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  • satx78247

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    Wildcat Diva,

    I have an old boarding school chum who convinced his lady that the "one gun a month law" meant that you HAVE to buy a gun each month.
    (YEP. BLOND.)

    Took her quite some time to figure out that "her chain was being pulled".

    yours, satx
     

    Southpaw

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    Credit Human/SACU sent out this email this morning. I'm sure other credit unions/banks are doing the same.

    Like many of our members, we recognize you may be impacted by the partial shutdown of federal government agencies. As part of a financial cooperative formed by members to serve the needs of our members, you’re not alone at difficult times like this.

    If you need assistance with your Credit Human loan

    To request a loan extension on a home or auto loan, please call our Member Service Center at 800-688-7228
    To request assistance with manufactured home loans, please call our Manufactured Home Loan Call Center at 866-310-2143
    For assistance with any other Credit Human loan, please call our Member Service Center

    If you need immediate access to cash

    If you need to access your savings and are concerned about incurring fees, we may be able to help. Just call the Member Service Center or visit any Credit Human location for assistance
    We have signature loans available for $500 or more with fixed terms and a rate discount of 2.25% off our published rates -- and we will defer the first payment for 90 days. You can apply for a signature loan online or by calling our Member Service Center

    Please call our Member Service Center at 800-688-7228 if there’s anything else we can do to help you with your financial services needs during this challenging time.
     

    pronstar

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    good article:
    https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/14/smoke-out-resistance/

    df98ae7473ec070d5e5c4a92f19d5c44.jpg



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    toddnjoyce

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    easy rider

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    While many share the sentiments of the author, he lost with the hyperbolic ‘saboteur’

    Having spent a career in the bureaucracy that is DoD, people who talk like that either have an axe to grind, are butt hurt, or are the political appointees pushing an agenda.
    Although my percentages would be reversed in what I observed, there is some truth. Unfortunately, many of those that don't produce (some of which get promoted) are not removed due to how hard it is to terminate.
     

    pronstar

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    While many share the sentiments of the author, he lost with the hyperbolic ‘saboteur’

    Having spent a career in the bureaucracy that is DoD, people who talk like that either have an axe to grind, are butt hurt, or are the political appointees pushing an agenda.

    I think - but have no factual basis - that there are plenty of folks at agencies like the EPA who are at best dragging their feet to execute Trumps’s orders.


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    toddnjoyce

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    I think - but have no factual basis - that there are plenty of folks at agencies like the EPA who are at best dragging their feet to execute Trumps’s orders.

    Here’s the deal. As a leader, federal agencies inculcate the thought that words mean things. Your communications in either a leader or ‘senior’ role are considered strategic communications; that is what you say, write, and even your non-verbal communications convey the official policy of the US Government and is as binding on the government as is the communications of an officer of the company.

    Those standards, while applicable to political appointees (whom all are categorized as ‘senior’ officials are not routinely enforced. So that’s why you usually see bland official communications.

    When you see ‘anonymous senior official’ that should be an indication that the statement doesn’t reflect existing USG policy and either personal or political bias is included OR in some instances policy changes changes are being shopped for public sentiment on the proposed changes.

    So yes, while there are many, many questionable manpower authorizations, those positions are not the purpose of a statement such as this.
     

    equin

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    I think - but have no factual basis - that there are plenty of folks at agencies like the EPA who are at best dragging their feet to execute Trumps’s orders.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

    Sadly, I'm one of the furloughed workers who happens to work at EPA. :( What I'm about to say is my own personal opinion and shouldn't be construed as me speaking for the EPA.

    I work at EPA's Dallas office in Region 6. We have a lot of veterans and former military working in my office, and pretty much all of my 2A shooting friends also work with me. So unlike what most folks think, we're not a bunch of tree hugging, far-left liberal hippie deep-staters. Just ask the environmental organizations who constantly accuse EPA of being in corporate industries' pockets. Sure, there are some very left-leaning liberal folks, just as there are also some far-right leaning conservative folks. But it's been my experience that that's how it is most everywhere, including in the private sector. The majority are just regular working folks trying to do their job.

    A lot of EPA employees work in different regions throughout the U.S. Many are scientists, engineers and lawyers simply trying to do what Congress mandated the agency to do through the laws it passed. The gist of Congress's statutes is essentially to protect human health and the environment. Remember Union Carbide's Bhopal India incident or the cancer-stricken residents at Love Canal? EPA does what it can as a slowly shrinking agency to try to prevent stuff like that.

    Most of what I do involves cleaning up highly contaminated Superfund sites. Most of these sites are referred to us by the States, which don't have the funds or technical know-how to clean these places up. A few of these places are so badly contaminated they've actually killed people just by breathing in the fumes (usually hydrogen sulfide inhalation):

    https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe...ackDesc=Results page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1

    (I was assigned to the above site.)

    https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/CES-exec-sentenced-in-worker-s-death-4935334.php

    (Co-worker of mine worked on the cleanup at the Port Arthur site in the above link.)

    I also work on cleaning up oil spills in waterways. Some of the angriest and most vocal complaints we get on oil spills come not from environmentalists but from ranchers. Sometimes their cattle die when they drink oil-contaminated water from an upstream spill. Many times their property is badly damaged from an oil and saltwater brine spill.

    And then you have the big oil spills, like the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 oil rig workers. Since it happened in the Gulf, the Coast Guard had jurisdiction. But given its sheer size and magnitude, it called on the EPA to help. We worked day and night alongside the Coast Guard (who now happens to be working without pay) during that response.

    As for Trump's agenda, those of us in the regions don't set policies or agendas. We don't draft rules or regulations nor do we roll them back. Policies aren't law anyway. They simply help guide how to implement a Congressional statute or regulation. I don't know about Trump's agenda concerning other areas of EPA's Congressional mandates, but Trump's Superfund Task Force Recommendations actually says to be more aggressive in getting polluters to clean them up and to get them to clean them up more quickly (cleanups can take years, if not decades, given their expense and technical complexity):

    https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-07/documents/superfund_task_force_report.pdf

    It's a lengthy read that'll put most to sleep, but I actually had to give a CLE presentation on it to a room full of private sector lawyers wanting to know more. So yeah, if the policy says to do it one way, that's how we do it. If the administration changes and says to do it a different way, then we'll do it a different way. It doesn't matter to us, we just want to do our work and get it done.

    As an aside, and since this is a gun forum, I thought some might find it interesting that EPA has thus far successfully argued it lacks authority to regulate lead ammunition and lead shot:

    https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/...com/&httpsredir=1&article=1086&context=gguelj

    https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/owens_petition_response.pdf

    https://thehill.com/regulation/227972-epa-prohibited-from-regulating-lead-bullets-court-says

    Anyway, I'm not an important person, but I thought what I do was important enough to be considered "essential." The higher ups, though, feel differently. Either way, I'm just a low-level pawn in a political game who simply wants to get back to work.
     

    Younggun

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    FWIW, it’s not typically low level employees that are the issue. It’s as you go up the ladder and things get more and more political.

    As for the EPA just enforcing congressional mandates...the EPA rules via regulation and has been given far too much authority in that regard. And those regulations carry the weight of law.


    Yeah, there is the Superfund thing. But if you think it’s not a corrupted program talk to those who live on the Hudson River and can’t eat the fish due to tens of thousands of pounds of PCBs still in it. They won’t be removed because GE has fought not to do it. They dumped more than they disclosed and the cleanup requirements were based not on creating a clean site but removing a certain amount of material (based on the inaccurate original claim of what was dumped). So when I speak of the EPA being garbage it is related to the bloated government agency that runs as poorly as every other agency with far too much authority and far to little concern for what it’s actually supposed to do.


    Full disclosure, I’ve been cleaning up PCBs (along with smaller petroleum based spills) for close to 10 years now and find that the EPA is often a big pain in the ass to deal with. We had a truck go off the interstate in to a normally dry creek bed a couple years ago. We cleaned the mess and were required to take TPH samples to show it was clean...from a creek bed....TGT caught drainage directly from the interstate. You’d get hits on those samples for a mile down the creek just from the interstate runoff. Yet when it comes to a massive dump of carcinogens that result in spiked cancer rates in the area...well, halfway is good enough.


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    equin

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    Valid points, Younggun, and good to see another fellow response and remediation guy on here! As for regulations, Congress chose not to take the heat when it passed enviro laws and required EPA to promulgate the rules. Clean Water Act is a perfect example when it defined “navigable waters” as “waters of the U.S.” What the heck is that supposed to mean? The Supreme Court in Rapanos v. EPA pretty much skewered the EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers for not crafting a rule further defining it. Both tried to do so with a draft recently, but it’s my understanding the new Administration is still trying to figure out what to do with it.

    It’s an impossible task that Congress refuses to tackle on its own for fear of political repercussions. So it passes the buck to the USACE and EPA to take the heat from the enviros for not going far enough and industry for going too far. Well, that’s my own personal opinion. I’m not a Congressman or legislative staff (they’re all getting paychecks by the way) who worked on drafting Congressional statutes, so who knows?

    Most folks also don’t know that EPA actually argued it lacked jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gasses. More than a handful of states sued the EPA, and EPA lost the fight at the Supreme Court lin Massachussets v. EPA. The Court ordered EPA to promulgate regulations on greenhouse gases. Again, us low-level serfs in the regions don’t get involved in rule-making.

    And yeah, I heard about the big fight GE gave the EPA so it wouldn’t have to clean up the Hudson River. Wasn’t the cleanup supposed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars? It’s insane how expensive it is to clean up some of these sites. I don’t think the public understands that. So Congress and cabinet heads have to decide - spend big money cleaning these places up, or use it for another aircraft carrier or repairing our crumbling infrastructure or paying food stamps to the poor or exploring Mars?

    But yeah, many big companies fight so they don’t have to clean up these sites or reimburse the government for cleaning them up at taxpayer expense. I guess that’s just the nature of the shrinking Superfund program.
     

    Younggun

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    Your comments on Congress not taking responsibility are dead on. And it’s not just an issue with the EPA.

    The other side of the issue is that it also dumps more authority in to the executive branch. I’m 100% bipartisan in my negatives feelings on the subject. Don’t care who’s in office.


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    toddnjoyce

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    HKShooter65

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    Sadly, I'm one of the furloughed workers who happens to work at EPA. :( What I'm about to say is my own personal opinion and shouldn't be construed as me speaking for the EPA.

    I work at EPA's Dallas office in Region 6. .....Either way, I'm just a low-level pawn in a political game who simply wants to get back to work.


    Marvelous posts.

    The EPA could be a poster-child for so many intensely valuable federal agencies that get demonized unfairly by superficial thinking sound-bite believing citizens.

    Granted, federal overregulation is going away no time soon.
    We'd be far worse off without your organization, though.

    Keep up the good work when Trump allows you.
    Glad you guys are now guaranteed to get paid eventually.

    HKS
     
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