The U.S. Energy Information Administration provides these U.S. Energy Facts:
Americans use many types of energy
Petroleum, natural gas, coal, renewable energy, and nuclear electric power are primary energy sources. Electricity is a secondary energy source that is generated from primary energy sources.
Energy sources are measured in different physical units: liquid fuels in barrels or gallons, natural gas in cubic feet, coal in short tons, and electricity in kilowatts and kilowatthours. In the United States, British thermal units (Btu), a measure of heat energy, is commonly used for comparing different types of energy to each other. In 2016, total U.S. primary energy consumption was about 97.4 quadrillion (1015, or one thousand trillion) Btu.
In 2016, the shares of total primary energy consumption for the five energy-consuming sectors were:
Electric power—39%
Transportation—29%
Industrial—22%
Residential—6%
Commercial—4%
The electric power sector generates most of the electricity in the United States, and the other four sectors consume most of that electricity.
The pattern of fuel use varies widely by sector. For example, petroleum provides about 92% of the energy used for transportation, but only 1% of the energy used to generate electricity.
Domestic energy production is equal to about 91% of U.S. energy consumption
In 2016, energy produced in the United States was equal to about 83.9 quadrillion Btu, which was equal to about 86% of U.S. energy consumption. The difference between production and consumption was mainly in net imports of petroleum.
The three major fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—accounted for most of the nation’s energy production in 2016:
The three major fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—have dominated the U.S. energy mix for more than 100 years. Several recent changes in U.S. energy production have occurred:
Coal production peaked in 2008 and trended down through 2016. Coal production in 2016 was about the same as production was in 1977. The primary reason for the general decline in coal production in recent years is the decrease in coal consumption for electricity generation.
Natural gas production in 2016 was the second largest amount after the record high production in 2015. More efficient and cost-effective drilling and production techniques have resulted in increased production of natural gas from shale formations.
Crude oil production generally decreased each year between 1970 and 2008. In 2009, the trend reversed and production began to rise. More cost-effective drilling and production technologies helped to boost production, especially in Texas and North Dakota. In 2016, crude oil production was lower than production in 2015, mainly because of lower global crude oil prices.
Natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) are hydrocarbon gas liquids that are extracted from natural gas before the natural gas is put into pipelines for transmission to consumers. NGPL production has increased alongside increases in natural gas production. In 2016, NGPL production reached a record high.
Total renewable energy production and consumption both reached record highs of about 10 quadrillion Btu in 2016. Hydroelectric power production in 2016 was about 12% below the 50-year average, but increases in energy production from wind and solar helped to increase the overall energy production from renewable sources. Energy production from wind and solar were at record highs in 2016.
The following is a statement from Florida Representative Cord Byrd who voted NO on SB7026. SB7026 is the Gun Control Legislation created in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting in Broward County, Florida. This legislation was passed before the full investigation of what actually happened at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School was completed.
As Representative Byrd points out this legislation was based on the desire to “do something” not on the facts of what actually occurred.
Friends,
Over the past three weeks my office has received thousands of emails and phone calls regarding the horrific tragedy in Parkland and what steps the State should take moving forward. It was impossible to respond at the time, but now that Session is over I wanted to make sure everyone received an explanation as to why I voted NO on Senate Bill 7026.
I simply could not vote for legislation that has serious constitutional infirmities infringing upon the Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. When I took the Oath of Office I meant it.
What happened in Parkland was a failure of government. Over and over again, federal, state and local government failed. When government fails, the solution is not more government. The solution is not gun control.
The gun control measures in SB7026 would not have prevented the Parkland tragedy. The desire to “do something” cannot serve as the rationale to infringe upon the rights of law abiding 18-20 year old citizens.
Our society has lost its values and morals. It glorifies vice and mocks virtue. Until we fix our broken society, until we fill the God-sized hole in the hearts of our children, we will not solve this problem.
Thank you for being engaged politically, I look forward to hearing from you in the future. In the meantime, please follow me on Facebook or Twitter for updates on our battle to protect the 2nd Amendment and all other issues before the Florida Legislature.
CLEVELAND, Ohio /PRNewswire/ — Votem is proud to announce its participation in the Department of Homeland Security’s Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) for the Election Infrastructure Subsector. The Council, which is a cooperative effort between the DHS, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), The National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), and state and local election officials, will facilitate joint engagement between public and private entities to coordinate efforts to make voting the United States’ voting infrastructure as secure as possible.
The SCC will also be comprised of private sector companies, including Votem, that have an interest in making American elections more secure and threat-resistant. Votem is joined in the council by 23 other companies, ranging from elections providers to major publications, that have a stake in the success and betterment of domestic elections.
Votem’s membership on the SCC will offer the company the unique opportunity to weigh in on the most prescient security issues facing the U.S.’s election infrastructure, including questions of how to prevent meddling in the upcoming 2018 Midterms.
“Votem is honored to be a founding member of the Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) which was formed to defend the U.S. elections infrastructure. We believe that the SCC, in conjunction with the Government Coordinating Council (GCC), will help usher in an era of unprecedented security in our elections.” – Votem CEO Pete Martin
About Votem
Votem is a blockchain mobile voting platform enabling citizens around the world to easily vote online with a level of verifiability, accessibility, security and transparency that does not currently exist. Founded in 2014 by CEO, Pete Martin, Votem’s mission is to change the way people vote and believes that mobile voting will lead to positive change in the world by providing voters with complete transparency, thus shaping the future of democracy. Having conducted nine elections for both private and public clients, Votem has received praise and accolades from various institutions including the Cleveland Technology Awards and OHTech Best of Tech Awards.
The mobile voting platform is in its public pre-sale of Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) for its VAST tokens that is currently only open to accredited investors. The public pre-sale is scheduled to close on March 29th,2018.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/votem-logo.jpg360640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2018-03-17 06:44:132018-03-17 06:44:13Votem joins with Department of Homeland Security to Stop Election Fraud
For far too long our federal government, and many state and local governments, have been representing everyone and anyone but the citizens of the United States.
As an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent I became painfully aware of how the supposedly “broken” immigration system has been operating as one of the most efficient delivery systems in the entire federal government, rivaling the both Fed-Ex and UPS. The broken immigration system has been delivering a virtually unlimited supply of foreign tourists, foreign students and especially an unlimited supply of exploitable Third World workers who bring with them Third World expectations of Third World wages and working conditions.
Over time the magnitude of the immigration crisis grew exponentially. This crisis undermines national security, public safety and the overall well-being of America and Americans.
The Amnesty of 1986 that was part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) not only resulted in nearly four million illegal aliens acquiring lawful status and ultimately enabling those newly legalized aliens to petition to have their family members admitted as lawful immigrants, but encouraged an influx of even more illegal aliens who believed that if one amnesty could be enacted to “solve” the immigration crisis, other such amnesties would likely follow.
The immigration system became ever more ineffective and politicians from both parties made false claims that since there were so many illegal aliens in the United States the only way of solving this huge problem was to legalize all of the illegal aliens and secure the U.S./Mexican border so that more illegal aliens ostensibly could not enter the country.
Of course, while the U.S./Mexican border must be made secure, as I have noted in many of my articles and especially in my testimony before a succession of congressional hearings in both the House and Senate, our nation does not have four border states (California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas), but 50 “border states.” Any state that lies along America’s northern and southern borders are border states, as are those states that have access to the estimated 95,000 miles of the U.S. coastline and any state that has an international airport.
On November 15, 2014 the David Horowitz Freedom Center sponsored an event in which I was honored to join three true leaders in the United States Congress in a panel discussion on immigration: then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions and Congressmen Louis Gohmert and John Fleming. A video of this panel discussion has been posted and includes a statement by Rep. Gohmert in which he said that my perspective on America having 50 border states was gaining traction in Washington.
It is encouraging when we are able to change the perspectives of our political leaders. However, those instances are far too infrequent.
This weekend I was elated to find out that I may have had an impact on how the leadership of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) perceives its vital mission in adjudicating applications for a wide variety of immigration benefits, which include applications for political asylum, lawful immigrant status and United States citizenship. This is a welcome change from years of inadequate leadership, especially during the Obama administration.
On March 20, 2013 during the disastrous Obama administration, I testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic, “Building An Immigration System Worthy Of American Values.” I concluded my prepared testimony with the following paragraphs:
I want to make this clear: Law enforcement is at its best when it creates a climate of deterrence to convince those who might be contemplating violating the law that such an effort is likely to be discovered and that, if discovered, adverse consequences will result for the law violators. Current policies and statements by the administration, in my view, encourages aspiring illegal aliens from around the world to head for the United States. In effect, the starter’s pistol has been fired, and for these folks, the finish line to this race is the border of the United States.
Back when I was an INS special agent, I recall that Doris Meissner, who was at the time the Commissioner of the INS, said that the agency needed to be ‘‘customer oriented.’’ Unfortunately, while I agree about the need to be customer oriented, what Ms. Meissner and apparently too many politicians today seem to have forgotten is that the ‘‘customers’’ of the INS and of our Government in general are the citizens of the United States of America.
I have referenced Meissner’s fatally flawed perceptions and guidance in numerous articles and speaking events in addition to my prepared testimony at that Senate hearing.
On February 22, 2018 NPR reported “America No Longer A ‘Nation Of Immigrants,’ USCIS Says.” Here is an excerpt from the NPR article bemoaning the removal of the phrase “nation of immigrants” and the term customer:
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
Here is USCIS’s previous mission statement:
“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”
The removal of the phrase “nation of immigrants” was announced to agency staff in an email letter from Director L. Francis Cissna.
In the letter, Cissna said, “I believe this simple, straightforward statement clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”
He also explained why the new mission statement deletes the reference to agency applicants as “customers.”
“What we do at USCIS is so important to our nation, so meaningful to the applicants and petitioners, and the nature of the work is often so complicated, that we should never allow our work to be regarded as a mere production line or even described in business or commercial terms. In particular, referring to applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits, and the beneficiaries of such applications and petitions, as “customers” promotes an institutional culture that emphasizes the ultimate satisfaction of applicants and petitioners, rather than the correct adjudication of such applications and petitions according to the law. Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve.”
Director Cissna’s understanding of the true mission of his agency is a refreshing change from those who preceded him and insisted that the adjudications officers “get to yes” and seek to approve virtually every application that lands on their desks.
In the business world, it is said that “the customer is always right.” Bringing that dangerous notion to an element of homeland security encourages and enables immigration fraud, a key vulnerability exploited by the majority of terrorists who have entered the United States determined to carry out and/or support deadly terror attacks.
Undoubtedly there are going to be some employees as USCIS who will find the change in fundamental philosophy to be a shock to their systems, particularly if they have entered on duty during the Obama administration where the “customer” was always right.
However, the clear and unequivocal message that the new mission statement and use of terminology sends to personnel at USCIS and to all who interact with USCIS is that the priority is to imbue the system with integrity.
The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to embed themselves in the United States. For example, page 54 contained the following excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot”:
Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.
In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
This new and welcome philosophy will help to deter potential fraudsters from filing fraud-laden applications by those who thought that as “customers” they could game this system.
As the number of applications for immigration benefits decline, beleaguered USCIS adjudications officers will have more time to more carefully scrutinize each application. (It takes just minutes to approve an application, but can take days or longer to deny an application.) This will likely result in more fraud being discovered, thus deterring the filing of fraudulent applications as the word gets out. Deterrence through enforcement works.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/uscis-logo-e1520512654688.jpg360640Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2018-03-08 07:42:502018-03-08 07:44:29New U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Mission Statement puts Americans First
How would you like to receive $500 a month, no strings attached?
Stockton, California, a city outside of Silicon Valley, is providing such benefits to a group of its low-income residents in a pilot version of universal basic income.
Universal basic income is a policy that gives all people a set amount of benefits without requirements or stipulations. After a brief stint of popularity in the 1970s, the idea has resurged in the public interest, with backers including innovators Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, union leader Andy Stern, and even libertarian Charles Murray.
There is no official start date for the program, but Stockton’s mayor, Michael Tubbs, has indicated they will be screening applicants through June. Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, is providing $1 million toward the effort.
To those familiar with the universal basic income debate, the renewed interest in the program is baffling because similar programs have been tested with terrible results.
In the 1970s, the government ran four random control experiments across six states to try the negative income tax, a similar policy proposal that was popular at the time. In each test, the work disincentive effect was disastrous. For every $1,000 in added benefits to a family, there was an average reduction in $660 of wages from work.
There are many reasons universal basic income proposals fail. The policy tends to direct resources to people who do not need them, while increasing dependency and decreasing work across the truly needy population.
The most apparent flaw in the universal basic income proposal is the lack of work requirements. Work requirements are important because they help those in poverty achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, a vast majority of Americans believe that people should be required to work in exchange for benefits (upwards of 90 percent by The Heritage Foundation’s latest estimates).
Robert Rector, senior welfare policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, spoke recently about universal basic income with The Daily Signal. In the podcast, he suggested expanding the earned income tax credit, a program that rewards work with benefits, as an alternative to universal basic income.
Rector pointed out that the earned income tax credit “has the same effect as a guaranteed minimum income, but it’s linked to positive contributions to society.” To improve it, Rector suggests making the program more generous and supportive of marriage, as well as working to reduce fraud.
Despite the admirable goals of the Stockton proposal, the program is likely to reduce work, increase dependency, and overburden the taxpayer. Instead of overthrowing our current welfare system, it is better to focus on the initiatives that work.
Mimi Teixeira is a graduate fellow in welfare policy at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @_MimiTeixeira.
A Note for our Readers:
Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.
Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.
Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.
You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.
Every year, millions of families make the trip to one of Disney’s famous amusement parks. Thousands of parents diligently save to bring their young children on the vacation of a lifetime.
Honeymooning newlyweds stroll the streets of “The Happiest Place on Earth,” snapping pictures with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy. Some visitors even pick up a season pass to enjoy this magical place all year round.
But what if there was an easier way to enter Disney World? What if your status as a child under the age of 16 entitled you to a lifetime pass? And what if that pass not only entitled you to free entry but automatic access to every one of Disney’s special VIP perks?
And what if the only condition was that you have a parent carry you into the park? Sound unfair?
Well, that’s exactly what the bipartisan open border club has been telling hardworking Americans they must do when it comes to DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. “Compassion,” they proclaim. “It’s the right thing to do,” the insulated elites exclaim.
The hardworking parents who took on extra shifts to pay the ticket price for admission certainly would appreciate learning of such “compassion.” Disney’s shareholders would likely revolt, slamming the board members who so carelessly voted to open park doors.
And wait until you saw the new lines of young parents desperately trying to get their children into Disney to take advantage of such a unique opportunity.
But this isn’t a low-stakes issue involving theme parks and line-skippers. This is a dangerous national security issue that’s putting our country at risk and setting a dangerous precedent for our nation.
For decades, the establishment immigration lobby has been insisting Americans give so-called “Dreamers” a lifetime pass to America: citizenship. Don’t worry, they say. These “Dreamers” will enhance the American experience.
At the same time, the open borders club turns a blind eye to the pitiful state of our immigration system, demanding that immigrants who skip the box office be welcomed into our arms.
Those same elites never mention the millions of law-abiding and hardworking immigrants who enter our country legally—some after waiting over a decade to join this place we call home—and are getting delayed and punished for following the law.
They certainly never discuss the thousands of felons shielded from deportation by so-called “prosecutorial discretion” (translation: ignoring congressionally-passed law).
And the American citizens who refuse to reward the line-skippers and call for enforcement of our current laws first? Attacks of racism, bigotry, and, yes, anti-Americanism.
What good is having a price for park admission or a national immigration policy if they are not enforced? Why subject any potential immigrant to vigorous background checks if other immigrants can walk right across our border, wait a couple of years, and unlock the golden ticket: American citizenship?
Americans know DACA is nothing more than a cheap ploy for amnesty, a sort of citizenship-for-votes scheme that could only be hatched in the darkest corners of Washington, D.C., by liberal elites.
The forgotten men and women of America have a message to the backroom wheelers and dealers in Washington feverishly looking for a so-called permanent “DACA fix” in 2018: Do your job. Secure our border. Keep America a place that rewards those who work hard and come here legally.
And most importantly: Do not reward law-breakers. Anything less would be, well, goofy.
Ken Cuccinelli is president of the Senate Conservatives Fund and the former Virginia attorney general. Twitter: @KenCuccinelli.
A Note for our Readers:
Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.
Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.
Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.
You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.
Recent reports have revealed the existence of Broward County’s “Promise Program“, first begun in 2013, whereby Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, Sheriff Scott Israel, the Chief Judge of the Judicial Court, the State’s Attorney, the Public Defender, local police departments and the NAACP entered into a “Collaborative Agreement” to statistically reduce juvenile recrimination by simply covering it up within the public school system. This program evolved on the heels of a similar program initiated circa 2012 by Miami-Dade County Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, whose school district and police department also covered up student juvenile crime simply to improve his school district’s statistics. (See B&B’s “Did Superintendent Patton Import a Cover-Up Policy from Miami-Dade” 2/20/2018″).
These “Promise”-type programs rely upon the ability of a county’s local school district and law enforcement to work hand-in-hand to cover up student criminal activity, transforming crimes into lesser school punishments that remain publicly undisclosed by virtue of student privacy laws.
In 2012, an opportunity to eliminate Florida State regulations in the area of crime and school safety fell into the lap of Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie.
Such programs work best if any state-mandated oversight or reporting requirements of school districts can be eliminated. In 2012, an opportunity to eliminate Florida State regulations in the area of crime reporting and school safety fell into the lap of Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie.
At its core, Governor Scott’s concept was laudable. Governor Scott appointed a task force comprised of seven (7) Florida district superintendents, including Runcie, to report back to the Governor on what excessive regulations might be cut to achieve greater focus on classroom learning.
The “Statewide School Safety Hotline” statute, first enacted in 1995, authorized the creation of a toll-free safety hotline through the Florida Sheriff’s Association, “for the purpose of reporting incidents that affect the safety and well-being of the school’s population…..The toll-free school safety hotline is to be a conduit for any person to anonymously report activity that affects the safety and well-being of the school’s population.”
1006.141 Statewide school safety hotline.— (CIRCA 2012 – NOW REPEALED):
(1) The department may contract with the Florida Sheriffs Association to establish and operate a statewide toll-free school safety hotline for the purpose of reporting incidents that affect the safety and well-being of the school’s population.
(2) The toll-free school safety hotline is to be a conduit for any person to anonymously report activity that affects the safety and well-being of the school’s population.
(3) There may not be an award or monetary benefit for reporting an incident through the toll-free school safety hotline.
(4) The toll-free school safety hotline shall be operated in a manner that ensures that a designated school official is notified of a complaint received through the hotline if the complaint concerns that school. A complaint that concerns an actionable offense must be reported to the designated official within a reasonable time after the complaint is made. An actionable offense is an incident that could directly affect the safety or well-being of a person or property within a school.
(5) If a toll-free school safety hotline is established by contract with the Florida Sheriffs Association, the Florida Sheriffs Association shall produce a quarterly report that evaluates the incidents that have been reported to the hotline. This information may be used to evaluate future school safety educational needs and the need for prevention programs as the district school board considers necessary.
The statute also provided that the Florida Sheriff’s Association would produce a quarterly report that evaluates the incidents that have been reported to the hotline, and then use the information “to evaluate future school safety educational needs and the need for prevention programs as the district school board considers necessary.”
Runcie’s task force recommendation on the Florida’s Statewide School Safety Hotline: “Repeal. Concerns should be reported to local law enforcement or local school officials.”
The elimination of the Statewide School Safety Hotline would be convenient to the likes of Superintendents Runcie and Carvalho, whose “Promise”-type programs were designed to sugarcoat any “reporting” of juvenile delinquency by orchestration between the local sheriff and local school officials. In other words, bury the wrongdoing. What better way to sweep student recrimination under the rug than to eliminate laws designed to provide for state oversight of local school safety efforts.
Keep in mind — Runcie’s proposed repeal of the “Statewide School Safety Hotline” would do little to achieve Governor Scott’s intent to eliminate regulations that took away from classroom teaching and learning. After all, the Hotline law had little impact on the local school districts’ resources or operations.
Florida’s FADSS Superintendent’s lobby, led by Democrat state senator William Montford, backed Runcie’s efforts.
The circulation of the “deregulation” list was orchestrated through the FADSS Superintendent’s lobby group, which was (and still is) curiously overseen by Democrat State Senator William “Bill” Montford. Senator Montford acts as the FADSS Chief Executive Officer.
Florida’s Department of Education Commissioner enthusiastically jumps on board.
In November 2012, Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Pam Stewart, also enthusiastically jumped on board Runcie’s task force deregulation proposals which had grew to 54 in total. Stewart described the elimination of these regulations, which included the repeal of school safety-related laws — as the elimination of “unnecessary regulations” and “a win for students.”
Runcie’s task force also tried unsuccessfully to repeal Florida’s “school safety assessment and reporting” law.
Runcie’s “deregulation” shortlist also pushed for the repeal of the school board “school safety reporting” law in Fla. Stat. 1006.07(6). That statute requires school boards to annually conduct a self-assessment of the school district’s current safety and security practices. The superintendent is then required to annually recommend to the school board which strategies and activities that the school board should implement in order to improve school safety and security, and thereafter the district reports the self-assessment results and school board action to the commissioner of the Department of Education within 30 days.
1006.07: District school board duties relating to student discipline and school safety.—The district school board shall provide for the proper accounting for all students, for the attendance and control of students at school, and for proper attention to health, safety, and other matters relating to the welfare of students, including:
* * *
(6) SAFETY AND SECURITY BEST PRACTICES.—Use the Safety and Security Best Practices developed by the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability to conduct a self-assessment of the school districts’ current safety and security practices. Based on these self-assessment findings, the district school superintendent shall provide recommendations to the district school board which identify strategies and activities that the district school board should implement in order to improve school safety and security. Annually each district school board must receive the self-assessment results at a publicly noticed district school board meeting to provide the public an opportunity to hear the district school board members discuss and take action on the report findings. Each district school superintendent shall report the self-assessment results and school board action to the commissioner within 30 days after the district school board meeting.
Runcie’s seven-person committee wanted to eliminate this common-sense safety reporting to the state back in 2012, but was unsuccessful in repealing this. It remains in Florida’s statutes today.
Did the Dec. 2012 Sandy Hook/Newton School Massacre temporarily derail Runcie’s safety regulation repeal efforts?
Ultimately, Runcie and his fellow Florida superintendents successfully achieved their objective to repeal the “Statewide School Safety Hotline” law by the legislature’s passage of Laws of Florida 2014-39, but not until the 2014 legislative session. Curiously, despite the coordinated efforts and support of the governor, Runcie’s select committee, the FADSS, and the Commissioner of the Department of Education, the repeal of the Safety Hotline did not occur during the 2013 Florida legislative session which commenced in early 2013, just after the December 2012 Newtown/Sandy Hook school shooting massacre. Was the political environment then not suitable for Runcie & Co. to eliminate the State School Safety Hotline law? Did they have to wait for the Sandy Hook dust to settle?
Questions That Deserve Answers….
The facts and circumstances surrounding Florida’s coordinated school safety deregulation, led by Runcie’s task force and the FADSS, raise the following questions:
Might state authorities have intervened and prevented the Broward County school shooting massacre had Runcie and the FADSS instead pushed to enhance and further fund the “Statewide School Safety Hotline” following the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012, rather than expediently pushing for its repeal? After all, it has been reported that the local Broward County Sheriff’s office failed to take proper action despite dozens of complaints about the school shooter Cruz. Would an anonymous statewide hotline have made a difference?
If the “Statewide School Safety Hotline” was in effect today, would Governor Scott and the Legislature be utilizing it as another tool to enhance the safety of Florida’s schools, and to identify potential safety threats before they result in tragedies?
By what authority do Florida’s 67 superintendents fund and support a lobby organization at all? Do taxpayers fund the FADSS lobby? Do district school vendors fund it? By statute, Florida’s superintendents are the executive officers of their respective school boards, and thus have a fiduciary duty to that board. The school boards are the elected policy-making heads of each county school district, NOT the superintendents. So why do the 67 superintendents have their own separate lobbying organization? What happens when the Superintendents’ lobbying platform diverges from a local elected school board’s own legislative platform? Are Superintendents informing their local School Boards about the substance of the separate FADSS legislative platform?
Is the 67-member FADSS Superintendent’s lobby really running Florida’s various school districts, with local school board members becoming mere puppets pulled by the strings of their local district Superintendent? In effect, have school board members become hand-picked “useful idiots” who serve no purpose?
Has your local Superintendent and school board complied with the annual school safety assessment, review and reporting requirements in Fla. Stat. 1006.07? If you don’t know the answer, you should ask your local district records custodian to provide the meeting minutes and backup records.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/robert-runcie.jpg360640Bolduc & Braccihttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngBolduc & Bracci2018-03-03 05:37:212018-03-04 05:49:18Broward School Superintendent Robert Runcie Led the Elimination of Florida’s Statewide School Safety Hotline Law
In this episode of “Inside Judicial Watch,” host Jerry Dunleavy joins JW Senior Investigator Bill Marshall to discuss the perfect storm of events that led to the Parkland school shooting on Valentine’s Day which resulted in the deaths of 17 students and faculty. Had local and federal law enforcement been more proactive, the massacre could have been prevented.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Parkland-shooting-failures_840x480-e1519989300300.jpg366640Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2018-03-02 06:15:452018-03-02 06:26:03VIDEO: Law Enforcement’s Failures Before, During and After Parkland School Shooting
According to many gun-control advocates, 18-year-olds are too immature to handle guns — but are mature enough to advise us on gun policy. Thus we’re told we must “listen to the voices” of the young Parkland shooting survivors. Not only that, we’re not to question or oppose them because they’re young, they’re survivors and, by golly, because it’s absolutely devastating to the anti-gun agenda!
There’s something truly reprehensible about this situation, and it’s not conservatives criticizing the positions of activist Parkland students such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez. It’s that liberals are using the students as human props and human shields, letting them throw the punches and then condemning the assailed if they dare defend themselves.
Well, sorry, but as I wrote years ago in “The Grieving Activist,” if you want to grieve, grieve. If you want to play politics, play politics.
But my sympathy for grieving ends when the use of grief as a political battering ram begins.
Now, putting minors on the front lines is not at all unprecedented. The youngest U.S. naval captain was 12-year-old David Farragut, and the British would often have upper-class, preteen boy officers aboard their warships, as accurately portrayed in the film Master and Commander. But could you imagine if, after firing some salvos at French vessels and receiving a proportionate response, a British captain bellowed, “What do you think you’re doing?! There are kids aboard this ship!” Ridiculous.
But no more ridiculous than doing likewise in our political campaigns — and, mind you, “campaign” is a military term, applied here because at issue is political warfare. So put kids on the front lines if you wish, as the Nazis did in WWII’s waning days, but know that they’re taking flak because you placed them in harm’s way.
Of course, this all is very calculated. We know that CNN staged a town-hall affair, cherry-picking the attendees and controlling the questions. We know that, as pro-Second Amendment Parkland survivor Brandon Minoff related, the media are ignoring the voices of the pro-gun Parkland kids (so much for “listening to the children”). Nonetheless, while this anti-gun operation may or may not have George Soros’ fingerprints all over it, as Sheriff David Clarke suggested, it’s also no doubt true that the student activists are “wildly motivated,” as CNN’s Alisyn Camerota put it in response to him.
Yet there’s an obvious question here: Is it wise to have recently traumatized people advising on policy? Would we let someone whose dog was just killed by a neighbor help determine punishment for cruelty to animals? “Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” as Ben Franklin warned.
Additionally, we’re a pretty immature civilization if we look to kids for policy advice. There’s a reason why societies might traditionally have been governed by a council of (hopefully) wise elders: Teen boys may sometimes have utility in warfare, but adolescent angst doesn’t make for sober heads. Moreover, mainstream media love publishing articles about the impulsive “teen brain”; now they say we should bow before these brains’ latest impulses. (Note: I instinctively knew the “teen brain” thesis was nonsense, as this article explains, but immaturity is nonetheless a factor.)
Yet something else must be said about these “wildly motivated” teens. To paraphrase late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “They really care — about what I have no idea!”
It’s fashionable to beatify survivors. Endure a tragedy, and you’re suddenly a sainted soul whose motives are beyond reproach. But while I’m sure many Parkland students are what we’d call, practically speaking, “good people,” I’m also sure about their character as a group.
They’re just people.
Their number includes the good, the bad and the ugly. Heck, we’re only talking about this issue right now because of a Parkland teen who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSDHS) and who is not at all a good person (I won’t give him publicity by using his name).
Yet the mainstream media exalt Parkland students as fonts of wisdom — while simultaneously infantilizing them, saying they can condemn but not be criticized, offend but not be offended. I’m different: realistic. I’m thus going to exercise some logic here, even though it’s wholly out of fashion.
With approximately 3000 Parkland teen survivors, what’s the probability that they’re all “good people”? Oh, I’m sure a handful will go on to do great things and that most of the others will do good but average things. Then there are the rest. Whom might they include?
Well, without naming names, is it inconceivable that a few of the 3000 might be Machiavellian enough to realize that the shooting’s aftermath is an opportunity for fame and possibly wealth and career-building? This doesn’t mean they don’t have genuine anti-gun passions — they may, as people’s actions are often driven by multiple motivations, some noble and some ignoble — only that the primary impetus may be a more self-serving one.
And, actually, out of 3000 students, it’s inconceivable that there wouldn’t be two or three of this mold. Teens ain’t potted plants — they can be manipulative as well as meritorious. Just ask “clock boy” Ahmed Mohamed about that.
The Left can huff and puff about these observations, but it draws distinctions among gun-crime survivors, too. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was seriously wounded by a left-wing activist in last year’s congressional baseball shooting, and Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, also a Republican, survived the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. But I don’t hear them trumpeted as voices “we must listen to.” Why? It could be what they have in common with the ignored Parkland pro-Second Amendment kids.
The latter, however, are just a few of the young voices about which leftists couldn’t care less. Other examples are the Boy Scouts booed at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the six-year-old lad in a 2012 anti-Obama video whom liberals wanted dead, and the 650,000 babies they actually do manage to kill annually via prenatal infanticide. And this does reflect the culture-of-death mentality: Liberals want to hear young voices — until they become inconvenient. At that point their freedom of speech can be aborted.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/DavidHogg.jpg_11692092_ver1.0_1280_720-e1519938046819.jpg360640Selwyn Dukehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSelwyn Duke2018-03-01 16:01:212018-03-01 16:01:21Parkland Kids: The Return of the Grieving Activist
What’s the best way to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States? Most Republicans would say tougher border security. Many have loudly applauded President Donald Trump’s proposal to build an impenetrable “wall” between the United States and Mexico and to hire more border patrol agents to keep unwanted aliens out.
But even the best border barrier isn’t infallible. Some aliens will slip through — or simply overstay a tourist visa. So, it’s critical to have a second layer of defense in the interior of the country.
Conservatives know that. That’s why they want to deputize law enforcement as de facto immigration agents on the nation’s highways and in federal, state and local prisons. Aliens stopped on the road or booked at jails will be fast-tracked for deportation. In fact, it’s already happening — by executive order.
But even these measures — essentially tripwires — are hardly foolproof. If you really want to target illegal aliens, it’s at the point of hiring. Nearly everyone acknowledges – quietly, it seems — that often difficult-to-fill low-skill jobs are the real “magnet” for immigrants to try to enter the country illegally.
But thus far it’s been nearly impossible to institute an effective workplace enforcement system.
Part of the problem — but only part, and probably not the most important part — is technical.
Democrats and some Republicans have long complained that most “workplace verification” systems — like “E-Verify” — are too error-prone to be useful.
And for years, politicians have used that argument to stall or derail bills that included the program.
But the real problem isn’t technical. It’s political. Most American businesses don’t want to be held responsible for weeding out illegal aliens from the workforce. They don’t want to shoulder administrative burden or the additional costs involved. We’re not immigration “cops,” they insist.
In fact, the last time a comprehensive immigration reform package passed the Congress, in 1986, businesses revolted against a proposed provision–– known as “employer sanctions” — that would have punished them for employing illegal workers.
Their revolt was so strong that Congress was forced to water down the employer sanctions provision to the point where it no longer served as an effective deterrent to illegal hiring.
Businesses were allowed to claim an “affirmative defense” against illegal hiring by claiming that they had made a “reasonable effort” to verify the legal status of their workers by inspecting their hiring documents. As long as those documents seemed “genuine on their face,” employers could not be accused of “knowingly” hiring illegal workers.
As a result, illegal aliens began forging their hiring documents en masse. And not surprisingly, it was soon found that “employer sanctions” system weren’t working. In fact, fabricating green cards and driver’s licenses and stealing social security numbers became a burgeoning new industry.
Believe it or not, this toothless system of workplace enforcement — which has deluded taxpayers into thinking that their government was actually protecting their jobs as well as their borders — has remained in place at the federal level for the past thirty-plus years.
What little progress that’s been made is due largely to conservatives pushing for E-Verify at the state level. Currently, some 20 states have mandated the use of E-Verify in the private or public sector, or in some cases, both. Nationally, about 57 percent of all jobs are screened with E-Verify, up from just 30 percent in 2010. But with only piecemeal and partial local enforcement, illegal aliens are free to apply for work in the thirty states that don’t use E-Verify.
President Trump, to his credit, has decided that America, at last, must end the current “nod-and-a-wink” conspiracy between illegal immigrants and low-skill businesses by insisting that E-Verify be implemented nationwide.
But Trump hasn’t exactly touted E-Verify, either. A border wall is a far more visually compelling symbol and metaphor for American policy intent. It also implicates America’s southern neighbor more directly. Mexico has no reason to pay for interior enforcement, but insisting that Mexico fund a wall along a border the two countries share makes perfect sense. It also stokes the kind of patriotic fervor that keeps Trump popular with the GOP base.
Downplaying E-Verify also allows Trump to dodge a potential fight with the US business community over immigration enforcement. Remember: Trump needs the business community’s support on tax reform, infrastructure rebuilding and a host of other economic issues.
Antagonizing business groups on an issue they are leery of could backfire. Immigrants are heavily concentrated in “Blue” states like California, New York and New Jersey. Democrats in these states would love to exploit business resistance to workplace verification to win support for their political candidates and to undermine Trump’s immigration policies generally.
Some Democrats have support an expanded E-Verify system in the past, but only in the context of a sweeping amnesty program. Without a commitment from Trump to expand legalizations beyond the so-called DREAMers, they’re unlikely to support E-Verify.
Trump should agree to make that commitment – one still short of a full-scale amnesty, mind you — if it ensures that tougher workplace enforcement as well as border enforcement receives bipartisan support.
No doubt some powerful conservatives will howl. And business concerns will need to be allayed.
But getting E-Verify passed is simply too important not to make additional concessions.
Illegal immigration is at its lowest level since 2003, but those flows will resume – and surge – as the economy keeps expanding. We need a deal now. Otherwise, we will be arguing over this same issue – without resolution – for another thirty years.
Stewart Lawrence is a consultant and policy analyst.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/E-Verify_Participation_Poster.jpg359640The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2018-02-28 10:33:312018-02-28 10:33:31Border Security Is Important For Immigration But Workplace Enforcement Is YUGE
Two occasional papers were recently published by the Center for Security Policy. The first, entitled “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?,” was published in late 2016. The second, “The Perfect Storm,” was published in 2017. Both papers describe a 35-year lease to a cargo container terminal on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The peculiar discoveries in the papers made by investigative journalists Mary Fanning and Alan Jones have not received the national media attention they warrant.
In 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based company Gulftainer was awarded a three-and-a-half decade lease to operate the cargo container terminal at Port Canaveral, Florida. The peculiarity of this acquisition rests on the fact that Gulftainer is co-owned by the emir of Sharjah, UAE, and Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, who is the brother of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear mastermind. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Dr. Jafar was an official of the Iraqi regime who could have been engaged as a military target.
Why is this alarming? In part, it is because Dr. Jafar has also been credited with the design of a miniaturized nuclear weapon, commonly known as the “Beach Ball.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has appeared standing by a similarly purported nuclear weapon in recent photographs. This type of nuclear weapon can easily fit inside the nosecone of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and can cause the kind of catastrophic damage the United States has never seen.
The danger to America is not just that Gulftainer is co-owned the family of Saddam Hussein’s top nuclear mastermind, Dr. Jafar, and the emir of Sharjah, but also that Gulftainer is also in a joint venture with Kontsern-Morinformsistem-Agat, the Russian company that makes the Club-K missile launch system. The Club-K system looks identical to standard ocean containers that are shipped by the billions all over the world. The alarming difference between the ordinary cargo containers is evident by what’s found on the inside of the Club-K containers. Four cruise missiles are housed in each Club-K system and can be launched directly from the container – even remotely.
How many Trojan horses have our enemies shipped around the world? Such an entry into any of our ports would be considered astronomically valuable to any enemy of the United States. Have some of these dangerous containers made their way to America? These are viable questions.
Though speculative, the numbers could be staggering. Some ships hold as many as 3,000 cargo containers. “Relying on intelligence and risk analysis,” Van Hipp tell us in his book, The New Terrorism, “we are only able to scan less than one percent of the incoming containers before they enter the country.” Do the math, and that’s 30 or fewer containers scanned per 3,000. The potential for a national security threat to be offloaded at Port Canaveral or any other port around the country is alarming. These 40-foot shipping containers could be carried by semi trucks or freight trains anywhere around the country without raising a single eyebrow.
If a Club-K missile attack were to happen, the results could be cataclysmic. Each hidden missile could carry any number of conventional payloads, including those poised for a biological, chemical, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), or nuclear attack.
Clare Lopez, vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy, says, “We have no idea how many of those might be already among container traffic in the world.” This is rightly disturbing for us, as millions of Americans have unknowingly put their trust in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review and oversight process, or probably have never given it any thought regarding safety.
Ordinarily, the CFIUS would determine whether or not any kind of foreign purchase, acquisition, or lease like this one could have some kind of national security implication. A failure of the review and oversight process is not out of the question, considering the utter failure of the Uranium One case, which occurred in the same time period. Lopez confirms, “It speaks to a lack of oversight during the Obama years, particularly of the CFIUS body that has the responsibility for oversight over deals just like this. Either they didn’t pay enough attention to it or they just let it go just like the Uranium One deal, but of course, there we know there was all kinds of malfeasance involved, including corruption, extortion, blackmail, kickbacks, and payments to the Clinton Foundation.”
According to Lopez, “Gulftainer is seeking similar cargo container terminal leases at least 42 other U.S. ports.” Roadways and railways extending from Port Canaveral could be giving our enemies access to the entire country.
Media and layperson alike should be compelled to bring this to the attention of those in Congress, particularly to those who are members of the House Transportation Committee. Could we be on the brink of disaster without even knowing it?
ABOUT J.M. PHELPS
J.M. Phelps is a Christian activist and journalist based in the Southeastern U.S.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/container-ship-in-port-e1519824413663.jpg398640Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2018-02-28 08:27:302018-02-28 08:27:30We could have shipping containers full of foreign nukes in our ports and not know it
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham reported Monday that Broward Country deputies were told not to go into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the mass shooting earlier this month.
The alleged reason? They didn’t have any body cameras with them.
WATCH:
“Curiously, police also lost radio communications during the parkland shooting. And our source claims that radio communication also went dead during the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting in 2017 that he also got a lot of criticism for.”
Ingraham did not say who issued the order to not go into the school.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/ISRAEL-CLINTON-e1519740381531.jpg371640The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2018-02-27 09:06:432018-02-27 09:08:19VIDEO: Broward County Deputies Were TOLD Not To Go Into High School
In the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting and the wave of well-organized and financed protests using emotionally traumatized students, the Florida Legislature is set to vote on a range of legal responses — including a series of gun restrictions.
This, from a state that has some of the strongest Second Amendment protections in the union, should cause some real alarm. The pressure on legislators up for re-election in November is immense, from the demonstrators, anti-gun activists, their media allies, and the public consuming it all. But it is totally and purposely misdirected.
The real blame in this atrocity — after the deranged shooter himself, never forget that — is the total collapse of the governmental institutions charged with protecting the defenseless students collected into an unprotected public school.
Let’s recap how the Parkland shooting has played out politically. Because make no mistake, it is now allpolitical in Florida and nationally, and it is driven by the activist left and the media pursuing their anti-gun agendas — and not by the facts as they are being revealed.
The FBI failed twice to take any steps when informed about the Parkland shooter being a threat to do exactly this, by his own family members. This is hardly the worst, as the FBI gets a lot of bum tips, but it is still a failure.
Worse, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office failed to take any steps when called to his home 39 times, including for violent and threatening behavior, and being told he had guns. That is an extraordinary number of red flags missed or blown off by local law enforcement. The FBI and the Sheriff not only did nothing, but apparently they did not communicate with each other with this information.
Worse yet, the sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school did nothing, standing outside with his gun while the killer roamed the halls killing defenseless people.
And then very worst of all, when three more Broward deputies showed up, all of them stayed outside while the monster continued killing inside. They did nothing until Coral Springs police arrived on the scene, at which point the killer had stopped and was slipping away.
With four deputies all doing this, it is clear it was not cowardice. There are just too many good cops for that to be the case. They were almost assuredly following some sort of policy by the uber-incompetent and morally dubious Broward County Sheriff, a Democrat with a history of corruption charges.
The collapse of law enforcement and school security in the Parkland shooting (such as cameras being on a 20-minute delay, not a live feed, sowing more confusion) is perhaps the worst in modern American history. This shooting was eminently preventable, and should never have happened. The systemic collapse on the part of multiple government organizations failed the students, their families, friends and community.
And it will again.
But the entire media and political focus is on the weapon the killer used. It’s not the killer, not the FBI, not the deputies, not the school. It’s the weapon.
None of these protests are about the utter failure of the law enforcement community in Broward County. That’s because there is an agenda, using impressionable, traumatized youth. What there is not with any of these well-orchestrated protests is any effort to look at cause-and-effect solutions in this shooting. They are staring us in the face, but being ignored for the ongoing anti-gun political agenda.
And finally, the pursuit of gun bans and even gun confiscation, as has been suggested repeatedly in the wake of Parkland — using dubious example of Australia as the success of gun confiscation — means Americans would have to simply trust their defense to the same law enforcement and government systems that failed Parkland students so badly. Even in the best of times, police or deputies are several minutes away from a murderous rampage — or a home invasion. In the worst times, apparently they wait until the murder spree has ended.
Compare and contrast Parkland to the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting last year where a civilian heard the attack, got his semi-automatic rifle and took down the mass killer at the church before cops could get to the scene. What was the gun he used to stop the slaughter? An AR-15, the exact type of weapon that is being aimed at for banning by activists and Democrats.
As the protests and politics continues to play out, remember where the real blame lies — after the evil shooter — when you hear all the calls for gun regulations. And ask how you will defend yourself once all our non-musket guns are confiscated. Because that is the only end-game for the anti-gun activists, protestations to the side.
In his first year as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has already transformed the agency in many ways. He spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal before addressing attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual Reagan Dinner. An edited transcript of the interview is below.
Rob Bluey: You gave a speech at CPAC last year where you were just at the beginning of your tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency, and you outlined some of the things that you wanted to do. Here we are a year later, you’ve repealed, taken back, 22 regulations at a savings at $1 billion, a significant contribution to the U.S. economy, as President Donald Trump talked about in his speech. What does that mean?
Scott Pruitt: Busy year. And it was great to be at CPAC about two weeks after having been sworn in last year. And I talked last year about the future ain’t what it used to be, that Yogi Berra quote that I cited about the change that was gonna take place at the agency and I think we’ve been about that change the last year. Focusing on rule of law, restoring process and order, making sure that we engage in cooperative federalism as we engage in regulation.
But the key to me is that weaponization of the agency that took place in the Obama administration, where the agency was used to pick winners and losers. Those days are over.
You know, to be in Pennsylvania as I was early in my term, shortly after the CPAC speech last year, and to spend time with miners in Pennsylvania and be able to share with them underground. I was a thousand feet underground and 3 miles in. First time that an administrator in history had done that, and I talked to those long wall miners in Pennsylvania, and delivered the message from the president that the war on coal is over. That was a tremendous message for them, emotion that I saw on their faces.
Can you imagine, in the first instance, an agency of the federal government, a department of the U.S. government, declaring war on a sector of your economy? Where is that in the statute? Where does that authority exist? It doesn’t. And so to restore process and restore commitment to doing things the right way, I think we’ve seen tremendous success this past year.
Bluey: President Trump cited a number of examples that have come out of EPA in his speech to the CPAC attendees, and one of them was coal, another one was the Paris climate treaty. Talk about those two issues and your work with the president in terms of why you decided to take those actions in conjunction with him?
Pruitt: The president’s decision to exit the Paris accord—tremendously courageous. When you look at that decision, it put America first, which is what the president said in the Rose Garden in June.
What was decided in Paris under the past administration was not about carbon reduction. It was about penalties to our own economy because China and India, under that accord, didn’t have to take any steps to reduce CO2 until the year 2030. So, if it’s really about CO2 reduction, why do you let that happen?
“That weaponization of the agency that took place in the Obama administration—where the agency was used to pick winners and losers—those days are over.”
When you look at who’s led the world in CO2 reduction, it’s us. From the year 2000 to 2014, we reduced our CO2 footprint almost 20 percent through innovation and technology. So, we have nothing to be apologetic about as a country, and yet, the past administration went to Paris, hat in hand, and said, “Penalize our economy”, which is what happened with the Clean Power Plan.
The president saying no to that and putting America first was the tremendously courageous and right thing to do. I’m very excited about that decision. I know he talked about that in his speech and it was a wonderful decision he made, and I think great for the American people.
Overall, this regulatory reform agenda—this regulatory certainty that we’re about—is achieving good things for the environment, but it’s also achieving, as you say, good things for our economy. We can do both. And I think that’s what’s key.
President Donald Trump listens to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt after announcing his decision that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Newscom)
Bluey: President Trump certainly cited deregulation as just as significant, I believe he said, as the tax cuts. We’ve seen some of the benefits for many American businesses, and certainly American workers as a result of that.
Pruitt: When you think about an EPA—armed, weaponized, if you will—like a rule like WOTUS, the Waters of the United States rule, that would take a puddle and turn into a lake. To take land use decisions away from farmers and ranchers and landowners across this country, and people think it was just farming and ranching. It was the building of subdivisions. It was really all land use decisions.
I was in Utah last year meeting with some folks there that were building a subdivision, and there was an Army Corps of Engineers representative that was standing outside the subdivision with me, and he pointed to an ephemeral drainage ditch and he said, “Scott, that’s a water of the United States.” And I said, “Well, it’s not gonna be anymore.”
That’s exactly the kind of attitude that drove the past administration. It was all about power. It wasn’t about outcomes necessarily. It was about power and picking winners and losers, and we’re getting that corrected.
Bluey: That’s one thing I want to talk to you about because right now your agency is going across the country. You’re having hearings on the Clean Power Plan. You’re trying to get input from Americans, and not just Americans in Washington, D.C., and the Beltway, but places like Wyoming and Missouri and West Virginia. Why is that important to get out and hear from Americans about how government affects their lives?
Pruitt: Couple things: One, we’ve been to 30-plus states. And as we’ve met with stakeholders, farmers and ranchers, and those in the utility sector and the energy sector, landowners, representatives from the state’s governors, and DEQs from across the country, I think what we didn’t recognize over the last several years with the past administration is that those folks are partners. They care about outcomes.
“We shouldn’t start from the premise that those folks are adversaries or don’t care about clean air or clean water. We should start from the premise that they do, and work with them to achieve good outcomes.”
Think about those farmers and those ranchers. They’re our first conservationists. They’re our first environmentalists. I think of the young man, David, in Florida that I meant about a month ago, 12 years old. I was speaking to a group of individuals in Florida. David was there with his dad and his granddad was there. Now, think about what their greatest asset is? Their land. And they’re teaching David how to cultivate and harvest and care for that land and act as a steward.
That’s the message we’re sending across the country. We shouldn’t start from the premise that those folks are adversaries or don’t care about clean air or clean water. We should start from the premise that they do, and work with them to achieve good outcomes. That’s the difference in how we approach it versus the past administration.
Bluey: That leads to my next question. When we last spoke in October, we talked about what true environmentalism really means, and I’d like you to share again how you’re approaching that.
Pruitt: It’s a very important question because I think when you look at what is true environmentalism, the past administration said prohibition.
Though we have natural gas and oil and coal and all these natural resources that we’re blessed with as a country, they approached it by saying, “Put up fences. Do not touch.” And that’s just simply wrong-headed in my view.
What we should be about is stewardship. Recognizing that God has blessed us with those resources, that we have an obligation to use them responsibly and environmentally stewardship focused with respect to future generations, and we can do that.
This notion that we cannot be about jobs and stewardship of the environment is just simply not right. We’ve always done that well as a country. We haven’t had to choose. The past administration had to choose. Jobs or environmental protection? We’re saying environmental stewardship and jobs in the economy. We can do both together.
Bluey: One of the things I know you’ve been focused on is making the EPA, as an agency, run more efficiently. And you talked to me before about how you brought in a staff that is really committed to doing that. How has that progressed?
Pruitt: It’s exciting. Exciting. I mean permitting is one of those areas that I think is a great representation of that, a great measurement better put.
When you have a permitting processes that take 10, 12, 15 years, that’s not permitting. That’s obstruction. That isn’t an answer. That’s just simply a delay tactic in my view.
We are going through a process right now that, by the end of this year, every decision we make on a permit at the agency will be done within six months, up or down. Now, states do it all the time. States have processes in place where they’re making decisions between six months and a year, and we don’t.
“When you have a permitting processes that take 10, 12, 15 years, that’s not permitting. That’s obstruction.”
We’re getting accountability across the country in regions and in headquarters, and it’s gonna be done by the end of the year.
That’s something that is very exciting to me, but when you think about the core mission of our agency, we’ve done something else that’s very important. We’re setting goals.
We’re saying, “Where do we wanna be air attainment?” Those air quality standards that we have, where do we need to be five years from now? What about Superfund sites? What about water infrastructure? How do we avoid a Flint, Michigan, and a Gold King, Colorado? How do we take the backlog of chemicals? How do we address the state of limitation plans that states have submitted to improve air quality, and work through that backlog?
Let’s set objective measurements and measure them every single day, and challenge everyone to meet those goals. And it’s exciting. And people are really, I think, getting vested and invested in it.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt watches an underground conveyor belt system carrying coal to the surface during a tour of the Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pennsylvania. Pruitt was visiting the area as part of his Back-to-Basics Agenda promoting coal as a source of energy. (Photo: Eric Vance/ZUMA Press/Newscom)
Bluey: Last fall, you took action on sue and settle. You decided to end that practice. What has that meant in the months since you’ve taken that action?
Pruitt: Well, Rob, you get this, but how damaging was that to rulemaking when the sue and settle practice—a third-party group comes in and sues the agency, goes into a courtroom somewhere in the country, agrees to a substantive rule in the course of that settlement, puts it into consent decree, and then goes all over the country and says, “This is what you have to do across the country.”
Now, that’s abusive. That’s not how the process should work. You should not have a sue and settle process to bypass rulemaking. So, I ended it.
I sent a memo out to the entire agency that said gone are the days of us going into a backroom at a courtroom, and make a decision with one party that affects the entire country.
We’re going to do rulemaking the right way. We’re going to publish our rules. We’re going to take comment on those rules. We’re going to respond to those comments. We’re going to finalize the rules. That’s what Congress has required of us. That’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to make a substantial difference.
“This notion that we cannot be about jobs and stewardship of the environment is just simply not right. … We can do both together.”
One other area that we’ve addressed that I think is equally important is this area of our advisory committees. These scientists that serve on advisory committees that help us do rulemaking because, as you know, when we make a decision, we don’t just snap our finger. We have to build a record. There’s scientific inquiry. There’s evaluation, data, methodology. All of those things take place with water, air, whatever the rulemaking is.
As that record is built, you have advisory committees, you have scientists that advise me as the administrator and the agency as a whole on the efficacy, the merits of that rule. Well, those scientists, we have many scientists that serve on those advisory committees that were also getting grants from the agency that were supposed to be given as independent counsel. In fact, we had several scientists receive almost $77 million over the last three years.
I said to those individuals, “Look, you can receive the grant, but you can’t serve on the advisory committee. Or you can serve on the advisory committee but not receive the grant. Choose this day what you’re going to do.”
We got accountability there to ensure the independence of the scientific basis by which we were doing rulemaking. That’s the process changes we’re engaged in that I think lead to good results at the end, and it’s what the American people deserve.
Bluey: Follow up to that last point you made. I know that when you announced that change, obviously there was a big uproar in the media and among those people who didn’t like the fact that you were trying to make this change. What have the results been in the months that followed?
Pruitt: Common sense is not too common, and so, I think when we make those kind of commonsense changes it’s disruptive to the status quo, but frankly, the status quo needs to be disrupted in these areas.
“Common sense is not too common, and so, I think when we make those kind of commonsense changes it’s disruptive to the status quo, but frankly, the status quo needs to be disrupted in these areas.”
We’re getting good accountability, good transparent outcomes. The other thing that’s just amazing to me is that the agency historically, as it’s done rulemaking, it contracts studies to third parties. It doesn’t do the science itself in some instances, it goes to a third party and says, “You do the science for us, give us the findings.” But then when the findings come back to the agency, they don’t provide the methodology, nor do they provide the data. And so there’s no transparency in that process. We’re going to get accountability there as well.
These matters, at the end of the day, I think are what we should be focused upon. As we do our work, do it with a commitment to transparency and objectivity, making sure that we have a record that is solid, and in making informed decisions about the rules that we’re passing so that the American people have a voice, and that we know how it’s going to impact positively the environment, but also the cost-benefit aspect.
Bluey: Speaking at the Reagan Dinner at CPAC is a real honor. There have been many who’ve come before you and had this opportunity to address the audience. What message do you want to leave the CPAC attendees this year?
Pruitt: This first year as I’ve served, and as the president has served this country, he’s a person of results.
You think about the State of the Union. His message that night was powerful. I think it was very powerful. But it was powerful because he said look what we’ve accomplished this past year. Look what we promised, look what we’ve done, look at the impact it’s having on the economy. And look what’s going to happen as we go into 2018.
I love how the president leads with a commitment to getting results. And I think the American people, as I serve in this capacity, we’ve got to focus on what. Key objectives that we want to achieve for the environment. Air, land, water, removing solid waste and hazardous wastes.
“Look what we promised, look what we’ve done, look at the impact it’s having on the economy.”
What are our objectives? Let’s focus on those to address all those very good things for the environment. But let’s also recognize that we have to have an attitude that says we can be about natural resource management and environmental stewardship, that we don’t have to choose. That’s one of the greatest challenges we have as a country. We need to get that question right and that answer right because we have so much opportunity.
It’s an exciting time to be serving. There’s wonderful things happening. And this country, I’m telling you, the growth that we’re seeing, it’s only the beginning. As we get together next year, which I pray we do, we’re going to celebrate another year of progress.
You talk about those 22 actions of $1 billion [at the EPA], $8 billion as a total for the administration. That’s really quite amazing. We’re going to see that continue through courageous leadership, and focus on getting results.
Rob Bluey is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Rob. Twitter: @RobertBluey.
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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is prior to addressing CPAC attendees, Scott Pruitt speaking exclusively to The Daily Signal about his first year as EPA administrator. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Newscom)
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/180224_ScottPruitt-1250x650-e1519645332623.jpg363640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-02-26 06:42:362018-02-26 20:20:08VIDEO: The Weaponization of the EPA Is Over: An Exclusive Interview With Scott Pruitt
After delivering a homily indicting Catholic Senators (Democrat and Republican) who voted against legislation that would render illegal the killing of unborn babies with a developed nervous system, I received a response in a letter:
I look forward to hearing your next political homily, similar to the one on abortion a few weeks ago. Please state the Catholic position on mass murder, and, in that context, list the Catholic Republicans in Congress who block any reasonable assault-weapons ban. You might need to extend church hours since the list will, undoubtedly, be extensive. Thank you.
It needs to be said right off, of course, that a homily on the evil of abortion is about as political as a homily condemning the Holocaust. Regardless, if my correspondent would identify any politician who was in favor of placing weapons – including daggers and box cutters – into the hands of criminals and psychotics for purposes of mass murder, I would happily identify them by name. And I would invite the same boos and hisses I invite for any politician who doesn’t lift a finger to protect the lives of unborn babies.
But on such matters, here is my answer in a nutshell:
Abortion is intrinsically evil and thus opposing it is not political.
Guns are not intrinsically evil. On the contrary, the Catechism teaches not just the right but the duty to use lethal force, if necessary, to defend oneself and those towards whom we have a responsibility. The same right to life that condemns mass murder requires the use of a gun to wound or kill if necessary to save life. Keeping guns away from mass murderers is obviously a moral duty, but guns in themselves are not intrinsically evil, unlike abortion.
Every firearm can be used in an assault, so the label “assault rifle” is a political, rather than a moral, one.
Priests and prelates have no pertinent expertise in crafting gun control legislation or, or for that matter, in preventing the arming of rogue states. Those killed by a butter knife, an AK-47, or a neutron bomb are equally and indifferently dead. In each case, the resort to arms will be judged just or unjust by the same moral criterion.
The Church must always uphold the integrity of justice, and justice not only permits but requires defense of the innocent against unjust aggressors, i.e., those who inflict harm without due cause.
But is a “reasonable assault-weapons ban” a moral imperative in our day in view of the increasingly frequent school shootings (not to mention violence in the cities)?
Here there arise some truly political questions that need thoughtful consideration and rigorous analysis – by the laity. The ones I am about to list certainly are not exhaustive. (I do not presume to exercise priestly authority here, but I am, after all, a citizen, too.)
What is a “weapon”? Obviously, handguns and rifles are weapons. But so are box cutters on airplanes. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered with assaults that began with box cutters in the hands of terrorists.
Image: The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or the Bloody Massacre, printed in 1770 by Paul Revere after a design by Henry Pelham [Library of Congress]
The difficulty of defining a “weapon,” however, doesn’t disappear when restricting the conversation to fire sticks. What is an “assault weapon”? A tank? A machine gun? A repeating Winchester rifle? An M-16? The real question is how might legislation keep these weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally disturbed?
The question of crafting criminal laws threatening to inflict just punishment, it seems to me, is far easier to evaluate with moral criterion than regulatory laws. Front-end regulatory laws such as a “reasonable assault weapons ban,” in contrast, are far more complicated because not only do the laws need to envision an ever-expanding universe of definitions, there are serious questions of effectiveness and the morality of infringing on the right to self-defense. And it should be recognized that in the aftermath of violence, hysteria and emotionalism easily disrupt clear thinking.
With respect to the question of effectiveness: What kind of gun control is “reasonable”? How do outlaws obtain guns? Is it true – or just a clever phrase – that if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns? What is the experience in cities with strict “gun control” laws? What is the experience of political entities with “conceal and carry” regulations? What are the facts?
All of these questions are clearly beyond the competence of the clergy.
Questions of gun violence causality need a continuing dispassionate investigation by the laity and the experts among them. (My educated guess is that pornography plays a large part in causality. When the porn fails to satisfy, a twisted mind seeks other methods of excitement. And of course at root is the breakdown of the family including legalized abortion. Disrespect of unborn human life begets disrespect of all human life.)
Who among us would not like to see a world without violence, where guns were only used for hunting and sport? But the effects of Original Sin remain and we have a natural right to self-defense. (Alas, whenever I try to “Visualize World Peace,” I end up visualizing a police state.)
These are difficult times, with a broken culture contributing to a breakdown on a wide scale of our civilization, leading to countless acts of violence. So pronouncing on the morality of banning guns should not be made by a cleric in the exercise of his prophetic office. There are too many moving parts, questions of fact and causality, and good faith prudential judgments where believing Catholics can disagree in good conscience. But underlying moral principles remain and need proper application.
At times, a clean gun in good working order can be the solution – as in just war, just police action, and acts of personal self-defense. But legislation regulating the procurement and possession of guns, to preserve the liberty and order and security essential to a free society, is the business of the laity.
Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky
Father Jerry J. Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington. He is pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Great Falls, Virginia.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/MORLITY.jpg360640The Catholic Thinghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Catholic Thing2018-02-24 06:39:212018-02-24 06:41:26On the Morality of Gun Control
Conservatives know that. That’s why they want to 
