Promises made, promises kept, promises declared

Published 8:00 am Thursday, September 19, 2019

While the Democrat Socialists in the House dithered about opening an “impeachment inquiry” (whatever that is) against President Donald Trump because he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election cycle and, in so doing, hurt their feelings, his administration continued its march to keep the promises made by candidate Trump.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler put an end to the infamous 2015 Waters of the United States rule (WOTUSA) inflicted on the country during the Obama Administration.

As Wheeler succinctly described the EPA action as one that “puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations, and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework.”

There is, indeed, a merciful God.

As originally intended when passed in 1972, the Clean Water Act authorized the EPA to regulate only those waters that were interstate in nature, not intrastate.

WOTUSA redefined what bodies of water came under federal control subjecting “all tributaries, adjacent waters, wetlands and other waters” to federal regulation making the breadth of the EPA’s reconfigured rule breathtaking.

The depression in your backyard which after a rain had enough water to flow into a ditch and then into a stream, which emptied into a creek, and ran into a river was subject to regulation under the rule.  

This job-killing regulation required construction companies, farmers, and other real estate intensive enterprises, the vast majority of which are family owned, to obtain expensive, time consuming permits not previously required. 

Georgia was particularly hard hit.

The rule put an additional 40,000 miles of Georgia streams under federal control. And that meant roughly 57 percent of all Georgia waterways were subject to direct federal regulation.  

That’s a lot of intrastate water controlled by an act intended to affect only interstate waterways.

Then-Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens recognized it for what it was: a federal government effort to transfer more property rights away from the private landowner and states and reinvest those rights in federal regulators. He fought it and allied Georgia with 33 other states in lawsuits nationwide resulting in a federal court order preventing enforcement of WOTUSA.

Georgia’s current AG, Chris Carr, followed through and won a landmark ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia banning the rule’s implementation in August.

This regulation, however, elucidates more than just a money and power grab by a federal agency, it illustrates the sheer arrogance of an administration and an agency. 

This is the same arrogance on display within the ranks of the Democratic Socialists running for their party’s nomination for president in 2020.

Consider Beto O’Rouke’s promise to law abiding gun owners made in a recent Democratic Socialist primary presidential debate forum, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Who, exactly, is “we”? The Democratic Socialists? Antifa? Snowflakes? The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Reserves?  

And by what authority?  

The Second Amendment, in part, states clearly and succinctly, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Period. And barring a sweeping constitutional amendment reframing or disposing of that right, the Second Amendment will stand sacrosanct and protect that right.

But perhaps Beto is relying on the Nazi Germany model.

When Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, he and his thugs used the previously enacted gun control registration records to identify and disarm their political opponents (kinda sorta like the kind of folks who have AR-15s and AK-47s). Constitutional rights (like the Second Amendment) were suspended. Save for the Nazis and their sympathizers, the nation was disarmed.

You know the rest of the story.

Be careful. Be vigilant. Take nothing for granted. The Democratic Socialists are serious.

Gary Wisenbaker (gary@realtyadvisorsga.com) is a political consultant at Blackstone, LLC and a REALTOR® at Real Living Realty Advisors