By: Sharon Sebastian

www.DarwinsRacists.com

The Obama Administration bullied its way into your doctor’s office, now it is bullying its way inside your home. Claiming a need for “healthy housing,” new 2013 policies enacted by the Obama administration give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD) the right to decide the condition of your home.  While Obamacare is not about quality health care, the government’s new housing strategy appears to be more about home invasion than home health.

On February 4, 2013, the Obama government issued a press release on how it plans to gain access into your home. What follows is an edited snapshot of the government’s planned intrusions onto and into your private property:

FEDERAL AGENCIES WORKING TO MAKE HOMES HEALTHIER Improving housing quality can dramatically affect the health of residents 

WASHINGTON-Several federal agencies today unveiled Advancing Healthy Housing – A Strategy for Action. White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Shaun Donovan, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D., and Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman discussed the new plan during an event at the National Building Museum this morning… The Strategy for Action encourages federal agencies to take preemptive actions that will help reduce the number of American homes with health and safety hazards…. Currently, millions of U.S. homes have moderate to severe physical housing problems, including dilapidated structure; roofing problems; heating, plumbing, and electrical deficiencies; water leaks and intrusion; pests; damaged paint; and high radon gas levels… The Strategy for Action unifies, for the first time, federal action to advance healthy housing, demonstrating the connection between housing conditions and residents’ health… It is clear that unhealthy and unsafe housing has an impact on the health of millions of people in the United States,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan… “Today’s announcement will help the federal government unify action to controlling and preventing major housing-related exposures and hazards.” (Emphasis added.)

The Obama administration through the EPA, HUD and DOE (Department of Energy) wants unprecedented control over your home.  In addition to privacy issues, homeowners can expect to fork over hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to be in compliance or face stiff fines.  Additional costs will be added to how new homes are built, whereas the sales of older homes can be stopped in their tracks until they meet stringent government codes. The government portends to act in your best interest. Note words, such as controlling, in the press release that reveal real intent:

1.)  The Strategy for Action encourages federal agencies to take preemptive actions

2.) Today’s announcement will help the federal government unify action to controlling and preventing major housing-related exposures and hazards.”

3.)  The Strategy for Action unifies, for the first time, federal action to advance healthy housing, demonstrating the connection between housing conditions and residents’ health.

4.)  Currently, millions of U.S. homes have moderate to severe physical housing problems, including dilapidated structure; roofing problems; heating, plumbing, and electrical deficiencies; water leaks and intrusion; pests; damaged paint; and high radon gas levels.

Like Obamacare, this “action” being imposed by the government is touted as being “for your own good,” whether you like it or not.  The following statement by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman obtusely explains the push for so-called smart meters; meters that are reportedly designed to enable external control of home thermostats by government authorities: “Energy efficiency and healthy homes are inextricably linked. We cannot, in good conscience, pursue one in the absence of the other.”

Selling, renovating or simply upgrading items such as air conditioning, electrical or water heaters can cost additional thousands. Inspectors will have greater access into your home through new and unwieldy code requirements. Contractors’ open work permits flag your home as a target. The new federal EPA, HUD and DOE home regulations filter down to local inspectors who are required by law to impose them or fail the home inspection. Unnecessary and unreasonable code can be imposed on homeowners who find they “can’t fight code.” There is virtually no appeal.

The government’s goal to invade personal privacy and control the lives of all Americans was exposed when Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Socialist Democrat from California, recently bragged on TV One’s Washington Watch:

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful. That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that.” – Maxine Waters

Water’s real message is that it is the American people who are being forced to deal with it. Of utmost interest is if and how the American people will choose to do so.

For Sebastian’s analysis on the EPA and Code via Agenda 21, go to YouTube. Click here.

NOTE:  OBAMA & THE UN: AGENDA 21, April 2010, reads “…the Environmental Protection Agency will have power to force many homeowners to virtually rebuild their homes to meet stringent environmental requirements before they can sell them. Living in a house that does not meet the EPA’s “green” regulations for roofing, windows, doors, insulation or heating and cooling systems will be slapped with fines. Electrical companies are now installing “smart monitoring systems” to track usage of energy by residents.” TO CONTINUE:  CLICK HERE.

Sharon Sebastian (www.DarwinsRacists.com) is a columnist, commentator, author, and contributor to various forms of media including cultural and political broadcasts, print, and online websites. In addition to the heated global debate on creation vs. evolution, her second book, “Darwin’s Racists: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow,” highlights the impact of Social Darwinism’s Marxist/Socialist underpinnings on the culture, the faith and current policy out of Washington. Critics are calling Darwin’s Racists, “Incredibly Timely” and “A Book for our Times.” Sebastian is a featured guest on broadcasts nationwide on topics ranging from politics, the economy, healthcare, culture, religion and evolution to Agenda 21′s global green movement. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses on a wide range of national and global events are published nationally and internationally. Website: www.DarwinsRacists.com. “Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” may be purchased at: www.DarwinsRacists.com, www.Amazon.com, www.BarnesandNoble.com and at bookstores online and worldwide.

EPA tells the federal court hearing the illegal human testing suit that the agency answers to nothing and no one — i.e., no law and no judge.

Check out this passage from EPA’s memo in support of its motion to dismiss our claim:

D. EPA’s Decision to Study PM2.5 with Human Participants Is a Decision Committed to Agency Discretion by Law.

Even if some element of EPA’s program of controlled human exposures studies involving PM2.5 could be considered a final agency action, Plaintiff’s claim still must be dismissed because EPA’s decision regarding what studies it chooses to conduct is committed to agency discretion by law and, therefore, is not subject to review under the [Administrative Procedures Act (APA)]. See 5 U.S.C. §701(a)(2). The APA bars judicial review of discretionary agency action where the statute “is drawn so that a court would have no meaningful standard against which to judge the agency’s exercise of discretion.” Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 830 (1985).

Here, Congress directed EPA to study the causes and effects of air pollution. 42 U.S.C. § 7403. Nothing in the [Clean Air Act (CAA)] provides a meaningful standard” to evaluate what air pollution EPA chooses to study or how. To the contrary, the CAA gives EPA broad discretion in the subject matter of its research program. The only CAA provision applying to EPA’s research is CAA Section 103, 42 U.S.C. § 7403, where Congress broadly mandated that EPA study the health effects of air pollution. But no CAA provision tells EPA what air pollutants to study, with the exception of ozone and wood smoke. 42 U.S.C. § 7403(c)(3), (d)(1). Nor does it provide any standard or direction for how EPA must decide what to study or not, when to conduct studies, what kinds of studies to conduct, how to set and when to shift research priorities. The specific methods for EPA’s research are likewise not specified, i.e., whether EPA involves human participants in its research; although, as mentioned above, the involvement of human participants was known to Congress when debating the CAA. Congress prescribed certain timelines for the prioritization of environmental health assessments of hazardous air pollutants, id. §7403(d)(2)(B)-(C), but did not address any of the issues involved in developing and implementing a research program for any other air pollutant.

Deciding what research program to pursue and how to pursue it “involves a complicated balancing of a number of factors which are peculiarly within [the Agency's] expertise.” Heckler, 470 U.S. at 831. EPA must determine whether its resources are best spent in the study of certain types of pollutants, whether such studies will be fruitful, and whether such studies best fit with the Agency’s statutory mandates. Because “no judicially manageable standards are available for judging how and when [EPA] should exercise its discretion” in deciding what research to undertake, EPA’s decision to study the health effects of PM2.5 using controlled human exposure studies was a decision committed to EPA’s discretion and immune from review under the APA. Id. at 830… [Emphasis added]

But in the August 2001 Maryland Court of Appeals decision in Grimes et al. v. Kennedy Krieger Institute (a case involving EPA-funded study of children intentionally exposed to lead paint), the Court stated:

It is clear to this Court that the scientific and medical communities cannot be permitted to assume sole authority to determine ultimately what is right and appropriate in respect to research projects involving young children free of the limitations and consequences of the application of Maryland law.[Emphasis added]

Posted by Dottie MacQueen

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been sued in federal court for conducting illegal experiments on human beings. A federal judge will now determine whether the EPA has violated federal law and the most sacrosanct moral standards of scientific research or whether the EPA has been lying to Congress and the public about the dangers of air pollution.

Based on thousands of pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, since 2004 and continuing through the Obama administration, the EPA has intentionally exposed hundreds of human subjects to extraordinarily high levels of air pollutants such as diesel exhaust and fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. The experiments occurred at an EPA facility located at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Many study subjects were health-impaired: suffering from asthma, metabolic syndrome, and old age (up to 75 years). Financially needy, they enrolled in these experiments for $12 per hour.

Since 1997, the EPA has regulated PM2.5, a major component of diesel exhaust, on the basis that it kills people after long-term exposure. In 2004, the EPA determined that PM2.5 could also kill on a short-term basis — within hours or days of exposure. The EPA also determined that there is no safe level of exposure to PM2.5 — any inhalation can kill. The EPA says that health-impaired people and the elderly are most vulnerable. The EPA also cites “strong evidence” that PM2.5 and diesel exhaust cause cancer.

The chairman of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council, Jon Samet, wrote in a 2011 commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine that there is no safe exposure to PM2.5, a view reiterated to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., in a February 2012 letter by EPA air chief, Gina McCarthy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified in Congress in September 2011 that “particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.” She added: “If we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy we would have an identical impact to finding a cure for cancer.”

Cancer kills about 570,000 in the U.S. annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

The EPA does more than just badmouth PM2.5 and diesel exhaust; it issues stringent, multibillion dollar-costing regulations. In addition to national air quality standards, which the EPA is currently tightening, the two biggest rules of the Obama EPA are — the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard. Both depend on the condemnation of PM2.5 as a killer.

In addition to testing the lethal and cancer-causing PM2.5 and diesel exhaust on frail and needy people, the EPA failed to inform the study subjects that these substances were so dangerous.

While the EPA has repeatedly told the public and Congress that PM2.5 can kill within hours of exposure, the EPA only told the study subjects, for example: “You may experience some minor degree of airway irritation, cough or shortness of breath or wheezing. These symptoms typically disappear two to four hours after exposure, but may last longer for particularly sensitive people.”

One obese woman with a history of heart disease developed a cardiac arrhythmia during the experiment. She was rushed to the hospital for an overnight stay. The EPA attributed her heart problem to PM2.5 in a published report, but then failed to warn subsequent subjects of the cardiac arrhythmia risk.

In its lawsuit, the nonprofit American Tradition Institute asserts that the EPA’s conduct runs afoul of virtually every rule and ethical standard established since World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments intended to protect human study subjects from rogue scientific research.

The EPA also has potential civil and even criminal liability. While the mere testing of such toxic substances is clearly prohibited, the EPA has compounded wrongdoing by failing to obtain informed consent. The only way the EPA doesn’t face such liabilities is if it has been grossly misleading the public and Congress about air pollutants.

Three of the EPA researchers are North Carolina-licensed physicians, and the state medical board is investigating. The University of North Carolina, which provided the EPA with the required institutional review board (IRB) for approving the experiments, is also investigating.

In contrast, the Obama-appointed Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has so far refused multiple requests to get involved, claiming it already has a full agenda.

Because the EPA has so far resisted efforts, including those of Congress, to respond substantively to these allegations, they will now have the opportunity to do so before a federal judge.

• Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is a member of the American Tradition Institute.

Posted by Dottie MacQueen

American Tradition Institute attorney David Schnare argued that the court had jurisdiction to hear the case under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), asserting that the agency’s signing contracts with the human subjects constituted “final agency action.”

But Judge Anthony Trenga accepted the Department of Justice’s (lame-o) position that the term “contract” is not specifically listed in the APA as a “final action.”

The good news is that the court’s action is without prejudice, so ATI is free to refile the TRO with a new jurisdictional argument.

The question raised by all this is who can stop the EPA from illegal human testing? Does anyone have jurisdiction? And if no one does, can a rogue agency simply defy all the laws and rules developed since World War II concerning the protection of human subjects?

So for now, EPA can continue testing the most toxic substance on Earth on sick people while lying to them about the risks.

We are simply flabbergasted (but not surprised).