AGs from 22 states blast Biden’s attempt to illegally insert racial quotas and climate change into federal contracting law
Joe Biden imposes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
Green New Deal on all federal contractors
In May 2021 President Biden signed an executive order [pdf] requiring federal agencies to make climate change and helping “disadvantaged communities and communities of color” a major priority in all their work.
That executive order, which in many ways was simply a rewording of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s communist and bigoted Green New Deal, required agencies to do things like reconsider where their pension funds were invested and to change those investments — not to get the best return on the dollar as required by law — but to protect them from “the threats of climate-related financial risk.”
The executive order also demanded that the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FARC) require federal contractors to:
…publicly disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk and to set science-based reduction targets; and (ii) ensure that major Federal agency procurements minimize the risk of climate change, including requiring the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered in procurement decisions and, where appropriate and feasible, give preference to bids and proposals from suppliers with a lower social cost of greenhouse gas emissions. [emphasis mine]
Such a regulation would apply to contracts issued by NASA to companies like SpaceX, and would almost certainly hinder their efforts while forcing them to advocate in favor of social political movements they might not agree with. For example, the language of the order makes it clear that it wants contractors to favor minorities and those “disadvantaged communities.” To do so would violate many civil rights acts, yet if these contractors refuse to do so the order will consider them “nonresponsible” and ineligible for federal contracts.
The attorneys general of twenty-two states have now sent the Biden administration a letter [pdf] protesting these regulatory changes, noting that not only is it not legal for Biden to change these contracting rules by executive order (they are established by laws passed by Congress), it is also a violation of the first amendment rights of contractors to force them to advocate specific political positions. As noted in the press release issued by the AGs:
This proposal is both extraordinarily costly and unlawful. Not only does President Biden lack the authority to directly instruct FARC to adopt these new emissions requirements, but even if he did, Congress never conferred upon FARC the ability to impose left-wing climate-change policies.
The letter was sent in response to the regulatory changes proposed forced by Biden’s executive order, and requests that the order and those regulatory changes be withdrawn.
Will the Biden administration consider this comment and change its approach? Of course not. I expect that a lawsuit will soon follow, and it will be filed not only by these attorneys general but by many companies as well.
Will the lawsuit work? As long as Democrats control the executive branch, both at the elected level as well as within the ranks, I doubt it. Consider the recent actions of the FCC. It did not get a presidential order, but it has still gone ahead and created new satellite regulations that exceed its legal statutory authority. And nothing is being done to stop it.
Unless a major house-cleaning occurs very very soon at the federal level, leftist policies and their advocacy are going to become the law of the land. Dare to say or do anything different as a contractor dependent on federal work and you will find yourself out of work, and bankrupt.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Joe Biden imposes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
Green New Deal on all federal contractors
In May 2021 President Biden signed an executive order [pdf] requiring federal agencies to make climate change and helping “disadvantaged communities and communities of color” a major priority in all their work.
That executive order, which in many ways was simply a rewording of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s communist and bigoted Green New Deal, required agencies to do things like reconsider where their pension funds were invested and to change those investments — not to get the best return on the dollar as required by law — but to protect them from “the threats of climate-related financial risk.”
The executive order also demanded that the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FARC) require federal contractors to:
…publicly disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk and to set science-based reduction targets; and (ii) ensure that major Federal agency procurements minimize the risk of climate change, including requiring the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered in procurement decisions and, where appropriate and feasible, give preference to bids and proposals from suppliers with a lower social cost of greenhouse gas emissions. [emphasis mine]
Such a regulation would apply to contracts issued by NASA to companies like SpaceX, and would almost certainly hinder their efforts while forcing them to advocate in favor of social political movements they might not agree with. For example, the language of the order makes it clear that it wants contractors to favor minorities and those “disadvantaged communities.” To do so would violate many civil rights acts, yet if these contractors refuse to do so the order will consider them “nonresponsible” and ineligible for federal contracts.
The attorneys general of twenty-two states have now sent the Biden administration a letter [pdf] protesting these regulatory changes, noting that not only is it not legal for Biden to change these contracting rules by executive order (they are established by laws passed by Congress), it is also a violation of the first amendment rights of contractors to force them to advocate specific political positions. As noted in the press release issued by the AGs:
This proposal is both extraordinarily costly and unlawful. Not only does President Biden lack the authority to directly instruct FARC to adopt these new emissions requirements, but even if he did, Congress never conferred upon FARC the ability to impose left-wing climate-change policies.
The letter was sent in response to the regulatory changes proposed forced by Biden’s executive order, and requests that the order and those regulatory changes be withdrawn.
Will the Biden administration consider this comment and change its approach? Of course not. I expect that a lawsuit will soon follow, and it will be filed not only by these attorneys general but by many companies as well.
Will the lawsuit work? As long as Democrats control the executive branch, both at the elected level as well as within the ranks, I doubt it. Consider the recent actions of the FCC. It did not get a presidential order, but it has still gone ahead and created new satellite regulations that exceed its legal statutory authority. And nothing is being done to stop it.
Unless a major house-cleaning occurs very very soon at the federal level, leftist policies and their advocacy are going to become the law of the land. Dare to say or do anything different as a contractor dependent on federal work and you will find yourself out of work, and bankrupt.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
If a contract specifically favors certain demographics, would that not make the unfavored demographics a ‘disadvantaged community’? Indeed, there can hardly be a greater social and political disadvantage than to be specifically excluded by government on account of race. I believe we have some historical experience with that.
Welcome to the New American Theocracy, where the marginalization of those who don’t profess belief in ‘Climate Change’ and [very narrowly defined) ‘Diversity’ is not only encouraged, but codified. We’ve seen this movie, too.
Is your retirement secure? The rules on fiduciaries have changed, forcing them to “save the planet” with your money rather than saving your retirement.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ebsa/ebsa20221122
“a final rule that allows plan fiduciaries to consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select retirement investments“
Notice how you never hear about the American communist party any more? They’ve gone underground in the environmental and race hustling business.
A couple of quotations from a YouTube conversation between Jordan Peterson and Christopher Rufo (I’ve never heard of him). They say the godless commies failed to bring about their godless commie utopia in America using economic inequality, now they are trying gender and racial (and environmental) inequality.
Imposing Limits on the Woke? | Christopher Rufo | EP 335
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3t5cpGZwik
46:30 Jordan Peterson: Identity politics – The Marxist experiment failed on the economic front and all the Marxists did was perform a slight of hand and reform an economic inequality and oppression into identity inequality and oppression.
47:00 What constitutes Critical Race Theory defined by Christopher Rufo
There are 3 main concepts
1. The social analysis that the United States is a white supremacist country that promotes the concepts of freedom and equality but this is merely a smoke screen for naked racial domination
2. The doctrine of intersectionality says that the world can be divided between oppressor and oppressed but innovating from the Marxist economic axis they say no no no it’s actually an access of identity, predominantly race but also including gender and sexuality
3. The third component is what do you do to fix it? They argue that the Constitutional protections of the first amendment, the fourteenth amendment, private property should be overridden, should be suspended, and then society should engage in large scale wealth seizure and redistribution along the axis of race until you have equal outcomes.
48:00 Jordan Peterson: It’s basically Marxism repackaged using ethnic, racial and sexual identity, especially with regards to the notion that the entire Capitalist infrastructure needs to be redistributed. It’s like well it’s not the bourgeoisie and the proletariat it’s whatever racial group or sexual group or ethnic group that you happen to place in the ascendancy.
James Street: 1. Rufo is now a big player in Florida. DeSantis has given him a position of power within the education bureaucracy, specifically at New College. Do some searches. He strongly believes, as I do, that conservatives have to be fearless in the use of legislative power, something Republicans have been too cowardly for decades to do.
2. If you step back from Peterson’s analysis of modern woke theory, as described in your comment, it immediately becomes indistinguishable from Nazism, identity-based to determine who gets power and who gets killed.
And let me add one more point to #2: This is proved right time and again, every time you point it out and the left goes crazy with outrage that you dared do it.
Democrats have made a huge mistake tying environmental and climate matters into their social agenda spelled out in the executive order president Biden signed that Mr. Zimmerman has outlined above.
E & C issues require approaches and thinking that are in short supply when it comes to our country’s political machinery at many levels.
“Dare to say or do anything different as a contractor dependent on federal work and you will find yourself out of work, and bankrupt.”
And what the courts say will not mean squat. Our government operates on the principle of any other gang: “If you can’t shoot me, you can’t stop me.”
That ESG rule will be put into effect because only companies that “volunteer” the information will be considered. Companies that refuse to “volunteer” will be audited and inspected into oblivion. See Gibson Guitars, SpaceX and the EPA, etc.
“The White Pill”
Official trailer
Michael Malice
https://youtu.be/oq2vj0ZD6Qg
4:33
“For every crime that was committed, there was someone to come to their defense.
For every murder, there was an alibi. For every atrocity, there was an excuse.
There were heroes, and there were villains. There were victims and there were victors.
This is the History lesson they never bothered to teach you in school….”
Totalitarianism, with nary a shot fired.
Based on recent court rulings, I don’t think this is long for the world. It should bring a quick injunction.
See the recent WV V EPA SCOTUS ruling.
Biden selects from the Legion of Doom Black Manta and Giganta
M Puckett makes a great point. Like many previous controversial executive orders handed out by presidents of both parties, this one will likely be tied up in the courts until a new president arrives on the scene to void it. There have been exceptions, but most of these “social” directives just don’t have permanent impacts.
The seemingly ever rising waves of presidential executive orders issued by presidents over the last 20+ years points out the increasingly dysfunction of congress with the collapse of bipartisan efforts to solve the nation’s most vexing problems.