Category: Political

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Political

Billy Sol Estes and Congress are why the USDA is ordering machine guns

The tea-soaked conspiracy crowd has a new rai·son d’être this week: a procurement request from the USDA for machine guns and ammo. As RT.com notes, “The request has captured the attention of many conservative, pro-gun websites…which have raised questions about it.” These same gun loving web sites even managed to excite an Oklahoma Congressional member, Representative Jim Bridenstine, who sent a letter to the USDA demanding answers.

It’s ironic that sites that support arming every single human being for any reason object to arming federal agents who are enforcing criminal laws. And it’s unfortunate that Congressional members are unaware of laws passed by Congress.

The weapons requested are for the USDA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), tasked with investigating criminal acts related to the USDA’s own specific areas of interest. Congress established the Offices of Inspector General within each of the departments, such as the USDA, in the Inspector General Act of 1978. The USDA’s OIG was, however, created administratively in 1962 following an incident known as the Billy Sol Estes Scandal.

Who is Billy Sol Estes, and why was there a scandal related to him? According to the New York Times obituary for Billy Sol Estes:

In the late 1950s, Mr. Estes launched a bewildering array of interlocking enterprises involving liquid fertilizer, storage tanks, grain elevators, cotton crops, illegally borrowed money, secret payments to farmers and thousands of sham mortgages. It leaned heavily on government programs that compensated farmers for storing surplus grain and for lands taken under eminent domain laws to build public works projects.

There were clandestine lease-back arrangements, phony mortgages on nonexistent fertilizer storage tanks, illegal transfers of federal-compensation rights, kickbacks for bankers and bribes for Washington. The scams were so complex that prosecutors eventually had to break them down into 50 state and federal indictments.

The cover was blown in early 1962, when The Pecos Independent and Enterprise published an exposé by its city editor, Oscar Griffin Jr., on thousands of mortgages for nonexistent fertilizer tanks. The articles, which did not name Mr. Estes, won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and led to an avalanche of investigations.

You get a feel for how widespread the corruption was, especially in the local community where Estes was treated almost like a god, when you read how the key Estes investigator was found battered about the head, carbon monoxide in his bloodstream, with five rifle blasts to his chest and his death was originally ruled a suicide by the local authorities.

One of the outcomes of the multi-year investigation and criminal trial was the establishment of the first non-military OIG, embedded in the USDA. The reason for the establishment was to facilitate cooperation between auditing and investigating enforcement arms—a cooperation that was missing, as was painfully discovered with the Estes investigation.

When you consider the fate of the original Estes investigator, including those five bullet holes, you might understand why the USDA would be ordering bullet proof vests. And it can do so because it was granted law enforcement authority via Section 1337 of the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, which specifically authorized that properly designated agents could carry firearms, conduct searches and seizures, execute warrants for arrest, and in specific circumstances, make arrests without warrants.

If all of this was too involved for the good Congressman from Oklahoma, a quick search of the USDA OIG web site provides the answer to his question about why the USDA needs weapons, and where it gets its authority for doing so:

Pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978 and Section 1337 of the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981 (P.L. 97-98), OIG Investigations is the law enforcement arm of the Department, with Department-wide investigative jurisdiction. OIG Special Agents conduct investigations of significant criminal activities involving USDA programs, operations, and personnel, and are authorized to make arrests, execute warrants, and carry firearms. The types of investigations conducted by OIG Special Agents involve criminal activities such as frauds in subsidy, price support, benefits, and insurance programs; significant thefts of Government property or funds; bribery; extortion; smuggling; and assaults on employees. Investigations involving criminal activity that affects the health and safety of the public, such as meat packers who knowingly sell hazardous food products and individuals who tamper with food regulated by USDA, are also high-profile investigative priorities. In addition, OIG Special Agents are poised to provide emergency law enforcement response to USDA declared emergencies and suspected incidents of terrorism affecting USDA regulated industries, as well as USDA programs, operations, personnel, and installations, in coordination with Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies, as appropriate.

I can understand why conservative pundits avoid Google like a plague when it comes to investigating their next controversy of the week, but I’m assuming that Representative Bridenstine’s staff, which cost tax payers $915,521 in 2013, is capable of using a search engine before he takes pen to paper and demands explanations from a government agency about why it is enforcing laws established by the very organization in which he works.

Categories
Government

The Affordable Care Act: Field tested in battle conditions

How can you tell if armor is any good? You field test it. You shoot stuff at it. You shoot a lot of stuff at it.

Think Progress created a one-page timeline of GOP attacks on the Affordable Care Act. After looking at the extraordinary degree the GOP went to undermine and/or kill the ACA, I came away with a feeling that this thing must be pretty good—look at how it survived all these attacks.

What’s a bit sad about the timeline is knowing that the GOP has spent most of its time the last several years either trying to prevent people like me from having access to affordable health care or ensuring that women have little or no control over their bodies—or both. Seriously, GOP, my god, don’t you have anything else to do?!

Regardless of all the attempts, the ACA survived. It not only survived, but I’m now a proud possessor of a genuine healthcare policy, provided via the Healthcare Marketplace, that allows me to see the doctors I want to see. I had originally decided to go with an Anthem Blue Shield plan, but the company is having problems with its own systems and the provider network wasn’t that great. Instead, I went with Coventry and I can see the doctors I want to see and it covers all the nearby hospitals and urgent care centers. The deductible and co-pays aren’t too bad, either.

All the GOP warnings about the many and myriad failures of the Affordable Care Act—of Obamacare—have proven to be false. False. The hysteria has been proven to be nonsensical, the assertions are unfounded, even the court challenges have, for the most part, been unsuccessful. The only court case of importance that still exists (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores) should give even the GOP cause for concern because if the Supreme Court determines corporations can have religious freedom as well as freedom of speech, we’re all in a world of hurt. And that includes the corporations because a religious ruling undermines the economic separation between corporate owners and corporate actions (which is why the Chamber of Commerce is rooting for the government’s side in this one).

The real problem, though, isn’t with the GOP. No, the real problem is with the Democrats. And people like me.

See, once I stopped having problems with the Marketplace and was able to get a healthcare policy, I never said another word about the ACA. I bitched about the system, but when it came through in the end, not a peep.

That’s a heck of a way to thank a system that ensures I have healthcare coverage for the first time in five years.

And Democrats, oh my. When did aliens come from another planet and rip the backbone out of every Democratic candidate for office in the land? Instead of holding up the ACA with pride—because they, more or less, single-handedly solved one of this country’s biggest problems—they either pretend the ACA doesn’t exist, or they actually repudiate it.

Seriously, Democrats create a system that, over time, will ensure the majority of people have adequate healthcare coverage in the only industrialized nation that didn’t ensure this previously, and they run for rocks when it’s mentioned.

Well here’s a clue, gutless ones: I won’t vote for a Democrat that doesn’t go, “Damn straight, I’m proud of the ACA!”

We need to stop letting the GOP control the discussion about the Affordable Care Act. We need to stop pandering to the ignorant and the paranoid and the libertarians who, frankly, can only be libertarian because our government is so damn strong.

The Affordable Care Act is a good thing. End of Story.

Categories
Government

Fox falls all over itself to condemn the EPA…again

I wrote a more recent story on this particular battle, after Johnson filed a lawsuit against the EPA via, who else? Pacific Legal Foundation.

update March 22

A story in a local news station provides both video and photos of the “little pond”.

That’s no pond, it’s a bloody lake. It has a dock. A dock.

This is a contrived controversy.

Earlier coverage

Fox just published a story about a poor blue collar in Wyoming, threatened with horrific fines for building an environmentally friendly little pond on his land.

Wyoming welder faces $75,000 a day in EPA fines for building pond on his property goes the headline, and I’m sure the folks at Pacific Legal Foundation are on a plane, right now, racing to the location in order to represent the family in a lawsuit against the EPA.

According to Fox:

All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a stock pond on his sprawling eight-acre Wyoming farm. He and his wife Katie spent hours constructing it, filling it with crystal-clear water, and bringing in brook and brown trout, ducks and geese. It was a place where his horses could drink and graze, and a private playground for his three children.

But instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor, the Wyoming welder says he was harangued by the federal government, stuck in what he calls a petty power play by the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims the agency is now threatening him with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $75,000-a-day fine.

That EPA…what a bully. Poor man was only building a little pond, providing water for local wildlife and a place for the kiddies to play.

The only problem is the story is as much fiction as fact. Two minutes is all it took to locate the EPA letter of violation. And the letter tells a different story.

According to the letter, the Army Corps of Engineers knew about this “little pond” in 2012 and contacted the Johnsons. From the violation:

On October 11,2012, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) conducted an inspection of the Site and confirmed that Respondent or persons acting on his behalf had discharged or allowed the discharge of approximately 12 cubic yards of dredged and fill material below the ordinary high water mark of Six Mile Creek during construction of a darn. The work resulted in filling an approximately 40-foot reach of the creek and inundation of an approximately 745-foot reach.

Dumping 12 cubic yards of fill material into a creek is what we call a “dam” back where I come from. Perhaps they call it something else in Wyoming.

The Corps contacted Johnson several times but received no response back. It turned the case over to the EPA for enforcement.

On May 30,2013, the EPA performed an inspection of the Site and verified that an approximately 40-foot reach of Six Mile Creek had been filled during the construction of a dam, impacting approximately 785 feet of the Six Mile Creek channel. The dam was observed to be composed of sand, gravel, clay, and concrete blocks.

I suspect that the Johnsons effort to fill the pond with “crystal clear waters” consisted primarily of running a backhoe in and dumping cement blocks on the creek.

The EPA also invited Johnson to contact its representatives, multiple times, but he ignored all communications. Eventually, the EPA issued the letter with the violation notice. Now Johnson is crying to his Republican Congressional leaders and Fox news about the sudden appearance of the big bad EPA, dumping down on this poor little land owner.

There’s a reason for laws preventing people from damming water sources such as creeks and rivers on their property—their actions impact on others. I suspect the Army Corps of Engineers found out about the “little pond” when impacted neighbors complained.

And once again, Fox has failed to do its job in its haste to cast the EPA in the worst possible light.

Google Map of the farm:

View Larger Map

Categories
Documents Political Web

Eclectically yours #1

Once Google Reader bit the dust I made my move to Feedly, and I’m quite happy with the change. I especially like the search feature incorporated in the Pro version of Feedly. Since I follow several court cases, and the only “notification” the federal PACER system provides is an RSS feed of every court docket entry, being able to search on key terms ensures I don’t miss a filing.

Speaking of Feedly…

Food Safety News reports that a coalition of consumer groups interested in food safety are gunning for two amendments to the House Farm Bill. The one I’m most interested in is the infamous Steve King amendment titled the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act”. This amendment would start a race for the bottom when it comes to animal welfare laws, food quality, and food safety laws. The King amendment would basically allow one state’s agricultural law to override another, more restrictive law. In other words, King wants to force Iowa’s crappy agricultural laws on to the rest of the country.

It’s one of the worst amendments attached to any bill in more modern times, from a man who is infamous for bad legislation focused on supporting his big agribusiness contributors and little else. What’s surprising is how many Tea Party Congressional members voted for the amendment, as these supposedly “states rights” types are voting for a bill that undermines states rights.

Remember pink slime? There’s a hearing in December related to a motion to dismiss by ABC News and the other defendants. The story contains a link to a copy of the motion to dismiss, but I couldn’t find one for the memorandum, which is the interesting part. However, I’m assuming it’s similar (if not identical) to the one filed with a similar motion in the federal court. Food Liability Law Blog provided a copy of this document. BPI’s response at the time was to refer to its memorandum in support of its motion to remand back to the South Dakota state court.

The pink slime case started in South Dakota, moved to the federal court system, and then back to the state court. I hate it when a court case gets moved back to a state court, because most states don’t have an easily accessible document system. PACER is pricey, but at least you can easily access most documents.

Speaking of documents, California’s effort to get a case management system online has failed, and now the tech companies are circling, like vultures over a particularly juicy carcass, over new contracts to build a system.

They are scrambling for a mother lode of multimillion-dollar contracts for software and licensing, vast additional sums for upkeep, and the right to set up a toll booth on Court Road for 38 million people.

I’m all for private contracting of court systems, though I think the states would do better to share expertise with each other when it comes to implementation. My biggest concern, though, is system privatization: hiring companies to run the systems, as well as develop them.

Privatization of court systems is, in my opinion, wrong, wrong, wrong. Not only does privatization add to the expense of an already outrageously expensive legal system, they inhibit easy access to the documents. Instead of paying a fee such as ten cents a document page, like you do with PACER, it may cost you several dollars to access even the smallest document.

Still, some court document access is better than nothing, which is what you have with most state courts.

Categories
Political

Missouri veto day

photo of Eades bridge and St. Louis Arch in black and white

update

Evidently the pod people arrived today, stealing legislator bodies, because both the gun nullification and tax cut bills did not survive a veto override attempt. A half dozen bills did survive including a silly law created specifically for one powerful corporation, Doe Run.

earlier

Today is what’s known as Missouri Veto Day. This is the day when Missourians learn whether our state resumes a normal life or continues being fodder for much head shaking and laughter.

This special session of the Missouri legislature was organized to address several vetoes by Governor Jay Nixon. Among the many bills entering the override sweepstakes, two in particular stand out: HB 253, the latest in Rex Sinquefield’s social experiment to see how one can go about buying a state; and HB 436, otherwise known as That Damn Gun Nullification bill.

HB 253 is the granddaddy of “starve the government” bills. It’s a massive tax cut that benefits corporations and the affluent, while severely restricting desperately needed cash flow. Since Missouri also has a balanced budget amendment enshrined in our Constitution, this bill forces Missouri to dramatically cut education and other necessary services—and Missouri isn’t a particularly generous state to begin with. We’re thinking of changing our motto from “Show me” to “Send help”.

Nixon vetoed the bill, and haven’t we had fun since. You can’t watch news without seeing 10 or more of the Sinquefield funded ads accusing Nixon of various nefarious acts by not supporting the bill. I thought this crap was over after the election, but no, here in Missouri, we like political doggerel fed to us 24×7.

Veto supporters did manage to scrape together enough money to produce one ad, which I saw once. Most of the effort to support the veto came about by Nixon doing the boots-on-the-ground, press the flesh, eat ham at the fair, grass roots effort…and talk to every single reporter from anything even remotely resembling a publication. Heck, he even talked to webloggers.

(I found it humorous when State Rep. Holly Rehder compared what Nixon did in his grass roots campaign to the Nazi propaganda machine. That’s like saying Hitler rose to power by kissing baby cheeks and eating Leberkäse.)

Then there was the visit by Rick Perry, Texas Governor. Missouri’s Chamber of Commerce decided the best way to convince people to call their representatives and demand a veto override was by bringing in a man who ran ads telling businesses they should leave Missouri and go to Texas. Texas, where their lack of regulation is only matched by their spiffy highway system.

Missouri can proudly lay claim to having the only Chamber of Commerce actively trying to send business elsewhere.

There is one good thing about HB 253: no one has doubted the sanity of the people who support it. We may wonder about their fiscal responsibility, empathy to the average person, foresight and intelligence, but HB 253 supporters seem to be sane. The same cannot be said for HB 436 supporters.

There’s all sorts of good reading in HB 436, but my favorite part is the following:

Any official, agent, or employee of the United States government who enforces or attempts to enforce any of the infringements on the right to keep and bear arms included in subsection 3 of this section is guilty of a class A misdemeanor.

Any Missouri citizen who has been subject to an effort to enforce any of the infringements on the right to keep and bear arms included in subsection 3 of this section shall have a private cause of action for declaratory judgment and for damages against any person or entity attempting such enforcement.

According to this bill, not only can our sheriffs arrest ATF agents for enforcing federal laws, anyone busted in the state based on these same laws can sue the ATF agents. In what reality is this a good idea? Even the NRA isn’t embracing this puppy.

Fortunately, whatever sanity is lacking in Jefferson City can be found elsewhere in the state. Every major law enforcement organization in the state is against this bill, including the rural-reflecting Sheriff’s Association:

The sheriffs’ association – particularly influential in rural Missouri — announced early Friday that the bill “violates the sheriff’s oath of office.”
…

The Sheriffs’ Association says that several provisions also “would serve to hamstring the sheriffs and their deputies from enforcing or participating in all federal, drug, and violent gang task forces currently operating in the state.”

In addition, the association said, “language in the bill would expose all local law enforcement” to legal liability as authorities try to enforce any state laws regarding firearms violations.

Our Attorney General, Chris Koster, wants nothing to do with this bill. He sent a letter to the legislature reminding them of what happens when states attempt to nullify federal law. Of course, if the state implements the law and when it gets thrown out in court, Missouri legislators can just whip up another bill making it illegal for federal courts to operate in the state.