A Bad, Bad Agency

Police State, EPA

[How EPA flooded the zone on water rule] ...  What McCarthy did not mention, and what was reported last week in the The New York Times, is that the EPA used government resources to coordinate with environmentalist groups in order to achieve this 90 percent support. Through an intense effort in what is known as "grassroots lobbying," the government worked to encourage people on one side of the debate to make their voices heard, so as to skew perceptions of public opinion. In addition to meeting behind closed doors with environmentalist leaders supportive of the rule, the agency used a social media tool called Thunderclap. It is like Kickstarter, but users donate social media shares instead of money. By getting just under 1,000 left-wing activists to sign on, the EPA was able to urge 1.8 million people in their political circles, all at once, to comment favorably on the proposed rule. This helped generate levels of support for the rule more appropriate to Saddam Hussein's re-election results than to any serious issue discussed in a democracy ......