Deep State defiant
Being what they are, doing what they do.
The Administrative State Moves To Show Who’s Boss On Energy Policy
Last Thursday, June 30, the Supreme Court issued its decision in West Virginia v. EPA, holding that, absent a further explicit statute from the Congress, the EPA did not have the authority to orchestrate its planned fundamental restructuring of the electric power generation sector of the economy. More generally, the Supreme Court stated that in cases involving “major questions,” including regulations that affect large portions of the economy, the government must demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” to support a sweeping effort to regulate.Do you think that such a Supreme Court decision might cause the various regulatory bureaucracies to slow down and reconsider a little before plowing ahead with other dubious plans for fundamental economic restructurings? That’s not how these bureaucracies work. And such is most particularly the case with regard to regulators of the energy sector, sometimes known as “climate change” arena, where the bureaucrats are burning with a righteous religious fervor that they believe entitles them to cast the evil sinners into the fires of hell.
And thus, contemporaneous with the Supreme Court’s decision, several agencies promptly doubled down on efforts to strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory restrictions, essentially daring the courts or anyone else to stop them. Thousands of pages of statutes give them thousands of arguments to claim they have the “clear congressional authorization,” any one of which arguments might stick. They are now out to show who’s boss.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan wasted no time in getting a statement out on the afternoon of June 30. Excerpt:
[W]e are committed to using the full scope of EPA’s authorities to protect communities and reduce the pollution that is driving climate change…EPA will move forward with lawfully setting and implementing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm.
In other words, we will just have to find other ways to implement the restrictions that we want to implement.
Oh, I can think of at least one really good one right offhand, although things might get a little messy, so to speak, before all’s said and done. Alas, the EPA is hardly alone in their lawless defiance of the Supreme Court. That’s life under a power-drunk government gone rogue, believing itself to be above all sanction, restriction, or oversight.
One can only stand back in slack-jawed wonder at the sheer, unmitigated gall of the EPA’s brandishing of the word “lawfully” up there, waving it in our faces like a billy-club even as they’re so arrogantly disregarding its meaning. All under the holy “climate change” rubric, natch; honestly, is there ANYTHING it can’t do at this point?
Via BRM, who adds:
That’s typical of bureaucrats, of course. Don’t like a Supreme Court ruling? Defy it. Circumvent it with every paper-shuffling, buck-passing trick at your disposal. Deny, delay, obfuscate. Ignore complaints. It’s not just Democrat administrations that do it, either. The entrenched bureaucracy that implements (?) the decisions of every administration (the so-called “Deep State”) plus the political appointees of every President have always sought ways to do what they want to do, rather than what they should do or what the law says they must do. Lincoln’s abrogation of the right of habeas corpus comes to mind, to cite just one example.
I don’t know what can be done about this. The courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, can issue rulings and injunctions for all they’re worth; but if the powers that be are determined to ignore or circumvent them, there’s no immediate remedy for that. The rule of law is already honored more in the breach than in the observance in many ways in these formerly United States. Nowadays, it all too often depends on one’s politics to determine whether or not the law will operate in one’s favor.
Just don’t expect the Biden administration to be bound by the rule of law, or the decision of courts of law, from the lowest to the highest. It’s partisan in the extreme, and ruthless in its determination to do whatever it wants to achieve its objectives. It won’t be stopped by laws or lawsuits. It’ll need stronger measures than mere words.
Indeed it will. As the filthy bastards go from bad to worse to worse still, they make those “stronger measures” look less dreadful and more and more appealing.
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