What Kind of Government Should We Want?

By Rich Kozlovich 

In early November at least six agents of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (one article says ten) conducted what can only be considered a swat raid on the home of Mark and Daniela Longo, ransacking their home treating them like they would treat drug dealers or even terrorists, questioning them like criminals....for five hours.  Why?  They owned a pet squirrel named Peanut, who he raised from infancy when the mother squirrel was killed, and Fred the raccoon, which they seized under the pretext of the possibility of rabies, both of which they killed for testing, when they could have merely quarantined them for observation instead.  

“They asked my wife, who is of German descent, what her immigration status was. They asked if I had cameras in my house. They wouldn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without a police escort, who then checked the back of the toilet to see if I was hiding anything there.”

It took all these agents five hours for this?  What kind of government should we want?

New York City is a sewer of crime, violence, and corruption, which neither the city or the state can, or for that matter is even willing to control, and yet New York can waste money and manpower to kill a pet squirrel and raccoon.  I think this quote from "A Stranger in Town", 1943, is appropriate here. 

Men have fought revolutions, have died, to be called "citizen". And as citizens, we carry a burning responsibility. It means that when we elect men to public office, we, we cannot do it as lightly as we flip a coin. It means that after we've elected them we can't sit back and say: "Our job is done. What they do now doesn't concern us." That philosophy of indifference is what the enemies of decent government want. If we allow them to have their way to grow strong and vicious, then the heroic struggle which welded thousands of lovely towns like this into a great nation means nothing. Then we're not citizens, we're traitors. 

The great liberties by which we live have been bought with blood. The kind of government we get is the kind of government we want. Government of the people, by the people and for the people can mean any kind of government. It's our duty to make it mean only one kind - uncorrupted, free, united.

 We've lost our minds.

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 1:14 PM

EPA Can’t Deny Farmers Their Day in Court

Here is a prime opportunity for the White House to show farmers that it stands with them and with sensible, science-based environmental regulation, and against bureaucracy gone wild.

By Gerald Baron • September 1, 2020
 
With so much bad news circulating these days, how about some good news from an unlikely source? The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been a bastion of judicial activism for decades. But maybe that’s changing.

Late last month, a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency is not allowed to cover up evidence that they screwed up and then dodge a lawsuit by claiming the statute of limitations had expired.

The judges denied a motion by the agency to dismiss a lawsuit being brought by Washington state dairy farmers. What the farmers allege, with plenty of evidence courtesy of Freedom of Information Act requests, is a long list of actions by the EPA that are unethical, and possibly even criminal.

The Washington State Dairy Federation argues that the local branch of the EPA put together a shaky study of nitrate contamination in Yakima Valley groundwater. The farmers argue, again with plenty of documentary evidence, that EPA bureaucrats then rewrote that study over the objection of outside scientific experts to put the blame on farmers. They further state that the EPA strong-armed local farmers into signing consent decrees that cost them millions of dollars by misrepresenting the study..........To Read More.....