The Unraveling of the Deep State Chokehold Has Begun
The Administrative State is having the rug pulled out from underneath it with the deregulation of "greenhouse gases". This is a much needed Constitutional course correction of grave import!
In 2009, the price of a new car was around $23,000. Today, 16 years later, that price tag is close to $50,000, so almost 120% more. If we compare that to the price change in the 16 year period prior to 2009, a new car in 1993 cost about $16,000, which is 43% less than the $23,000 price tag in 2009. In other words, the price percentage increase to buy a new car almost tripled over the second 16 year time frame (1993 to 2009 = 43% price increase vs. 2009 to 2025 = 120% price increase). Why such a drastic increase in the price tag for a new car since 2009?
There are likely a couple of contributing factors, but what I believe to be the dominant factor glares at me all too obviously. I confess, economist I am not. But one need not be a financial analyst to follow the yellow brick road and find the answer. Even a legal scholar can connect the dots, particularly when statutory interpretation is involved. The answer in a word is, government. More specifically, the Administrative State. You see, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations have directly and significantly contributed to an increase in car prices. (For those who are going to insist the answer is inflation, and not government regulatory interference, I put forth the question… isn’t inflation ultimately caused by the acts or omissions of our government anyway?)
Let me provide more color on my position.
In 2009, the Obama EPA decided it was going to take control of the country’s energy by declaring that carbon dioxide (the food that plant life on planet earth relies upon to exist) was a “pollutant” that was detrimental to human health. (Mind you, they had to apparently mix that gas with some other gases that are not emitted by motor vehicles in order to get to their desired result, but hey, what’s a little pretzel twisting amongst deep staters?) In making their declaration, these unelected, agency bureaucrats gave themselves the power to regulate everything that emitted said “pollutant.” That means power plants, cars, trucks, recreation vehicles, and so on, were (and still are) under the complete control of this agency. The chokehold was immediate and massive. The motor vehicle manufacturing industry was captured. They had to comply with strict, new, ever-changing regulations which started adding tremendous cost to vehicle manufacturing, the cost of which was of course passed on to consumers. It had to be, or the industry would collapse.
The crushing regulations only worsened under the Biden Administration and culminated last year when Biden issued the outlandish Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate which requires approximately 50% of all new cars to be 100% electric by 2030, with about another 15% being plug-in hybrids. Not only is the infrastructure not there to support such a radical mandate, it’s probably not even possible to attain such an aggressive “net zero” goal according to many experts. (By the way, EV’s are absolutely not net zero emissions. Those that claim as much conveniently igore the emissions that spew from the factories that produce the batteries to power EV’s, as well as the emissions generated when electricity is produced to charge the batteries, not to mention the stripping of earth’s rare minerals that make the batteries work.)
The present-day grid cannot sustain our current electricity demands… but we’re going to throw a significant percentage of our transportation energy draw on there, too?! The knee-jerk reaction is to think, “How ignorant could the government be?” I submit to you that it’s not ignorance. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s intentional. It’s all about control.
Think about it logically. Isn’t this just a covert way to seize control of the means of production? A Marxist playbook staple slyly hidden in the dark corners of the halls of a government agency that will now control private company production of a tool (machine really) that gives Americans individual autonomy. Motor vehicles give us control over our cornerstone right to freedom of, well, everything. If you have a car, you are free to travel where, when, and why you want. But if you have an unreliable car (that runs on let’s say limited battery power and imperfect, underdeveloped electric grid technology), or if you cannot afford a car at all due to the drastic price increases (caused by over-regulation), then you are not really free. (Don’t forget to throw in there the revealing fact that EV batteries are predominantly manufactured in… China).
So we come to the crux of the Constitutional crisis, which permeates all levels of government and wreaks havoc on all aspects of our lives… We only have three branches of government, and agencies aren’t one of those branches. You would be surprised at how many people think that agencies are a branch of our government… particularly those people who work in those agencies. But, when one reads our Constitution, it’s clear that our three branches are Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. In fact, the word “agency” appears nowhere in our Constitution. Not once! And yet, the agency heads, workers, staff, etc. have burgeoned into a leviathan of endless power grabs with rules, regulations, policies, mandates and “guidelines”. (I have guidelines in quotation marks because we all know that when an agency issues a guidance, it never remains a choice, but instead always becomes a directive). They do all of this with absolutely zero authority to do so.
The agency bloat and brazen (though misplaced) entitlement to power is often referred to as the Administrative State. Because the people who run and work within agencies are unelected, government appointees and employees who wield relatively unchecked power, the Administrative State bears a secondary title known as the Deep State. Are these two power-hungry, shadow establishments one in the same? They may as well be for the purposes of this article. You see, people who are appointed instead of elected, answer not to you and me (as members of our Constitutional bedrock power source of “We The People”), but instead answer only to their superior in government rank. There are no repercussions to bureaucrats for not carrying out the will of We The People, but conversely, there can be grave backlash if they do not fall in line with the will of their chain of command.
The only way for the Administrative State to deflate is to have someone with integrity and courage running the show from within. Enter the new EPA Administrator (and colleague of mine in my Prop 1 and Congressional redistricting battles) Lee Zeldin, who has just publicly announced the truth-bomb that… the EPA did not and does not have the power to regulate greenhouse gases! As such, according to his press conference on Tuesday, and the statement posted on EPA’s website, the EPA is rescinding the Obama-era’s “Endangerment Finding” of 2009. This is tremendous, for the Endangerment Finding was, and is, the legal prerequisite used by both the Obama and Biden Administrations to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles. Without the Endangerment Finding, the EPA would lack the statutory authority under the Clean Air Act to continue to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. If finalized, this action would amount to the largest de-regulatory action in the history of the United States, according to Zeldin and his team.
The EPA provides a more detailed explanation on its website, part of which reads:
How We Got Here
Congress tasked EPA under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act with prescribing emission standards for new motor vehicles and engines when the Administrator determines that emissions of an air pollutant from any class of vehicles causes or contributes to air pollution that endangers public health or welfare. But the Obama Administration ignored Congress’ clear intent, slicing and dicing the language of the statute to make an “endangerment finding” totally separate from any actual rule setting standards for emissions from cars.
In an unprecedented move, the Obama EPA found that carbon dioxide emissions emitted from automobiles – in combination with five other gases, some of which vehicles don’t even emit – contributes some unspecified amount to climate change, which in turn creates some unspecified amount of endangerment to human health and welfare. These mental leaps were admittedly novel, but they were the only way the Obama-Biden Administration could access EPA’s authority to regulate under Section 202(a).
Likewise, the Obama EPA did not consider any aspect of the regulations that would flow from the Endangerment Finding. EPA subsequently relied on the Endangerment Finding to underpin seven vehicle regulations with an aggregate cost of more than $1 trillion. The Endangerment Finding has also played a significant role in EPA’s justification of regulations of other sources beyond cars and trucks, resulting in additional costly burdens on American families and businesses.
Much has changed since the 2009 Endangerment Finding was issued, including new scientific and technological developments that warrant review. Additionally, major Supreme Court decisions in the intervening years, including Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, West Virginia v. EPA, Michigan v. EPA, and Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, have significantly clarified the scope of EPA’s authority under the CAA. The decisions emphasized that major policy determinations must be made by Congress, not by administrative agencies.
(Emphasis added by me).
And there it is, folks… the key to all of this rogue Administrative State power grab insanity. In short, agencies are doing things - so many things - that they don’t have the power to do. The Constitutional construction and divide is sacred… Congress (Legislative Branch) makes major policy decisions… NOT agencies. It’s called the Major Policy Doctrine, and it makes logical sense. You see, agencies cannot make laws. Period. That is not even questionable or debatable. The issue lies in the little known fact that: though agencies can make rules, any “rules” that enumerate “major policy determinations” are actually laws, and therefore must be made by the legislature (i.e. elected politicians who answer to us). Why did our Founding Fathers craft our Constitution in this way? I have written extensively on this topic, and I fought this very argument when I successfully sued New York’s Department of Health for its draconian Quarantine Camp regulation.
But in short, legislators/politicians make laws because they are elected, and so we have the power to vote them out when we find that they have stopped doing our bidding. At that point, we can replace them with politicians who will do our bidding. However, we do not have that power over agencies (which are filled with unelected bureaucrats).
During his press conference with the U.S. Secretary of Energy and a number of elected officials, Lee pointed out that if Congress wants to give the power to regulate greenhouse gases to the EPA, then they can pass a law clearly stating as such. He went on to summarize the havoc the Obama/Biden’s Endangerment Finding has wreaked on Americans - manufacturers and consumers alike. Lee opined:
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers. In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year. We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA's GHG emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide which the Finding never assessed independently, was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods. If finalized, rescinding the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations would end $1 trillion or more in hidden taxes on American businesses and families.”
The breach of our Constitutional road map by the Obama/Biden EPA in order to illegally rule over our energy industry (and thus our mobility, our wallets, and our freedom) with an iron fist, is now being revealed. The fact that it is being revealed, and reversed, by the very agency that has been perpetrating this massive government overreach is nothing short of miraculous.
This is a Constitutional course correction that is long overdue.
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Great article. The vast majority of the electorate has no clue.
They scam 'the people' in every way and have been doing it for centuries...feed off of the people like blood-sucking leechs.