At today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of the Upton-Inhofe bill to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) tried to defend the EPA by offering a recent American Lung Association poll that purports to show public opinion favoring the EPA.
What Congress needs to know, however, is that the American Lung Association is bought-and-paid-for by the EPA. In the last 10 years, the EPA has given the ALA $20,405,655, according to EPA records.
The master-servant relationship between the EPA and ALA extends back to at least the early 1990s. As John Merline reported in Investors Business Daily (Jan. 28, 1997), between 1990 and 1995, the EPA gave the American Lung Association $5 million — even though the ALA was suing the EPA at the time. Although not many grantors give grants to organizations that sue them, at least in the regular world, the EPA likes to be sued by its buddies because such lawsuits invariably expand the agency’s powers.
So it’s not really surprising (or meaningful) that the ALA issued a poll supporting the EPA.
You are damn right the ALA is in the EPA’s pocket. When asthma inhalers were switched from the “evil” CFC charged delivery system, which worked by the way, to the new, not worth spit in a desert, HFC, I wrote the ALA asking for help.
You can pretty much guess what their response was. They were all in favor of banning the CFCs and going to the newer more eco-friendly inhalers. Yeah like me and the millions of others that can’t breathe at various points in the day are ruining the environment.
I thought maybe I somehow “forgot” how to use an inhaler correctly. I have only had to carry one for 20 short years. Nope, it wasn’t just me. The new system sucks, and I have that opinion straight from my old doctor.
The ALA can forget ever getting a dime from me, and I wish they would call me so I could tell them what I think of them in person.
Even if the poll was a valid, random sampling of American households, it still wouldn’t matter. The EPA is not subject to the whims of public opinion, it is subject to the US Congress. And that body is has given the EPA the responsibility to use science to determine how and when to take action to safeguard the environment. The EPA has failed to discharge this responsibility time and time again. They have been derelict in their duty and it is time to end the EPA.