Super-scandal: Where's accountability for EPA?

The lies and deception started more than 10 years ago.

A climate-change "expert" for the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the highest-paid employees in the federal government, began falsifying calendar entries that were meant to document his work.

When John C. Beale was questioned about what he was doing, he began telling fellow workers and supervisors that he was actually working for the CIA.

He eventually stole more than $800,000 from taxpayers.

Beale was sentenced recently to two-and-a-half years in prison for the monumental scam he perpetrated for so long.

But that's not justice.

Justice would be if the EPA management that allowed this theft to go on lost their jobs and their far more wasteful and rogue agency were abolished.

In sentencing Beale, federal district Judge Ellen S. Huvelle called him a stain on the federal workforce. That may be true. But he is hardly alone. An agency that could allow such behavior within its ranks for so long is a far bigger stain on government.

So who is holding the EPA accountable?

The answer is no one.

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Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, issued a statement saying the case "highlights a massive problem with the EPA. We need to know just how vulnerable is this agency."

Obviously there's a massive problem. But the question of how vulnerable the EPA is has been answered. And the bigger question is what legitimate purpose the agency serves other than to bully property owners and deceive the public about the far bigger scam of "climate change."

Understand what Beale did during his decade-long tenure at EPA. He did nothing but steal money and lie.

But lying and stealing money is what the entire EPA does. It lies about manmade catastrophic climate change. It steals from taxpayers and property owners.

In other words, Beale did just what his agency was created to do. In one sense, he was just a cog in the wheel of a massive fraud that his entire agency represents.

Nothing changes for the EPA. It's back to business as usual.

In fact, Beale may have provided one great service to the American people. In explaining how he got away with his crimes, he said he exploited flaws in the management system of the EPA.

So what is being done about those "flaws"?

What is being done about examining the agency's purpose?

Why isn't anyone making the connection between Beale's job description, lying about the phony problem of "climate change" and lying about everything else he and EPA do?

Isn't it time to abolish the EPA?

Here's a quick review of some of the official, unpunished actions of the agency itself in recent years:

The agency imposes fines of up to $50,000 on landlords who fail to distribute pamphlets to tenants disclosing the potential existence of lead-based paint in their homes or apartments. The EPA holds the power to inspect houses or apartments built before 1978 at any time to ensure landlords are in compliance. It also is empowered to "subpoena documents, require testimony and bring civil administrative actions" at will.

The EPA is at war with the coal industry. Within the next three to five years, more than 200 coal-fired electric generating units will be shut down across 25 states due to EPA regulations.

The EPA determined that water runoff into streams was pollution and subject to regulation until a federal judge overruled that claim of authority.

Over the past decade, the EPA has been paying hundreds of people $12 an hour to expose them to high levels of air pollutants like diesel exhaust and PM2.5 particulate matter in an operation run at the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine.

The EPA is forcing the U.S. military to give up on lead-based ammunition by 2018, an action many see as a back-door effort to drive up the costs of ammunition for Americans.

An Idaho businessman and his wife had to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court over the family's simple plan to build a three-bedroom home on a plot of ground they purchased in an existing subdivision, plans for which they already have obtained all the legally necessary building permits. The EPA claimed the land – which is surrounded by existing homes on three adjacent lots, has no standing water, and has no streams or creeks on it – is "wetlands."

I could go on and on with regard to EPA abuses. I wrote a book about it long ago now a collector's item.

This is just a small sampling of abuses. But the EPA is out of control – writing its own regulations that empower the agency to exceed any authority ever granted to it by Congress.

In light of the super-scandal of John C. Beale, isn't it time for Congress to act to rein in or abolish the EPA?