A while ago, Al Armendariz (an Obama recruit / appointee), a high level EPA district administrator for the oil areas of the South and Southwest regions got caught in a 2010 video admitting that his style of environmental overwatch was akin to the Roman soldiers (video after the jump) (emphasis mine):
“But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how 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 would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up. And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly. That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that’s our general philosophy.”
Of course, the whitewash machinery went to to work right away to disavow his actions and words and to make him out to be an outlier and not typical of the outlook of the EPA itself.
Yeah, like anybody believed that – and with this news as to where he landed after he resigned (just before he was to go before a Congressional hearing), does anyone believe that the Obama Administration WASN’T out to get the oil companies (disbelieve me? See after the jump for a reminder)? The Hill reports:
A former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who resigned earlier this year for comparing his work to crucifixion has found new employment with a leading green group.
The Sierra Club on Friday announced that Al Armendariz would be joining the group’s “Beyond Coal” campaign next month as a senior representative:
“As a third generation Texan, I’m proud to be taking on this new role to help protect Texas,” Armendariz said in a statement released by Sierra Club.
Armendariz stepped down as EPA’s Region 6 administrator in April after a video surfaced of him comparing his work enforcing of environmental laws to the way ancient Roman conquerors used terror to keep order.
…“Dr. Armendariz follows numerous Obama administration officials who have come from or moved to radical left and green groups,” Inhofe said in a statement. “It’s as if there is a revolving door between the White House and organizations such as the Sierra Club.”
“At least at the Sierra Club he won’t get into so much trouble for telling the truth that their true agenda is to kill oil, gas and coal,” he added.
Armendariz, a political appointee, oversaw oil- and gas-producing states such as Texas and Oklahoma. In his resignation letter, he said the crucifixion comments didn’t reflect his approach to the job.
His joining the Sierra Club just made a liar out himself. After all, the Sierra Club is trying to shut down the coal industry with its Beyond Coal efforts:
Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Dr. Alfredo “Al” Armendariz will join the staff of the Sierra Club effective in mid-July as Senior Campaign Representative for the organization’s Beyond Coal campaign. Based inAustin, Dr. Armendariz will draw on his scientific expertise working on air, water, and climate science to help move Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas off coal-fired electricity and toward an economy powered by job-generating clean energy sources such as wind and the sun
And have no doubt, the Sierra Club is out to kill off coal, oil, and natural gas (and nukes, naturally) and no growth economies.
Al Armendariz “Crucify them” speech snippet:
And he’s not the only one in the EPA that has said similar things:
Obama’s views on coal with the San Francisco Chronicle interview: Transcript here of his San Francisco Chronicle interview of Jan 17, 2008:
Let me sort of describe my overall policy.
What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.
I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
And given that Obama’s attempt at Cap And Trade failed in Congress, he simply told the EPA to institute its own version of it via regulation – which they did by merely changing the regulations such that without REALLY expensive equipment, there is no way that they could purchase it and stay competitive in the electrical generation industry. So for now, coal is out, as EPA Lisa Jackson made the regs stringent for Natural Gas but impossible for Coal plants to meet.
Consider this one promise he has kept (and went around the legislative process to do so). And makes it all the more believable that the Progressive Administrative State to not be full of non-partisan technocrats – these “experts” are driven as much by ideology beliefs and politics as by their “science”
