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The Office of Management and Budget(OMB) warned in its 2011 InformationCollection Budget of the U.S. Govern-

ment that 8.783 billion hours are required tocomplete regulatory paperwork annually, upfrom 7.4 billion in 2000. “If each hour is val-ued at $20,” the OMB estimates, “the mone-tary equivalent would be $176 billion.” Whenall regulatory costs are considered, the Com-petitive Enterprise Institute estimates thetotal annual cost to be $1.8 trillion.Regulatory costs greatly exceed total

corporate pretax profits ofonly $1.3 trillion. Obamacarealone will cost $27.6 billion,with nearly $30 billion neededjust to implement the blizzardof new regulations andrequired paperwork. Worse, itnow is becoming clear that Obamacare is atrain wreck in progress as states opt out ofstate-run insurance exchanges and the fed-eral government is hopelessly behindschedule in implementing its own law. Toadd to the misery—just as critics warned—it is apparent that Obamacare could doubleinsurance premiums. Instead of saving tax-payers $100 billion over 10 years, as Presi-dent Obama, Sen. Harry Reid, and Rep.Nancy Pelosi promised before passing thelaw, the OMB now says it will likely cost us$1.9 trillion by 2020. That will increase to$2.6 trillion by 2023.Obamacare is on the path to disaster that

will graphically illustrate why the govern-ment should stay out of the free market andkeep regulations to an absolute minimum.Unfortunately, the Obama administration’sanswer to every conceivable problem is moreregulations, justifiable or not. More than 67percent of the 6,000 new regulations postedby press time are environmentally related,and most are proposed by the Environmen-tal Protection Agency (EPA).

Small BusinessSmall businesses will be hit hardest becausethey cannot afford to hire an army of attor-neys and accountants to carve out exemp-

tions and minimize regulatory costs. SmallBusinesses for Sensible Regulations (SBSR)has exposed the gut-wrenching impact ofEPA’s “tidal wave” of newly proposed regula-tions (www.sensibleregulations.org).Meanwhile, the Small Business Adminis-

tration reports that 64 percent of all newjobs were created by small businesses in2010; others say it is closer to 70 percent.SBSR found that 85 percent of all smallbusinesses aren’t hiring, while 74 percentsaid there are too many new regulations in

the pipeline. Half of those polled said thereason they were not hiring was because ofregulatory uncertainty; the rest said it wasbecause of the lousy economy. Both reasonsare linked together in what is looking morelike a death spiral.A February 2013 study published by the

Fraser Institute of Canada reinforces theconcerns of small business: “Following anincrease in policy uncertainty of the sizeseen on average between 2006 and 2011,industrial production in the United Statesdropped by 2.5 percent and employment by2.4 million.... Economic policy uncertaintyis the new normal.”This study was completed before the

Obama administration put the regulatorypedal to the metal to create as many new reg-ulations as possible during its second term.That’s frightening when considering thatfinalized regulations released by the adminis-tration having a significant impact on smallbusinesses during Obama’s first three yearsexploded by a factor of 800 percent com-pared to the first three years of Bush. This isno accident. The mass of new regulations ispart of a diabolical plan that was actually ini-tiated in late 2011. Just before the November2012 elections, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)issued a Senate Minority Report that is seis-

mic in its nature. It warned: “As the economyhas continued to falter over the past year, teamObama has been delaying rule after rule thatwill eliminate American jobs, drive up theprice of gas at the pump even more, imposeconstruction bans on local communities, andessentially shut down American oil, naturalgas, and coal production. They don’t want thiseconomic pain to hit American families justbefore the election because it would cost Presi-dent Obama votes, so they have simply decidedto punt, intending to move full speed ahead if

they gain a second term.”The Inhofe report underesti-

mated the zeal of the Obamaadministration in general, and theEPA specifically, to issue this tidalwave of new regulations. What isdiabolical is that President Obama

deliberately kept this information from theAmerican people until after the election. Helied by omission rather than commission,and his propensity for bending the truth tothe breaking point and selectively changingthe law has resulted in opinion pieces in theNew York Times, Washington Post, NationalReview, and the Wall Street Journal that labelObama’s administration as the “ImperialPresidency.”The administration’s deception and con-

stantly changing regulations are drivingAmerica’s economy off the cliff, led by feder-al agencies like the ever-growing EPA. For-mer EPA administrator Lisa Jackson deniedthis. She claimed the agency has taken “mea-sured and careful” steps and the new costswould not be a burden to industry. TIMEmagazine noted that for Jackson, “a mea-sured step is when she only gets to move thegoalpost half as far as she wanted to.” Howdid she do that? By assuming powers thattrample individual rights and the founda-tional free-market principles.

Rampant AbuseThe EPA uses godlike powers to crush thosewho oppose it. On May 3, 2012, the Wash-ington Post published an editorial entitled,“The EPA is earning a reputation for

EPA’s Tidal WaveWithin three months after Election Day 2012, nearly 6,000 new regulations were posted by the federal government,

potentially costing businesses over a trillion dollars and crushing America’s economy.By Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D.

“The EPA has become so arrogantthat it is now creating regulationsthat are impossible to meet.”

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abuse.” This was in the wake of an EPAscandal in which former EPA Region 6Administrator Al Armendariz was caughton video admitting the EPA’s “general phi-

losophy” of enforcement for oil and gas isto behave like the Romans who “used toconquer little villages in the Mediterranean.They’d go into a little Turkish town some-where, they’d find the first five guys theysaw, and they would crucify them. And thenyou know that town was really easy to man-age for the next few years.” He continued,saying that he tells his staff to “hit them ashard as you can, make examples of them,and go aggressively after them.”Armendariz was forced to resign and the

EPA quickly denied that this crucify mentali-

ty was ingrained in its culture. Don’t believeit. In justifying its regulations, the EPA playsfast and loose with science to hype the dan-ger of not imposing the rule, while inflatingthe alleged benefits of imposing the rule. Anyconnection to truth and reality has becomecoincidental.The Sackett family has become the classic

example of EPA’s conquer-and-crucify men-tality. They were preparing tobuild a home on a lot innorthern Idaho. They had allthe necessary permits andwere preparing the site forbuilding when three EPAemployees drove by and,apparently without evenlooking at the site, declared ita wetland. The EPA threat-ened to fine the Sacketts$37,000 (up to $75,000) a day if they did notstop construction and restore the site to apristine condition.The Sacketts were not allowed any way to

appeal, even when it was determined the sitewas not on the EPA’s wetlands’ map. Becausethe EPA was still in the compliance phase—that’s the phase where it issues its threats—and had not yet issued the final enforcementdecree, its attorneys informed the Sacketts

that they were not even allowed to sue theagency. The EPA could penalize them any-time it wanted and they could do absolutelynothing. Mike Sackett later confessed, “Asthis nightmare went on, we rubbed our eyesand started to wonder if we were living insome totalitarian country.” That is, in fact,exactly what was happening to them.With help from the Pacific Legal Foun-

dation, the Sacketts sued anyway and wona unanimous decision in the U.S. SupremeCourt on March 21, 2012. Chief JusticeJohn Roberts wrote: “Because of theadministrative compliance order, [theEPA] is really never going to be put to thetest, because most landowners aren’t goingto say, ‘I’m going to risk the $37,000 aday....’ All EPA has to do is make whateverfinding it wants, and realize that in 99 per-

President Obama is issuing a tidal wave of new regulations that is already causing major problems for business. The National Federation of IndependentBusinesses is appealing to the public to stop the tidal wave by providing graphics like this, and other information on sensibleregulations.org. BELOW: Chantelland Mike Sackett were ordered by the EPA to cease construction on their home by arbitrarily declaring the site a wetlands and without allowing them dueprocess. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Sackett family.

“All EPA has to do is make whatever finding it wants, andrealize that in 99 percent of the cases, it’s never going tobe put to the test.”

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Before she was forced to leave her jobon Valentine’s Day 2013, EPA Admin-istrator Lisa Jackson was President

Obama’s “hatchet man.” Seemingly unac-countable, she ran the EPA as if she had aGod-ordained mandate to stop the admin-istration’s false belief in man-made globalwarming. To do this under the nose of theEPA’s inspector general, she and her innercircle used private (alias) email accounts toplan their strategies secretly rather than theEPA email system that is open to scrutiny.

Jackson’s actions are a clear violation ofthe Federal Records Act. EPA email andrecords rules instruct employees to “not useany outside email account to conduct offi-cial agency business.” When attorney ChrisHorner of the Competitive Enterprise Insti-tute (CEI) got wind of the alias accountsused for official business, he filed a Freedomof Information Act (FOIA) request for allthe emails listed as belonging to RichardWindsor, Jackson’s primary alias. It wouldlater be determined that four other nameswere also used.

When the EPA stonewalled Horner’sFOIA request in 2012, he sued the EPA.The court ruled in December 2012 that theEPA had to release all emails—roughly12,000 of them—in four batches of 3,000each. Even then the EPA thumbed its noseat the court by only providing 2,100 emailsof the court-ordered 3,000 in the firstbatch released in January. Incredibly, notone of them was from Richard Windsor’saccount. “Instead,” noted Breitbart News,“the EPA provided such absurdly silly andunresponsive emails as the daily newsbriefs published by the Washington Postand EPA national news clippings. It was apathetic attempt to avoid a contempt cita-tion that came only after a week’s worth ofunsuccessful attempts to push the officialresponse date down the road.”

There could be only one reason to havealias email accounts: to evade publicaccountability by conducting governmentbusiness under the table, outside the publiceye. The EPA’s only justification for theRichard Windsor false persona is, “Everyone

else does it.” Horner laments, “The readinesswith which we already know other adminis-tration officials, including lawyers, acceptedthe practice suggests Windsor wasn’t theonly such false identity Obama officials havecreated to subvert and circumvent federalrecord-keeping and disclosure laws.” Laterevents prove Horner correct.

The second batch of 3,000 emails wasapparently to or from Richard Windsor, butwere so heavily redacted that they omittedall but the most mundane communications(see example). The EPA used a FOIAexemption which allows agencies to redactcertain intra-agency communications. Theargument for the rule is that disclosinginternal debates could chill a bureaucrat’sability to have forthright discussions aboutpolicy. However, it also would allow Jack-son and her inner circle to easily hide pos-sible criminal activities. She may beinnocent, but why would she redact almosteverything if the emails merely containedeveryday business?

After discovering unredacted portionsof email chains that were redacted in earli-er correspondence of the chain, Hornerclaimed it was obvious that much of theredacted verbiage “appeared to have noth-ing to do with the sort of agency delibera-tion that qualifies for withholding.” Theexemptions, Horner said, “look to be abu-sive efforts to avoid embarrassing revela-tions about mystery meetings on Jackson’sschedule, planning spin for, and then char-acterizing, interviews and media coverage,and so on.”

The unredacted verbiage reveals thatJackson and other top EPA officials devotedextensive attention to and cooperation withmedia, public officials, and other “friend-lies,” whose coverage and commentary putthe agency’s policies and leadership in apositive light. Another 19 private emailsusing “me.com” between EPA Region 8Administrator James Martin and VickiePatton, general counsel for the Environ-mental Defense Fund, concerned meetingsscheduled with each other or a third party.

Martin had previously worked for the

EDF as an attorney. While there is nothingwrong with an EPA employee meeting withan employee of an environmental organiza-tion, why was it done with a private emailaccount rather than a highly scrutinizedEPA email account? In one email datedApril 12, 2012, Martin asks Patton for thecontact information of Patton’s “guy” in theNew York state government. The secretivenature of the emails raises suspicionsbecause a 2011 Chamber of Commercereport exposed secret and costly “sue andsettle” collusion between federal agenciesand radical environmental groups. Writingin Forbes magazine, Larry Bell recaps thepractice: “The [s]ue and [s]ettle practiceinvolves far-left radical environmentalgroups filing lawsuits against federal agen-cies wherein court-ordered ‘consent decrees’are issued based upon a prearranged settle-ment agreement they collaboratively craft

together in advance behind closed doors.Then, rather than allowing the entireprocess to play out, the agency being suedsettles the lawsuit by agreeing to move for-ward with the requested action they and thelitigants both want. Literally hundreds ofmillions of taxpayer dollars have gone toenvironmental groups using this highly ille-gal tactic.”

In other words, the agency throws thecase to allow the radical environmentalagenda to advance another step, allowing theagency to impose even more regulationswhile the environmental organizations getreimbursed for their court costs merely toinitiate another sue-and-settle case, all at tax-

WindsorgateEPA’s email scandal. By Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D.

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cent of the cases, it’s never going to be putto the test.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote thatthe EPA’s actions “would have put theproperty rights of ordinary Americansentirely at the mercy of...EPA employees.”This, of course, is exactly what the jack-booted EPA depends on.Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s deci-

sion did not settle the issue of whether theSacketts’ land really was a wetland. That deci-sion, along with any claim of damages doneby the EPA to the Sackett family, wasremanded back to the lower court. However,on the bright side, Louisiana State Universi-ty’s Energy Law and Resources has opinedthat “the [Supreme] Court dealt a detrimen-tal blow to the EPA’s ability to regulate partiesthrough the issuance of administrative com-pliance orders. The [Supreme] Court ruledthat regulated parties can challenge compli-ance orders before the agency seeks enforce-ment. Though this case specifically dealtwith the EPA, its ramifications may be feltacross the entire government agency regula-tory scheme.”The Supreme Court’s decision is unlikely

to deter the EPA from further abuse. It, alongwith other agencies, is frantically trying tofind a way to skirt the court’s decision inorder to regain its totalitarian powers. Theonly way these agencies can be broughtunder control is if abusive agency employeesface personal liability for their illegal actionsthat violate their victims’ civil liberties—without hiding behind the deep pockets ofthe federal government.The EPA has become so arrogant that it

is now creating regulations that are impos-sible to meet. It suddenly increased therequirement for refineries to use taxpayer-subsidized celluloid ethanol from 8.65 mil-lion gallons to 14 million gallons eventhough the fuel is virtually nonexistent. TheU.S. Court of Appeals for the District ofColumbia Circuit ruled that the agencyexceeded its authority in requiring refinersto purchase a nonexistent fuel. It wrote:“When [the amount available] is less thanthe mandated volume, the [EPA] Adminis-trator is to ‘reduce the applicable volume ofcellulosic biofuel...to the projected [avail-able] volume.’”Incredibly, instead of lowering the use of

celluloid ethanol to levels that were available,Lisa Jackson almost doubled the require-ment and then mandated that the refineriesbuy credits in lieu of the actual ethanol. Sheliterally thumbed her nose at the court’s rul-ing and proceeded to break the law. The EPA is out of control, corrupted by

pseudo-science and riddled with bureau-crats who believe their religious vision ofnature must be protected at any and allcosts to the citizens of America. The EPAcan no longer serve its original purpose: toprotect the environment without damagingthe economy. Its dismal record clearlyshows that its zealous ideology is soingrained in its culture that it cannot berehabilitated. It has set itself up as the highpriest of all human activity, it has outlivedits usefulness, and it must therefore be putout of the misery it is causing Americabefore it destroys us all. ■

payer expense. Not only is this an abuse ofpower, but it is also a clear-cut case of fraud.Yet, to my knowledge, no case has beenbrought to trial to punish the offenders.Lisa Jackson announced her resignation

days after the EPA lost its court battle withHorner and CEI the previous December,effective Feb. 14, 2013. James Martinresigned a week after Jackson. The dust hadnot yet settled when it was determined thatJackson’s temporary replacement—ActingAdministrator Bob Perciasepe—also used aprivate email account, perciasepe.org, toconduct official business. It never ends.Don’t expect this issue to go away any-

time soon. Horner and CEI have filedanother lawsuit, this time against theDepartment of Treasury, to obtain allemails dealing with Treasury’s efforts to getsupport for a carbon tax. But that’s anotherstory. The point is that the corruption inour federal government, bad as it was inprevious administrations, has exploded inObama’s presidency. His growing habit oftrashing the rule of law while continuouslyclaiming to be the most transparent admin-istration in history will not end well forAmerica. It is time to slash the power andreach of the federal government, no matterwhich party is in power. ■

Dr. Coffman is president of EnvironmentalPerspectives Incorporated (epi-us.com) andCEO of Sovereignty International (sovereign-tyinternational.org) in Bangor, Maine. He hashad more than 40 years of university teaching,research and consulting experience in forestryand environmental sciences and now geopoli-tics. He has led a multimillion-dollar researcheffort on climate change and was one of fourwho stopped the ratification of the Conventionon Biological Diversity one hour before theSenate cloture vote. The Biodiversity Treaty isone of the major treaties promoted by Agenda21. He produced the acclaimed DVD, “GlobalWarming or Global Governance” (warm-ingdvd.com), disproving man-caused globalwarming, another major theme of Agenda 21.Dr. Coffman’s newest book, “Plundered: HowProgressive Ideology Is Destroying America”(AmericaPlundered.com), details how theAmerican people are being indoctrinated andbullied into a destructive belief system calledprogressivism. His recent book, “Rescuing aBroken America” (rescuingamericabook.com),is receiving wide acclaim. He can be reached at207-945-9878 or epinc@roadrunner.com.

EPA’s OUTRAGEOUS COST

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