies for information. However, not all information is subject to these requests; the statute stipulates a number of exemptions. And of these exemptions, the broadest (and, therefore, most vulnerable to abuse) is known as the “b(5)” exemption, after its statutory provision (5 U.S.C. §552(b)(5)). Indeed, Obama’s EPA has broken new ground in the application of “b(5),” such that the censor’s pen renders entire FOIA productions black. I wish I were kidding—we post the evidence here. It’s a Kafkaesque.
#4: EPA’s Unequal Treatment of FOIA Requests
It goes without saying that civil servants should treat all citizens equally. EPA, however, treats right-of-center groups differently than “progressive” groups. According to data compiled by my colleague Chris Horner, there exists a huge disparity between the agency’s granting of fee waivers depending on what you believe, whereby green groups virtually always received one, and conservative groups almost never got one.
#3: Textgate
Here’s what we know: EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy conducted business via text and then destroyed the records of her correspondence, in blatant contravention of federal recordkeeping laws. Read a brief summary here.
#2: The Fall of EPA Region 8 administrator James Martin
Ex-EPA Region 8 administrator James Martin is the only casualty of the agency’s risible record on transparency. (After all, this administration claims to be “the most transparent, ever”). Martin conducted business on a private email account, and then got caught lying about it before a federal court. He abruptly resigned (for “personal reasons”) very shortly thereafter. My colleague Chris Horner has uncovered similar usage of private email accounts by EPA administrators for Regions 9 and 2. The behavior was so widespread that the Senate EPW minority staff (in the 113th Congress) wrote a report about it.
#1: Richard Windsor (of course)
The one, the only—Richard Windsor, a.k.a. Lisa Jackson. I mean, she corresponded exclusively in an alias. The only thing sketchier than that is what Hilary did.
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I usually don’t e-mail youtube shorts; but this is an exception. It shows a portion of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s testimony before a Senate Committee. The questioning is from Sen. Sessions from Alabama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQpyAY3J55g&feature=youtu.be
A partial transcript follows:
Sessions: “It’s not complicated on how many have landed. We’ve had a dramatic reduction in the number. We’ve gone a decade without a hurricane [Category] 3 or above… Would you acknowledge that over the last 18 years, that the increase in temperature has been very little, and that it is well below, matter of fact 90 percent below most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would increase?” …
McCarthy: “I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to…”
Sessions: “This is a stunning development, that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency—who should know more than anybody else in the world, who is imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prevent this climate temperature increase—doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong.
This is incredible testimony from the EPA Administrator that she doesn’t understand the science used to create stifling regulations from the EPA.
James H. Rust, Professor
I usually don’t e-mail youtube shorts; but this is an exception. It shows a portion of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s testimony before a Senate Committee. The questioning is from Sen. Sessions from Alabama.
A partial transcript follows:
Sessions: “It’s not complicated on how many have landed. We’ve had a dramatic reduction in the number. We’ve gone a decade without a hurricane [Category] 3 or above… Would you acknowledge that over the last 18 years, that the increase in temperature has been very little, and that it is well below, matter of fact 90 percent below most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would increase?” …
McCarthy: “I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to…”
Sessions: “This is a stunning development, that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency—who should know more than anybody else in the world, who is imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prevent this climate temperature increase—doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong.
This is incredible testimony the head of EPA doesn’t understand the science used for their economy killing regulations.
James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering
Professor Rust. I have to disagree with your last statement. She fully understands what the science is saying. She is lying to protect the political agenda of the Obama Administration.
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