EPA Favors Friends

A couple of newish EPA scandals, and an old, continuing one:

EPA waives fee requests for friendly groups, denies conservative groups

Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute
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For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the time...

Probably because they did intend to disseminate the information requested; however it was likely information EPA did not want disseminated.

Another scandal, long known but seldom mentioned, that surfacing in the week of scandals is that EPA is suing oil companies for relatively rare deaths of birds (particularly large, charismatic birds) in oil production or electric transmission, but giving a pass to wind power producers for the relatively frequent deaths of birds in the blades of the wind turbines:

Wind Farms Get Pass on Eagle Deaths

Wind farms in this corner of Wyoming have killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, one of the deadliest places in the country of its kind. But so far, the companies operating industrial-sized turbines here and elsewhere that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted - even though every death is a criminal violation.

The Obama administration has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits, and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines. But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly.

"What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody.

 As with animals and guns, some deaths are more are more equal than others.

Finally, a reminder, that EPA actually sets up and pays for training for some of it's "oppenents", that is to say environmentalist groups, that it hopes will take it to court to enforce things that Congress has not already authorized it to do.

The EPA is using taxpayer money to encourage environmentalist groups to sue … the EPA. This has continued for decades.

The EPA has paid one of these groups to produce a do-it-yourself guide to suing the EPA.

The EPA frequently enters into consent decrees to settle the suits. Even when the EPA doesn’t hand out megadollar settlements — your money — to the litigious loons, it commonly pays their attorney’s fees.

Why would the EPA do something so obviously crazy?

High-level EPA bureaucrats commonly support the leftist environmentalist beliefs of these groups, as do a great many of the career employees of the agency. They look to serve the leftist groups, not their employers.

One of the fundamental rights under our system of government is equal and unbiased enforcement of the laws and regulations that apply to us all.  EPA continually makes a mockery of the that principle.