EPA “loses” emails like the IRS.
Transparency! Subpoenaed emails at the EPA have been lost because of a hard drive crash.
The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled [EPA Administrator Gina] McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency’s decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.
North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North’s hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency’s discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.
This is all crap. The only way these emails get lost is if the people involved intentionally “lost” them.
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Transparency! Subpoenaed emails at the EPA have been lost because of a hard drive crash.
The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled [EPA Administrator Gina] McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency’s decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.
North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North’s hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency’s discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.
This is all crap. The only way these emails get lost is if the people involved intentionally “lost” them.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
Keep in mind that anytime federal records are lost, that is in itself a crime. Therefore it is incumbent on the Department of Justice to criminally investigate the person or persons responsible for the loss. The Statute of Limitations will not expire in such cases, so future justice department officials can track these perpetrators down and prosecute them. The clock is now ticking on many members of the Obama administration.
So she was threatened with a contempt charge, so what? It does not appear to have gotten them anywhere with the IRS. Until the Congress is willing to actually throw people in jail for extended periods of time then obstruction works and so it will continue to be done.
This is an example of the “before the law” inside the beltway way things work.
Congress needs to mandate that on federal computers the only thing permitted is the operating system and applications. Everything that is user created or received must be stored on servers, which are backed up regularly. Server backups must be saved to a federal backup repository equivalent of Iron Mountain – managed by the national archives. Said backups never leave the repository. Restores are made from a copy of a backup.
The problem is that Congress has already mandated that all “user created or received” material must be backed up multiple times and made available when required, not just for investigations but for the National Archives. That is the law.
Must I repeat this? It already is the law, and for the IRS and EPA not to have the routine kinds of backups that are required by law means they are breaking the law. And if they can break the law without punishment, then maybe we all should have that right.
The bottom line is that no law, either the ones on the books now or any you might propose for the future, can ever work if the citizens or government workers ignore them. Pass as many laws and mandates as you want, if we have a corrupt government and a society willing to accept that corruption for partisan reasons than those laws are meaningless.
I again point out that your every day man logic is flawless, but, we are applying citizenry, outside of the beltway logic / morality related to law to an inside the beltway situation. These people who administer the laws and who are judged by the club that passes the laws in many ways are before the law and unless there becomes a collection of hard evidence that demonstrates a blatant abuse of power all of this that we are witnessing is just a political show.
Hard evidence is the key here and if it does exist then it will have to be decided whether it will be used. All based in politics and not logic or morality. Let us not be naive.
(“Congress has mandated”. Now that’s funny! You can mandate anything you want to mandate but if you are unable or unwilling to enforce that mandate than something else is really going on. )