CEI, ATI Sue EPA for Instant Messaging Records

Potential Landmark Case Seeks Discussions on Agency's War on Coal, Role of Pressure Groups from Little-Known Accounts That Have Escaped Scrutiny

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1, 2013 — In what could be a landmark case, two free-market groups—the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center—have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking communications among senior EPA officials using instant messaging or IM technology.

In the joint lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., CEI asked the court to compel EPA to produce IM discussions to or from former administrator Lisa Jackson, including her alias “Richard Windsor” account, discussing the Obama administration’s war on coal. CEI already is in court for the “Windsor” emails on the same topics.

ATI sought Jackson’s IM correspondence to, from or discussing the Sierra Club and two other environmental pressure groups, as well as similar messages of two other senior officials—Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated to succeed Jackson as administrator, and former senior counselor Lisa Heinzerling, who has rejoined one of these groups.

In the course of CEI’s “Windsor” litigation, it learned EPA staff first used IBM “Sametime” to discuss creating the “Windsor” account. EPA provides Sametime and Oracle Messenger to staff as an alternative to email. Although IMs are “agency records” under the law, they do not seem to have been searched by EPA in response to FOIA requests or requests from Congress seeking “records," or “electronic records,” both of which would cover IMs.

“In addition to important conversations both inside the agency and with outside parties, we expect this suit to provide important information about EPA’s compliance with the law and Congress’ legitimate oversight activities,” said Christopher Horner, attorney, senior fellow at CEI and author of “The Liberal War On Transparency,” the research for which led to the investigation. “Based on information we have obtained, it seems we have uncovered another major transparency scandal in that either EPA is destroying instant messages against the law, or it is withholding them in defiance of its legal obligations to produce.”

EPA’s only response to the groups’ IM requests was to deny fee waivers for both, which are provided for under FOIA for non-profits that broadly disseminate information on government activities.

But, in what Horner calls “an apparent retaliatory tantrum,” the EPA has responded to his involvement in exposing the Richard Windsor account by denying all of his outstanding and subsequent requests for these routine fee waivers, for either ATI or CEI. While these denials are overturned on appeal, Horner claims that “this seems to be yet one more way ‘the most transparent administration, ever,’ is throwing obstacles in the way of transparency for those it deems inconvenient.”

► Read CEI and ATI's March 28 complaint here.

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CEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei.  

ALG - McCarthy EPA Administrator nomination rejection urged

March 4, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government urged the U.S. Senate to reject Obama nominee, Gina McCarthy, for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

McCarthy has been embroiled in scandal after scandal which can only indicate either pure managerial incompetence or a complicity in the failure to perform her most basic duties.

One example that reportedly has held up McCarthy's nomination at the White House was the failure of the EPA's radiation monitoring system in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

McCarthy, who currently heads the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, has come under withering criticism after the EPA's own Inspector General issued a report revealing that at the time of the Fukushima disaster many of the Agency's radiation monitors were out of service or so poorly maintained that they failed to work with 20 percent completely out of service.  The report goes on to report, "In addition, six of the RadNet monitors we sampled (50 percent) had gone over eight weeks without a filter change."  EPA policy calls on operators to change the filters twice per week."

Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government, called on the Senate to reject McCarthy as, "unfit to run a Burger King, let alone a Cabinet level agency that threatens our nation's economy through its series of strange and bizarre regulatory rulings."

McCarthy has also been on the cutting edge of a budding controversy over her approval of the use of DuPont's R1234ef air conditioning refrigerant in U.S. vehicles, ignoring a massive European recall by Daimler Benz when the product caught fire in crash testing scenarios.

Wilson expressed outrage over the McCarthy R1234ef decision stating, "This is an example where a German car company has discovered that a product that is being foisted upon them by environmental agency's is actually dangerous, and environmentally toxic, yet McCarthy has turned a blind eye to the health and safety hazards that she is creating through EPA incentives for car company's to use this deadly refrigerant.

"At a time when Obama's own State of the Union threat to continue to pursue unilateral executive actions through the EPA in lieu of climate change legislation, no nominee to the EPA should be confirmed, and it particularly foolish to allow a nominee who has twice put the public safety and environment at risk while in her current position. Gina McCarthy should be fired, not promoted based upon her record in office."

To view online: http://getliberty.org/mccarthy-epa-administrator-nomination-rejection-urged/

Attachments:

ALG Nominee Alert, Gina McCarthy, March 2013 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Regina-McCarthy-NomineeAlert-2013.pdf

"Obama and his rogue EPA," By ALG President Bill Wilson, Feb. 14, 2013 at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/02/obama-and-his-rogue-epa/

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Americans for Limited Government is a non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms, private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.

CEI - McCarthy "Wholly Unqualified" To Serve as EPA Administrator, CEI Says

Nominee Has Misled on Major Regulations and Is Implicated in Email Scandal

WASHINGTON, Mar. 4, 2013 — Gina McCarthy has decades of experience as an environmental bureaucrat, but a number of factors make her wholly unqualified to serve as EPA Administrator, say experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy on Monday to succeed Lisa Jackson as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“As Assistant EPA Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has implemented radical environmental policies that will put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work but do little to nothing to improve environmental quality,” said Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at CEI.

“McCarthy has regularly tried to conceal the Obama administration’s economically destructive policies by misleading Congress, the public and industry. She has regularly stonewalled congressional requests for crucial information. And she is up to her ears in the Richard Windsor email scandal,” Ebell said.

McCarthy testified under oath to Congress in October 2011 that fuel-economy standards and regulating greenhouse gas emissions are “closely aligned but not related.” Subsequent releases of information reveal McCarthy and the EPA were fully aware – as is everyone else – that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is inextricably related to fuel-economy standards. This matters because EPA has statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions but not set CAFE standards for vehicles.

On coal, she told a gathering of industry officials the emissions regulations her office was developing would not require utilities to switch from coal to natural gas in building new power plants, as long as they used best available technology. But the New Source Performance Standards for new power plants released in 2011sets limits natural gas plants can meet but coal plants cannot.

Chris Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI and counsel for its investigation into Jackson’s secret email accounts and efforts to avoid disclosure, said, “There is a real paucity of emails from McCarthy in what we’ve seen so far … so much so it makes one wonder if EPA managed its release of these records with the prospect of her being nominated in mind.

“We know she was Jackson’s chief lieutenant in the ‘war on coal.’ We know she was routinely party to discussions among senior leaders who received emails from the Windsor account. It will be interesting to see if her name appears any more frequently when we receive the next tranche of Richard Windsor emails on Mar. 15.”

“She has, at best, a strained relationship with disclosure and transparency,” said Ebell. “She promised Congress she would deliver additional information during her first confirmation hearing but never did. As assistant administrator, she promised to provide the scientific data and studies EPA has based its new Clean Air Act regulations on, but has not kept her promise. At the very least, the Senate should demand she answer all outstanding questions before it considers her nomination to be EPA Administrator.”

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CEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei.  

CEI Today: Gov't alarmism, National ID, and the Coal Ash Rule in Windsorgate

The Wages of Sin Taxes In his study, The Wages of Sin Taxes, Chris Snowdon reveals that these taxes not only do little to limit the use of “bad” products, they do nothing to reduce societal costs.  > Read more > Listen to the Liberty Week podcast INTERVIEW A CEI EXPERT Media Contacts: Christine Hall 202.331.2258 Nicole Ciandella 202.331.2773 Brian McNicoll CEI Experts by Issue Advancing Capitalism Constitutional and Legal Issues Energy and Environment Finance and Entrepreneurship Health and Safety Labor Nanny State Regulatory Reform Tech and Telecom Trade and International Transportation

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27 EVENT Scared to Death; How Government Nannies are Creating a Culture of Alarmism Featuring Angela Logomasini   Date/Time Date(s) - 02/27/2013 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm Location The Fund for American Studies America’s Future Foundation and the Independent Women’s Forum present: Scared to Death; How Government Nannies are Creating a Culture of Alarmism The panel will cover four diverse topics: Obesity Alarmism, Chemical Alarmism, Environmental and Energy Alarmism and Agriculture Alarmism. > RSVP to the event > Read more by Angela Logomasini: New Green Rules In California Take Safe Chemicals Out Of Use BPA resin replacements may be more harmful Lessons in Green Chemistry NATIONAL ID - DAVID BIER Openmarket.org: National ID, By Itself, Violates Liberty As I have pointed out over the past month and The Wall Street Journal’s Danny Yadron noted last week, many members of Congress are looking to impose a mandatory national identification system. Demonstrating that this attempt is gaining momentum, The Washington Post editorialized in favor of a national ID system earlier this month. Three things to notice about [the Washington Post's] line of reasoning: 1) It presupposes that a restriction of one’s ability to remain anonymous does not “encroach on Americans’ civil liberties”; 2) It cites without evidence that the government’s involvement in the regulation of travel has not violated (in other ways) Americans’ civil liberties; and 3) It assumes that this universal worker ID would remain limited to employment verification. Nothing could be clearer than that each of these arguments is totally false. > Read the full commentary > Interview David Bier WINDSORGATE Globalwarming.org:  Richard Windsor Makes Her Appearance in Second Batch of EPA E-mails The Environmental Protection Agency released to Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute late in the evening on Friday, 15th February, part of the second of four batches of e-mails that respond to a Freedom of Information Act request. Many of the e-mails are heavily redacted.  The reason claimed by EPA for most of the redactions is that they are part of the pre-decisional deliberative process and therefore exempt from FOIA.  CEI will be going back to court to challenge many of these redactions as improper and some as laughably so.  The judge will have a lot of fun reading to do. Two e-mails that were not redacted concern the Coal Ash Rule. Apparently, putting companies out of business and workers out of jobs adds to the holiday spirit just as much at the EPA as it does at environmental pressure groups. > Read the full commentary > Interview Myron Ebell More in the news... CEI Expert Calls Italian Election Results "Troubling" Why The Sequester Budget Cuts Are Good Government spending hurts people  In Virginia and Washington, Republicans back tax hikes   CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation     CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.

CEI Today: Carbon tax folly, labor union v. Hostess Twinkies, and the war on coal

CARBON TAX - CHRISTOPHER HORNER

Orange County Register: New carbon tax would be folly

A proposed carbon tax is actually about finding a new, massive and ultimately expanding revenue source, an ATM machine, a European-style revenue gusher to fund a European-style government.

When the carbon tax's proponents can acknowledge these things, or demonstrate that they are not true, we can have a useful debate over their new energy tax. > Read the full commentary on OCRegister.com

> Interview Christopher Horner

UNION v. HOSTESS TWINKIES - CRISSY BROWN Openmarket.org: Union Strike-Showdown Could End In Hostess Shutdown They are messing with our Twinkies. Upset over cuts to pensions and salaries brought on by a new collective bargaining contract, employees of Hostess, which makes Twinkies, Wonder Bread and other iconic snacks, are on strike. The workers, members of Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), walked out Nov. 9 to send the message recent changes to their compensation package are “outrageous.” > View the full commentary on Openmarket.org   > Interview Crissy Brown

OBAMA WAR ON COAL - MARLO LEWIS Forbes: Why You Should Care That Courts Overturn EPA's Carbon Pollution Standard The 2012 elections ensure that President Obama’s “war on coal” will continue for at least two more years. The administration’s preferred M.O. has been for the EPA to “enact” anti-coal policies that Congress would reject if such measures were introduced as legislation and put to a vote. Consequently, defenders of free-market energy are stuck playing defense and their main weapon now is litigation. This is a hard slog because courts usually defer to agency interpretations of the statutes they administer. But sometimes petitioners win. > View the article on Forbes.com > Interview Marlo Lewis

WORLD PREMIERE! The Competitive Enterprise Institute is proud to announce a new ambitious film project: an animated adaptation of I, Pencil by Leonard Read. > View the I, Pencil short film > Tweet about I, Pencil > RSVP to today's screenings in Washington, D.C.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, please visit our website, cei.org, and blogs, Globalwarming.org and OpenMarket.org.  Follow CEI on Twitter! Twitter.com/ceidotorg.