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The Environmental Corruption Agency

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is “protecting people and the environment.” In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government’s cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups and cronyism.

Just last week, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA “for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election.” The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to release emails and related records from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and others “who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election.”

Thanks to Levin and Landmark, Jackson and other EPA officials admitted in depositions that they used personal, nongovernmental email accounts to hide communications about official EPA business sent and received on their government-issued BlackBerries and smart phones. The agency has continued to drag its feet for two years in response to Landmark’s FOIA requests.

Levin minced no words: “The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution.” Not to mention disdain for the public’s right to know. As Levin added: “When any federal agency receives a FOIA request, the statute says it must preserve every significant repository of records, both paper and electronic, that may contain materials that could be responsive to that request.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Mike Lee Wants to Fight Cronyism in Government to Restore American Exceptionalism

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) spoke about the problems of cronyism in American government during a speech he gave at the Heritage Foundation Wednesday.

“Cronyism simultaneously corrupts our economy and our government, turning both against the American people,” Lee said. “It forces American families who ‘work hard and play by the rules’ to prop up, bail out, and subsidize elite special interests that don’t.”

Cronyism is leading to unequal opportunity in the United States. Lee said the GOP must address this threat to American exceptionalism by rooting out cronyism privilege and restoring fairness.

“Free enterprise works—morally and materially—because it aligns the interests of the individual and society,” Lee said. “It’s a system governed by an ‘invisible hand’ that rewards the creation of value, and by an ‘invisible foot’ that punishes complacency, especially at the top.”

Lee went after both indirect and direct subsidies in his speech.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ignorance And Cronyism Are The Only Settled Sciences

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

An honest debate with a progressive is almost as rare as a verified sighting of Bigfoot.

You’d have better luck getting a devout Scientologist to say L. Ron Hubbard was a horrible writer than you would to get a progressive to admit the “science” behind climate change is not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, it is based on models of what could happen in 100 years, even though those models are mostly unreliable when you use them to map what happened in the last 30. That’s right, the vast majority of “climate models” predicting doom and gloom, the basis for Democrats’ oppressive legislative and regulatory push, can’t accurately predict what happened in the past, let alone predict the future. Yet, they demand it’s a moral imperative we act now.

As we traverse our second decade of “we have only 10 years to act” hysteria, the planet forgot to warm, and hasn’t since 1998. But this fact of science hasn’t deterred the “Party of Science” from pressing forward. And why would it?

The science is settled … just like it was back in the 1970s when the same people, with the same level of certainty, were predicting an ice age and famine. When that “settled science” didn’t pan out, they flipped the script. Global cooling was out; global warming was in. The only thing that didn’t change was the “solution” – a more powerful and intrusive regulatory state.

Isn’t it amazing how the exact opposite problem can have the same solution?

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Levin: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Is About Cronyism, Not Capitalism (+audio)

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levin_roveMark Levin said Monday on his syndicated radio program Monday that the United States Chamber of Commerce is “not about capitalism, they’re about cronyism,” continuing with the theme of the divide between “establishment Republicans” and “conservatives.”

Levin discussed an Opensecrets.org report showing that, in the 2012 election cycle, the Chamber gave $6,275,199 in campaign contributions to candidates, Leadership Political Action Committees (PACs), parties, and 527 committees.

The top individual recipients were Mitt Romney, Senate Candidate Laura Lingle (R-Hawaii), Senate Candidate George Allen (R-Va.), Senate Candidate Heather Wilson (R-NM), and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). The Republican Governors Association (RGA) received $1.25 million, while the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) and the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) received a combined $130,000 from the Chamber.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Lawyer: Republicans Must End Cronyism of ‘Little White Boy Consultants’

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A top GOP legal adviser to several House and Senate Republicans says the Republican National Committee’s newly formed panel to study the GOP’s failed 2012 election strategy must focus on rooting out cronyism among the party’s consultant class.

“Until Chairman Priebus and other GOP leaders focus on rooting out the greed, cronyism, and corruption of the ‘little white boy’ consultants who make millions of dollars, year in and year out, and yet lose elections—and until there is real accountability and transparency to donors to ensure that integrity is restored to GOP circles—none of these initiatives will matter,” said Cleta Mitchell.

The assembling of the Republican panel comes on the heels of an investigation by Breitbart News contributor Patrick Michael Leahy that showed that the Romney campaign paid over $150 million to two consulting firms with ties to top RNC and Romney campaign staffers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Christmas for Obama Bundlers

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Merry Crony-mas! It’s time to pass out the goodies. While President Obama’s lips champion the middle class, his administration’s old hands are preparing to lavish rewards on the creme de la campaign creme: his wealthiest political donors.

Several media outlets reported this week that the White House is considering fashion doyenne Anna Wintour for a possible appointment as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain or France.

The rumored short list also includes Obama campaign finance chairman Matthew Barzun and investment banker Marc Lasry. The three share one common, er, “qualification”: Each raked in more than $500,000 for Team Obama 2012.

As previously reported in this column, Wintour held multiple million-dollar fundraisers for Obama in Hollywood, New York, London and Paris — raking in the fourth highest amount for the Man of the (Glamorous) People. Wintour’s $40,000-per-plate dinners attracted Hollywood’s biggest leftist celebs.

She went further than just passing around the fashion plate, though. Before Election Day, the fashion world buzzed over the British-born Vogue editor’s behind-the-scenes campaign to intimidate designers into spurning GOP women. Such Chicago-style diplomacy will fit in perfectly with the brass-knuckle-wielder-in-chief.

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Conflict-of-Interest Concerns Raised as Obama Races to Implement Health Reform

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photo credit: mlangsam2004 The Obama administration is relying heavily on outside contractors to implement a core component of healthcare reform as it races to set up a federal health insurance marketplace before 2014.

The fast-approaching deadline gives the administration little time to scrutinize private-sector partners for conflicts of interest.

The purchase of one of these contractors, Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI), by UnitedHealth Group, a major healthcare conglomerate, has sparked concerns about a potentially uneven playing field.

QSSI, a Maryland-based contractor, in January won a large contract to build a federal data services hub to help run the complex federal health insurance exchange. It will be working with several other contractors, including CGI Federal, Inc., to create the technological architecture for the exchange.

The quiet nature of the transaction, which was not disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has fueled suspicion among industry insiders that UnitedHealth Group may be gaining an advantage for its subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare.

Read more from this story HERE.