Saturday, May 31, 2014

Smart Meter Spying Finally Admitted


Warren Woodward
Activist Post


Industry mouthpiece SmartGridNews finally admitted that “smart” meters are surveillance devices.

Of course they didn’t quite put it that bluntly.  In fact, they celebrate the ability of utilities to know what appliances people use as another tool to help craft the wonderful world of the future


Below is my letter to the Arizona Corporation Commission pointing out that industry has finally come out and admitted what I and others have been saying for years.[Note from Take Back Your Power: It's important that you send your utility your notice of Non-Consent via registered mail.  Subscribe to our Newsletter for forthcoming news, and see ourSolutions page for current links to templates.]

The
SmartGridNews article, entitled “Now utilities can tell customers how much energy each appliance uses (just from the smart meter data),” is here.

May 15, 2014
Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC)
Docket Control Center
1200 West Washington Street
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Re: Docket # E-01345A-14-0113
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Here is breaking news. SmartGridNews has just come out of the closet and admitted what I and others have been saying all long: “Smart” meters are surveillance devices.
APS and utilities nationwide have been denying the surveillance capability of “smart” meters but here is one of the foremost “smart” meter cheerleaders in the world finally admitting the truth.
SmartGridNews calls such “smart” grid industry names as Telvent, Silver Spring Networks and Lockheed Martin its “major sponsors”. So of course the news story attempts to put a positive spin on the surveillance, hyping such nonsense as an “over 4% conservation [of energy] after just a few months”.
Wow, that means I might save four whole dollars and change on a one hundred dollar electrical bill. Where do I sign up to be spied on?
Enclosed is the SmartGridNews article, Now utilities can tell customers how much energy each appliance uses (just from the smart meter data).
Sincerely,
Warren Woodward


PS – In the article, note the creepy picture of a guy dressed in black and using binoculars. SmartGridNews is shameless to promote Peeping Toms as cool. Note also Orwellian phrasing such as "behavioral science" and turning ratepayers into "willing partners". It’s not a “smart” grid; it’s a sick grid.




Also Read...New Federal Database Will Track Millions' Of Americans' Financial Records

Friday, May 30, 2014

Open Borders For Mexican Cartels?



Two frightening incidents of vandalism in El Paso near the Mexican border in Texas have been interpreted as warnings from drug cartels.


In both instances, a mannequin wearing a suit and tie was tied to a billboard with a noose and messages were scrawled over the placards.

Local station KHOU reports that one of the signs reads 'Plata o Plombo' which translates to 'silver or lead', a threat used commonly against police officers effectively warning that if they do not accept the cartel's bribes then they will be shot.

'This symbol has historically been used by Mexican drug cartels to threaten or intimidate Mexican citizens, business owners and government officials; however, we have never experienced this in El Paso,' local police said in a press release about the vandalism.

The fear now for many is that the 'warnings' shows that the drug cartels- which have not been identified by name- are willing to bring the violence from Mexican border towns into Texas.


I'LL BET MORE THAN A FEW TEXANS ARE PREPARED FOR THIS!

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!

Two armed robbers in attempted to hold up the wrong Gamestop video game store in Harris County, Texas:
It all happened shortly after noon on Wallisville Road near Beltway 8. According to investigators, the two men attempted to rob a Game Stop store when they were stopped by the 28-year-old U.S. Marine.
The Marine was eating at a restaurant next door when he saw two men pull up to the Game Stop wearing hoodies and bandanas. He yelled for someone to dial 911, and then he grabbed his concealed weapon out of his truck.
According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, that’s when one of the suspects pointed a gun at him.
One of the suspects was fatally shot. The second suspect got away but was found later and taken into custody....Read More

Read More At...Daily Mail

Released Illegal Aliens Flood Bus Station: Head Out Across US

Flood Of Illegel Immigrant Minors To Cost Taxpayers $2 Billion Next Year

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Directive Outlines Obama’s Plan To Use The Military Against Citizens



A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans.

The directive contains noncontroversial provisions on support to civilian fire and emergency services, special events and the domestic use of the Army Corps of Engineers.


The troubling aspect of the directive outlines presidential authority for the use of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, in operations against domestic unrest.

“This appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens,” said a defense official opposed to the directive.

Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities,” was issued Dec. 29, 2010, and states that U.S. commanders “are provided emergency authority under this directive.”

“Federal military forces shall not be used to quell civil disturbances unless specifically authorized by the president in accordance with applicable law or permitted under emergency authority,” the directive states.

“In these circumstances, those federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the president is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances” under two conditions.

The conditions include military support needed “to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order.” A second use is when federal, state and local authorities “are unable or decline to provide adequate protection for federal property or federal governmental functions.”


“Federal action, including the use of federal military forces, is authorized when necessary to protect the federal property or functions,” the directive states.

Military assistance can include loans of arms, ammunition, vessels and aircraft. The directive states clearly that it is for engaging civilians during times of unrest.




A U.S. official said the Obama administration considered but rejected deploying military force under the directive during the recent standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his armed supporters.



Read more: Washington Times 

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Obama Madder Than Hell After Golfing Accident Triggers WWIII


President Obama told a press conference today that he is “madder than hell” and “no one is angrier than I am” after a routine test of new $100 billion software intended to allow him to play computer-simulated golf rounds accidentally triggered World War III.
The president told the assembled journalists he only found out about the war while watching the news on TV. The inadvertent conflict is expected to kill upwards of one billion people.
The president once again denied accusations that the golf software project had suffered from incompetence and mismanagement since it first began 5 years ago, saying “ICBM silos mysteriously go on red alert status all the time, there was no reason to think virtual putting was connected to any of it.”
As far as the rumors that the lights at SAC HQ went out every time the golf software crashed, Mr. Obama remarked “it was just a coincidence.”
Continuing his prepared statement, the president vowed to “get to the bottom of this” and toward that end, announced he was seriously considering forming a blue ribbon panel consisting of experts from the consulting company that created the software, as well as their families and friends, to investigate the problem and get back to him no later than six months from now.
The president said he would make a final decision on the blue ribbon panel after returning from vacation.
After his statement, the president took questions from the assembled reporters, during which he expressed his acrimony, indignation, and seething resentment over the software problems. At one point, the president’s choler became so intense, he asked for a Thesaurus to be brought out for him to refer to as he spoke.
As the press conference ended, the president, still visibly annoyed, shook his fist in the air and announced “Let me be clear, heads are going to roll!” He then peevishly grabbed his golf bag and left the press room.
Shortly after the news conference, the White House Office of Cool Technology Investments announced the resignation of Cora Uption, the official in charge of hiring the consulting company that created the glitchy golf software. Ms. Uption had previously announced her retirement from the WHOCTI effective next month so she could accept a much higher-paying job as a lobbyist for the consulting company that created the glitchy golf software.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, emerging from her taxpayer-provided personal fallout shelter complete with movie theater, swimming pool, and wet bar, took the occasion to place the blame for the war on former president George W. Bush.
“This is just another problem we inherited from Bush,” stated Pelosi. “If he had authorized the creation of virtual golf software for the White House instead of waging illegal wars for oil, this would’ve happened on his watch!”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hiding in a location so secret not even he is sure of where he is, released a brief statement: “Didn’t I warn you about the Koch Brothers? Huh? Didn’t I?”
Meanwhile, executives at CNN defended their decision to limit coverage of World War III in favor of continuing round-the-clock coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
“Get a clue,” said one executive off the record. “Where is most of our audience? Airports! What are people in airports most interested in? Planes! It’s not rocket science!”
In a late breaking development on this story, President Obama made an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman” last night during which he told the host he is “still really steamed about this.”
“You know me, Dave, I’ve been on your show four or five hundred times, you know when I’m irate, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I do.”
“Tell ‘em, Dave, tell the audience if I’m pissed or not.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I know President Obama, and believe me, he’s mad,” Letterman said.


I Took This Clown To My Prom And...


A Virginia high school student had high hopes this year for a prom date, choosing to ask Vice President Joe Biden to accompany her to the dance.

“Joe Biden makes me laugh,” Talia Maselli, 17, told the Hartford Courant. “He just cracks me up.”
The 17-year-old senior moved quick to invite him to prom, sending the vice president a witty handwritten note last spring in hopes he would take her to the Newington High School dance.

“I am inviting you so far in advance because I’m sure many 17-year-old girls send you prom invitations, and I had to beat them to it,” she wrote. “I could only tolerate a high school dance if I was to be escorted by the most delightful man in America.”...More at The Blaze


VIDEO: Danbury Students Crown First Male Prom Queen...Watch it here if you care to risk eye injury


Danbury students used this year’s senior prom to make a statement by electing a homosexual student to prom court. Nasir Fleming took that statement a step further when he opted for the tiara over the crown, taking the title of Prom Queen.

Fleming’s fellow students voted for the 17-year-old senior to reign as both king and queen, though he was forced to choose between the two at Saturday night’s prom. He said he chose to be crowned Prom Queen to shed light on another ostracized group within the LGBT community: transgender teens.






Also See...
Send In The Clowns

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Old News, But Be Prepared...Stop At The Gun Store On Your Way Home


March 19 2012...
On Friday evening Barack Hussein Obama signed into existence National Defense Resources Preparedness, an Executive Order which will afford the president dictatorial powers over the nation and the American people whenever he chooses to implement it.



Some of the more important—and frightening—dictates of the Obama decree:
The President can place the Order in effect virtually whenever and for whatever reason he wishes. Although related to the Defense Production Act of 1950, written as a result of the Korean War, the current Executive Order makes it clear that the nation need not be at war or threatened with aggression by outside forces to be implemented. The Order specifically states that it may be activated in peacetime.
All actions of the Order are ultimately controlled by the President. Obama has appointed the National Security Council and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano as the “integrated policymaking forum” for all Order policies.
All commerce will be conducted according to the demands of the President. All “services, materials and facilities” may be commandeered by the President “as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense…”
Regulations will be issued by the President’s representatives, establishing nationwide standards and procedures of production. The entire economy will literally work under the President’s direction. He and his representatives will also decide how all important resources shall be apportioned. They will “control the general distribution of any material (including applicable services) to the civilian market.”
The President’s representatives will have authority to grant or guarantee loans for the production of goods and materials or to “create, maintain, protect, expand or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense.” They may also “encourage the exploration, development and mining of strategic and critical materials…” Apparently oil may be sought only after the President has become a dictator.
Manufacturers will not be permitted to produce or sell goods unless authorized by the President. Anything produced will be made available for the President’s (that is, the nation’s) use before it may be offered elsewhere. The President’s representatives have authority to take over privately owned companies, plants and facilities, modify them, add or delete equipment and “authorize” production schedules. In short, private businessmen will be told what to make, how to make it, how much, when and for whom.
The Director of Selective Service and the Secretary of Defense will decide who will be inducted into the armed forces and who will be deferred.
In addition to those powers listed above, the President will also control all civil transportation; all forms, supplies and suppliers of energy; farm equipment; all food resources; food resource facilities; all water resources; health resources; strategic and critical materials and national defense.



And there are two additional items to consider. Janet Napolitano will be in charge of the National Defense Executive Reserve program. NDER refers to individuals recruited for specific tasks based upon specific abilities. And though they might be builders, they could also be mercenaries armed by Obama to “control” an unruly populace.
Also, emergency preparedness mandates of Obama’s Executive Order will be carried out according to title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief Act. Managed for years by FEMA, the Act is known for its creation of “temporary housing” facilities for displaced persons also known as FEMA camps.
As the American people consider what Obama has done, it is also necessary to ask why. Does he know or expect something the American public does not? And how will the enslavement of 300 million Americans make the United States better prepared for the requirements of “national defense?” Sleep well, America.

H/T to Madd Medic

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Radio Hosts Fired For Failuure To Revere Transsexual Feakazoids


The sicker an ideology, the more force will be required to impose it. Liberal sexual dogma is so profoundly disgusting to any normal person that it can only be rammed into the mainstream by aggressively punishing those who dare to show any sign of resistance. Two of the latest casualties are Kimberly Ray and Barry Beck of WBZA in Rochester, New York — who have just been fired for their thought crimes:
Two upstate New York radio hosts have been fired over their on-air comments about Rochester’s decision to cover gender reassignment surgery for city employees. …
Ray referred to someone seeking gender reassignment surgery as “a nut job.” Beck equated the issue to having the city pay for breast enhancement or liposuction for a mentally ill woman.
Noticing that men who think they are women have psychiatric issues is now beyond the limits of what is regarded as acceptable speech in our increasingly totalitarian society.
To say incidents like this have a chilling effect on speech would be putting it mildly. Liberals want us to live in terror of accidently exposing any sign of revulsion toward, or even failure to revere, the most severely psychosexually ill in our society.
Remember this, shock jocks: when being transgressive, don’t transgress against anyone allied with our liberal rulers, or you will be punished into silence....Moonbattery




The homosexual-transgender movement is working hard to indoctrinate schoolchildren as young as possible. By far, the most effective way is to get them into school-based “gay” clubs that are run by activist, often radical, adults…


Middle schools are such an important target that GLSEN recruited an activist “LGBT” middle school student to address the conference’s opening session. She said she’s bisexual (in middle school!) and that her sister is lesbian.
The girl spoke about how she helped organize the “Day of Silence” in her middle school. She said that one teacher was reluctant to put up the posters because of parent conferences that evening, saying that parents might not be comfortable seeing it. The girl labeled the teacher “ignorant” and said the teacher is “no longer working at the school” (which brought a cheer).
She added that “kids are figuring out who they are younger than ever” (i.e., being persuaded to self-identify as L, G, B, or T) and that “we need to create a safe environment for them in the lower grades.” This was a mantra that was repeated again and again in the conference. (“Safe environment” is the Orwellian term for a school that aggressively enforces pro-”LGBT” sexual ideology and suppresses all dissent.)

Read more at I Own The World

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Hero Cat Out Pitches And Outshines Obama



The commander-in-chief dropped by a game at DC's Friendship Park, and the players were not impressed

On Monday evening, President Obama decided to stop by D.C.’s Friendship Park to surprise some Little Leaguers who were warming up for their game.
Many of the young ball players weren’t exactly impressed, though, mostly because they apparently didn’t know who he was. Allow us to repeat that: the President of the United States of America just dropped by to say hey, and they didn’t know who he was.
EVERYONE KNOWS HERO CAT

21 Jokes That Only Conservatives Will Find Funny


IJ Review...It’s already been a crazy week around here, which means it’s the perfect time to take a break with a few jokes. And they’re all clean! Hope you enjoy:

#1 – Did you hear about the new Obama Diet? You let Putin eat your lunch every day.

#2 - How does Obama win the war on terror? He renames it!  Its now the overseas contingency operation.

#3 - Did you hear about the reporter who asked Obama a hard question? Neither have we!

#4 - How many democrats does it take to change a light bulb?  5! Al Gore to insure it’s a CFL, an EPA agent in case the bulb breaks and a mercury cleanup is necessary, a person to bail out the home owner, an ACORN member to ensure that the right person changed the bulb, and a member of the media to celebrate the change.

#5 - Why can’t Obama dance? Cause he has two leftist feet.

#6 - Some Republicans are saying that due to his current scandals, President Obama should be impeached. In response, Obama laughed and said, ‘Two words fellas: President Biden.’

#7 - Why won’t Obama have a turkey for Thanksgiving? Because Vice President Biden will be out of town.

#8 - Democrats and liberals always say they are smarter than conservatives. If that is true, then why do Democrats always have problems filling out a ballot?

#9 - Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering a plan for higher payroll taxes on upper-income earners to help finance health care legislation. So apparently, healthcare willl be paid for by the New York Yankees.

#10 - What do Obama and financial scam artists have in common? They both say “yes we can,” they both give hope, they both take your money, and they both will leave you penniless in the end.

#11 - Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in Shanghai to debate climate change with Chinese government officials. I think she’ll do fine. These negotiations always come down to whoever blinks first.

#12 - How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb? It’s irrelevant; they still don’t know they’re in the dark!

#13 - They say that Christopher Columbus was the first Democrat. When he left to discover America, he didn’t know where he was going. When he got there he didn’t know where he was. And it was all done on a government grant.

#14 - What do you get when you offer a liberal a penny for his thoughts? Change.

#15 - What’s the difference between Bill Clinton and government bonds? Government bonds will mature someday.

#16 - What do you call a basement full of liberals? A whine cellar.

#17 - Nancy Pelosi has now been elected the new House minority leader. She was smiling from ear to ear, which is pretty impressive considering how far her ears have been pulled back.

#18 - Joe Biden accidentally revealed the location of the Vice President’s top secret bunker. The guy can’t help it. But he did apologize. He said, “I am so sorry for the mistake. The launch code is 85334. It will never happen again. It will never happen again. My Gmail password is robot23. What am I doing? The house key is under the plant near the doorstep.”

#19 - What kind of doctor do you need to fix Obamacare? A URLologist.

#20 - What’s Obama’s new slogan in these tough times? Spare Change You Can Believe In!

#21 - Today is #CyberMonday, the day you can buy anything online. And by “anything,” I mean anything but health insurance.


H/T to Mark Scott

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Sagebrush Rebellion Redivivus

President Obama on Wednesday will designate nearly half a million acres in New Mexico as a national monument, the latest in a series of executive actions intended to improve environmental protections of federal lands.
The president will sign a proclamation establishing the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, the largest such designation of his presidency, during a ceremony at the Department of the Interior, the White House said Monday.



See Video HERE
It will be the 11th time the president has established a national monument during his term, and the largest designation in terms of land mass during his presidency.
By contrast, former President George W. Bush established only four national monuments during his eight years in office.
Read more: The Hill 
H/T to Cowboy Byte


Dictatorial Michigan government to ban chickens, goats, honey bees on small family farms

Learn more: Natural News




The following is excerpted from the latest issue of  Imprimis...William Perry Pendley


For many or maybe even most Americans, reports that a rancher in Clark County, Nevada, was at odds with federal land bureaucrats, that scores of federal lawyers were litigating against him, and that SWAT-garbed and heavily armed federal law-enforcement officers had surrounded his place might have come as a surprise. They might have been even more surprised, in the wake of this standoff—which ended short of deadly escalation thanks in part to negotiations by a local sheriff—to hear that over 50 elected officials from nine Western states had gathered in Utah to discuss a state takeover of a significant portion of federally owned land in the American West. But Westerners—especially rural Westerners who make a living on the federal lands that predominate beyond the hundredth meridian, by logging, mining, ranching, or developing energy resources—were not surprised at all. 

What has been most lacking in the reporting on these stories is the background of the disputes. And it should be stated up front, in all fairness, that the Obama administration is not unique in pursuing policies anathema to Westerners. On that score, it has simply followed the examples of the Carter and Clinton administrations. 

In the late 1970s, President Carter’s “War on the West” spawned what came to be known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Ronald Reagan embraced during his campaign for president in 1980: “I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion,” candidate Reagan proclaimed in a speech in Salt Lake City. “Count me in as a rebel.” The uprising was spurred by the fact that, more than any other region, the American West had been victimized by the environmental policies implemented—utterly regardless of their destructive economic and human consequences—during the previous two decades. Reagan had seen firsthand the transformation of the environmental movement from one of conservation and stewardship, in which the part played by human beings and technology was vital, to a movement in which humans and technology were understood to be enemies of nature. As articulated by Reagan, opposition to extreme environmentalism represented a return to true environmentalism. America’s “environment[al] heritage” will not be jeopardized, he promised, while at the same time insisting that “we are going to reaffirm that the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.”


The Obama administration has picked up where the Carter and Clinton administrations left off, adopting the no-use policies promoted by environmental groups who view all federal lands as off limits to productive human activity. 

A typical way these policies get implemented is for environmental interest groups to sue a government agency under either the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and for the agency then to settle the lawsuit in the interest group’s favor. Sometimes—as in a 2008 lawsuit filed against the U.S. Forest Service by three environmental groups to prevent oil, gas, and mineral extraction in Pennsylvania—the government not only settles the lawsuit but also pays the interest groups for their complaints (in that case paying out nearly $20,000). Just last month, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over such “sue and settle” tactics following an ESA lawsuit by a group called Wild Earth Guardians that sought to restrict land use for agriculture, oil and gas drilling, wind farms, and other activities in a five-state area—Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas—inhabited by the lesser prairie chicken. “These settlements,” Pruitt said in a statement, “impose tougher regulations and shorter timelines than those imposed by Congress,” and thus violate the rule of law. “Oklahoma has indicated its willingness to protect the lesser prairie chicken,” he added, “but it seems increasingly clear this issue isn’t about sound science or saving endangered species.” 

Following a recent report by the Government Accountability Office on how NEPA is being used to delay projects on federal lands, Dan Kish of the Institute for Energy Research characterized NEPA’s effect as “paralysis by analysis,” pointing out that “environmental impact statements, which were expected to take no more than 12 months 30 years ago, now take an estimated 4.6 years to complete.” NEPA’s consequences are wide-ranging: Since its passage in 1969, not a single new oil refinery has been built. Following forest fires in the West, as reported by the National Forest Association, “[NEPA] regulations . . . [delay] harvests of diseased or burned timber indefinitely. As such, usable salvage timber wastefully rots away, resulting in lost government income . . . and economic privation for local communities.” And after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, it was too little noted that twice—in 1977 and in 1996—plans to build a hurricane barrier and to raise and strengthen the levees were halted by environmentalist NEPA lawsuits. 

According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2009 through 2013, oil and natural gas production on private land was up 61 percent and 33 percent, respectively; on federal lands, by contrast, oil production was down eleven percent and gas production was down 28 percent. This is no mere coincidence. The Monterey/Santos oil field in California is estimated to hold more than twice the oil of the Bakken oil field in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford oil field in west Texas combined, but its development is on hold because federal lands are involved. 

Apparently wishing to slow production even further, former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar—ignoring that hydraulic fracturing has been regulated successfully by states for 60 years—proposed new fracking regulations that will add $345 million in annual costs to Western energy development. Regulatory costs as a whole, it should be noted, are at a record high: Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute places the total costs of federal regulations in the U.S. in 2013 as greater than the GDPs of either Canada or Mexico.

Salazar’s successor, Sally Jewell, is not only pressing forward with redundant hydraulic fracturing rules, but is threatening the West with the use of President Obama’s power, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, to prevent economic activity with massive national-monument designations. 

This was a tactic of the War on the West that President Clinton raised to an art form—most famously announcing, in a speech set against the backdrop of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the closure of 1.8 million acres to economic activity, including what might have become the world’s largest high-quality, low-sulfur coal mine in economically hard-pressed southern Utah.

In her most egregious move yet, Jewell signed off on a decision by the EPA to put a million acres of Wyoming land—including the entire town of Riverton, Wyoming, with a population of over 10,000—into the Wind River Indian Reservation, despite the indisputable historical fact that this land was ceded to the U.S. in a 1904 agreement between the United States and the Tribes, and in opposition to a unanimous 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding a comparable situation in South Dakota.

It is difficult to exaggerate the quasi-religious zeal with which the War on the West is waged. Two years ago, a video surfaced of a training lecture on regulatory enforcement by the head of the EPA’s Region Six office, which oversees Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. This senior administrator, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009, cited the Roman Empire as the inspiration for his mode of operation: “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.” The same year he gave this talk, his office charged in an emergency order that a Fort Worth-based drilling company had contaminated groundwater in Texas’s Parker County through hydraulic fracturing. A year-and-a-half later the emergency order was withdrawn and the case was dismissed in a federal court, but only after a judge criticized the agency for seeking penalties without first investigating the truth of the charges. A commissioner on the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state, accused EPA’s Region Six office of “fear mongering [and] gross negligence.”

Recently the EPA issued new regulations to redefine “wetlands,” the term of art by which the agency determines the reach of the Clean Water Act. Under these regulations, a Wyoming man named Andy Johnson—a welder who owns an eight-acre farm—has been targeted because he and his wife built a stock pond on their property and brought in brook and brown trout, ducks, and geese. The EPA is threatening civil and criminal penalties—including a $75,000-a-day fine—because Johnson failed to receive permission for his pond from the Army Corps of Engineers. (His permit from the Wyoming State Engineer’s office is irrelevant, according to the EPA.) So far Johnson has defied an EPA order to hire a consultant to assess the environmental impact of his stock pond and to propose a restoration project to be completed within 60 days of EPA approval. “This goes a lot further than a pond,” he is quoted as saying. “It’s about a person’s rights. I have three little kids. I am not going to roll over and let [the EPA] tell me what I can do on my land.”

It is little wonder that there is talk of another Sagebrush Rebellion like that embraced by Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s. Westerners know they deserve better, and that they and their states can be better stewards of their land than federal bureaucrats.