WHEN THE FEDS COME MARCHING IN...

June 23, 2014 

What happens when you create a totalitarian state with no moral compass?  I believe we’re in the regrettable process of finding out.  The nightmare that is our federal government continues to bulldoze its way through or over the Constitution as well as state’s and individual rights.  If you love liberty, you know this cannot end well.

A friend of mine just made me aware of one of the latest bizarre, egregious, overreaches for which our federal government is becoming increasingly infamous.  This doesn’t pertain to shoving LGBT “rights” down our throats or throwing open our borders to whomever wishes to come across or seeking to punish the owners of the Washington Redskins for refusing to change the team’s name, this, believe it or not, pertains to the problem of  “regional haze.”  

The Environmental Protection Agency brought suit a couple of years ago against utility companies in Oklahoma that produce electricity by burning coal.  This federal agency, which, like the IRS, Homeland Security, and others is absolutely running amok, demanded that the utility companies follow a government mandated plan to reduce “regional haze.”  Understand, this demand has nothing to do with public health.  Let me repeat, this demand has nothing to do with public health.  This is not about the release of toxic chemicals or carcinogens into the atmosphere.  This has to do with visibility at national parks and wildlife areas being reduced because of haze.  A haze which, the EPA claims, may be exacerbated by coal burning power plants.

I’ve lived in northeastern Oklahoma for nearly nine years now.  Believe me, haze in the atmosphere is a part of life here, particularly in the heat of summer.  It has everything to do with lots of greenery and stifling humidity.  You could eliminate every coal burning plant in the state and the haze is not going away.  If you’ve travelled to Tennessee and visited the beautiful Smoky Mountains, the natural haze is a part of their beauty.  As we travelled to the Smoky Mountain National Park last Fall, we passed at least two coal burning plants that had been closed down. Hundreds of jobs were lost, but I wonder if “regional haze” was reduced at all.  There certainly seemed to be plenty of it when we were there.

Here’s what’s really frustrating.  The state of Oklahoma already had a plan in place that would more than meet the requirements set by the EPA.  And it would do so at a considerable reduction to the estimated one billion dollars the federally mandated plan is going to cost to implement. When Oklahoma Gas and Electric and the Attorney General of Oklahoma filed a joint appeal to this order, arguing that steps were already in place to meet its mandates, the tenth circuit court of appeals in July of last year ruled in favor of the EPA’s right to impose its federally mandated plan on the state.  In May of this year, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to that decision.

The result?  Because the EPA and federal courts arbitrarily rejected the state’s plan, which among other remedies would have used low-sulfur coal to reach emissions goals, again, at a much cheaper cost to consumers, under the federally mandated plan utility bills will increase a minimum of fifteen percent.  Many estimates see utility costs as much as doubling.  Oklahoma residents will bear an increased financial burden because a federal agency decided to throw its weight around.  We, in Oklahoma, are, in a very real sense, being taxed by a bunch of federal bureaucrats who arbitrarily decided it was worth billions of dollars (Oklahoma is not the only state affected by these regulations) to, maybe, reduce the “regional haze” in our national parks.

How much longer can this nation afford this type of abuse?  Those on limited incomes who live in Oklahoma are going to be forced to pay higher electric bills for no good reason!  Why should a set of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. have the right to force Grandma to pay an additional twenty to fifty dollars a month, just because they can?

We are seeing more and more of these power grabs by an out of control federal government.  States and individuals find themselves without recourse. Millions of voters can have their say on a moral issue such as gay marriage, and a single federal judge can dismiss those votes.  A state can institute its own regulations regarding emissions from electric generating stations, which produce a result within federal guidelines, and have a federal agency reject that plan and institute its own.  

I have read about totalitarian regimes – Stalinist Russia or Castro’s Cuba.  I never imagined I would live in one.  We are moving in that direction at a frightening pace. If states and individuals in this country don’t fight relentlessly against a federal government that greedily seeks to control every aspect of our lives, from the amount of salt in our food to the moral values we hold dear, the day is coming when this will no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Our lives will be dictated by legislators, courts, and bureaucrats whose god is power and whose moral code is rooted in a rebellion against the laws of God.   

Check your history books, friends.  This will not be a pleasant place to live.