What DOJ bias teaches us about EPA and other agencies

June 18, 2018 by CFACT, 4 Comments

The environmental left often criticizes climate skeptics and environmental realists for challenging the statements and actions of the EPA and other government actors. The revelations of the Department of Justice’s extensive political prejudice and improper actions taken against Donald Trump and the people who support President Trump illustrate how extensive the deep state is. Unfortunately, the bias of government officials who oversee global warming and environmental issues is just as pervasive – and perhaps more so – than the bias that exists and occurs within the Justice Department.

A love for the law, or a desire to practice law, is not something that is closely associated with ideology or party affiliation. Republicans are just as likely as Democrats to enter the legal field. It is the nature of government and governmental power, however, that facilitates the extensive bias and partisan misconduct discovered throughout the Justice Department. The political left champions government and governmental power. Similarly, Democrats are the party that champions government and governmental power. It logically follows that Democrats and left-leaning lawyers will be more likely to seek employment and build long-term careers with the Department of Justice and other branches of government. Even people whom we are told were Republicans before joining the ranks of career government employees – including people like James Comey and Robert Mueller – soon embrace government, governmental power, and the underlying tenets of leftist ideology after joining the ranks of the governmental deep state. The result of this is the pervasive bias and political misconduct perpetrated throughout the Justice Department to boost leftists and Hillary Clinton and subsequently destroy Donald Trump and his conservative followers.

It is important to remember that the overall pool of lawyers from which government recruits employees very closely represents the overall distribution of American ideological sentiment and party affiliation. It is the nature, role, appeal, and power of government that initially brings more leftists and Democrats into the ranks of ‘non-partisan’ career government employees. These same attributes of government and government employment further filter out centrists and Republicans, purifying the leftist sentiment of what we are told are non-partisan career government employees.

The same factors that lead to institutional bias in the Justice Department apply regarding the Environmental Protection Agency, but to an even greater extent. The study of law may be a politically neutral endeavor, but environmental students are overwhelmingly from the political left and believe in an activist agenda to “protect” the environment. Instead of initially recruiting from a talent pool that is relatively evenly distributed according to ideology and party, the Environmental Protection Agency and other governmental entities that address environmental issues recruit from a talent pool that is already numerically dominated by leftists and people who strongly identify with environmental activists. The centrists and Republicans who choose to study environmental issues and pursue a career involving environmental issues comprise a small minority among the overall talent pool available to the EPA. Still fewer of this small minority dream of working for government. With the same additional filtering of centrists and Republicans in EPA that applies regarding the Justice Department and most other branches of government, the end result is an EPA that is even more leftist, partisan, and activist that what exists at the Department of Justice.

It is important to keep this reality in mind when the environmental left and their media allies attempt to paint EPA’s ‘non-partisan career scientists’ as the impartial and unimpeachable voices of final authority regarding all matters relating to climate and the environment. The same underlying bias – both preexisting and subsequently purified within the bowels of government – exists regarding government scientists and government-funded scientists who choose not to work in the private sector.

E&E News, a prominent environmental news organization, illustrated this week how the left attempts to portray the heavily biased environmental deep state as politically impartial and unassailable. Writing about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s reported consideration of putting together a Red Team-Blue Team exercise to review EPA’s past determinations regarding global warming issues, E&E news quoted Natural Resources Defense Council strategic director David Doniger. “Instead of taking briefings from and respecting the knowledge of EPA scientists or NASA’s and NOAA’s scientists who are among the world’s experts on climate change, Pruitt wants to bring in a bunch of right-wing nuts to run an alternate facts process,” E&E News quoted Doniger.

In reality, climate and environment scientists within NASA and NOAA almost certainly lean even more to the left, and have even more activist inclinations, than career lawyers within the Department of Justice. Putting together a Red Team-Blue Team panel to consider arguments from the full universe of scientists and experts regarding global warming – and not merely accepting at face value the dubious findings and agenda advocated by government agencies that are almost certainly even more politically biased than the Justice Department – is both justifiable and necessary for scientific integrity.

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