A CNN Smear

Guest Post by John Stossel

Did you happen to catch CNN’s latest smear?

Anderson Cooper’s show recently featured a “two-part exclusive” that claims Donald Trump’s EPA director had conspired with the CEO of a mining company to “withdraw environmental restrictions” so the company could dig “the largest open pit mine in the world in an extremely sensitive watershed in wild Alaska.”

The report was enough to horrify any caring person. CNN showed beautiful pictures of colorful salmon swimming in Bristol Bay, and the reporter intoned dramatically, “EPA staffers were shocked to receive this email obtained exclusively by CNN which says ‘we have been directed by the administrator to withdraw restrictions’ … (P)rotection of that pristine area was being removed.”

No! A “pristine” area and gorgeous salmon were about to be obliterated by a mine!

I would have believed it, except I happened to report on that mine a couple of years ago.

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I knew that the real scandal was not EPA director Scott Pruitt’s decision to “withdraw the restrictions”; it was what President Obama’s EPA did to the company’s mining proposal in the first place.

Zealots at the EPA had conspired with rich environmental activists to kill the mine before its environmental impact statement could even be submitted. This was unprecedented.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform later concluded: “EPA employees had inappropriate contact with outside groups and failed to conduct an impartial, fact-based review.”

Now, appropriately, Pruitt undid that censorship of science.

But CNN, implying devious secrecy said, “according to multiple sources, he made that decision without a briefing from any of EPA’s scientists.”

Shocking!

But Pruitt didn’t require opinions from scientists. He didn’t approve the mine. He didn’t make a science decision. He simply followed the law and allowed a company to submit a proposal.

Also, despite CNN’s repeated depictions of salmon on Bristol Bay, it turns out that the proposed mine would not even be on the Bay. It would not even be 10 miles away, or 20 miles away, or even 50 miles. The proposed mine would be about 100 miles away.

Did CNN mention that? No. Never. We asked CNN why. And why not point out that the mining company is just being allowed to start the EPA’s long and arduous environmental review? They didn’t get back to us.

Of course, explaining that wouldn’t fit CNN’s theme: Evil Trump appointee ravages environment.

Their reporter did at least speak with the mine’s CEO, Tom Collier, who tried to explain.

“It’s not a science — it’s a process decision.”

But the reporter, Drew Griffin, wouldn’t budge. He called Collier “a guy who wants to mine gold in an area that many scientists believe will destroy one of the most pristine sockeye salmon sporting grounds in the whole world.”

By the way, Collier isn’t an evil Republican-businessman-nature-destroyer. He’s a Democrat who once ran environment policy for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. CNN never mentioned that either.

Instead, the reporter implied evil collusion: “This looks like the head of a gold mine went to a new administrator and got him to reverse what an entire department had worked on for years.”

Here at least the report was accurate. Obama’s environmental department did try to kill that mine for years. They colluded with groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of America’s wealthiest environment groups.

The NRDC is mostly made up of anti-progress lawyers who want no mines built anywhere. Don’t believe me? I asked NRDC spokesman Bob Deans:

STOSSEL: There are some mines where NRDC says, great, go ahead?

DEANS: It’s not up to us.

STOSSEL: Are there any?

DEANS: It’s not up to us to green light mines…

STOSSEL: Are there any you don’t complain about?

DEANS: Yeah, sure.

So I asked him for some names. He and the NRDC still haven’t provided any.

If these zealots and their sycophants in the media get their way, America will become a place with no mining, no pipelines, no oil drilling, no new … anything.

The acronym used to make fun of anti-development attitudes used to be NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard. Now it’s BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.

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kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

Don’t ever trust or believe anything a liberal says.

Daily Stormer Lover
Daily Stormer Lover

Only trust what you and people just like you say.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Not trusting leftists is something you can trust.

Daily Stormer Lover
Daily Stormer Lover

Leftists being anyone who disagrees with you in the slightest.

Crawfisher
Crawfisher

I now don’t believe or trust Establishment RINO Republicans either.
Seven years of promises, broken inside of 9 months.

curri
curri

Dems and GOPe are one party. The two branches of the uniparty serve their corporate masters in slightly different ways. GOPe is slightly less objectively
evil because it is forced to support gun rights to maintain its popular base.

covfefe
covfefe

Obama was the worst EPA offender in the US. Water aquifers ruined and intentionally poisoned by BIG OIL B O .Obama used the EPA to shut down family farms.He hired another black female sock puppet and shut them down for dust and Delta smelt.She was asked once if she felt bad for what she had done to families and generational farms,her answer was no!Who picked up prime farm land for pennies on the dollar?My guess is S O R O S.Remember Obama started rail roading gold miners for their claims in Alaska too.Obama use the EPA like a dictatorship .That was about when Hillary sold the RUSSIAN US URANIUM.See Solar mess and P U C in Nevada .My guess is Harry Reid’s black eye the two go together.

TampaRed-
TampaRed-
Maple Curtain
Maple Curtain

The 19th Amendment did that – Obama was only a symptom, not the cause.

anarchyst
anarchyst

Environmentalism has been the method used to impose communist principles on western society–especially in the USA.
Environmentalists are not content with promoting clean water, air and land, but are hell-bent on controlling human behavior, and yes, promoting extermination plans for much of humanity as these “anointed” types consider mankind to be a pestilence (except for themselves) to be reduced in population “by any means necessary”.
Environmentalists HATE the God-given concept of private property and have imposed government-backed and enforced “land use controls” on private property owners without compensation–clearly an unconstitutional “taking” of private property. If environmentalists want to control land use, let them purchase it themselves–not by government force. Today the only method of negating government-imposed land use restrictions is “shoot, shovel, and shut up”.
If environmentalists had their way, the earth’s human population would be reduced by approximately 90%, with the remainder to (be forced) to live in cities, in soviet-style high rise apartments, utilizing bicycles, buses and trains for transportation. The use of automobiles and access to “pristine wilderness (rural) areas” would be off-limits to us mere mortals, and would only be available for these “anointed” environmentalists.
The “endangered species act” is another abuse of environmentalism. Species are always changing, to adapt to their environments–”survival if the fittest”. In fact, the hoopla over the “spotted owl” (that placed much northwest timber land “off-limits” to logging) turned out to be nothing but scientific misconduct and arrogance. There are virtually identical species in other parts of the northwest.
More scientific malpractice occurred when government biologists attempted to “plant” lynx fur in certain areas to provide an excuse for making those areas “off-limits” for logging or development. Fortunately, these “scientists” were caught–however, no punishment was given.
In a nutshell, today’s environmentalism IS communism… like watermelon…”green” on the outside and “red” (communist) on the inside…

kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product
kokoda - AZEK (Deck Boards) doesn't stand behind its product

The co-founder of Greenpeace said he left due to a takeover by Communists.

Doug

Great comment anarchyst! Permit me to add a comment about the EPA and the outrageous abuse of the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 as if it were a “threat to human health”! It’s an outrageous premise/lie because CO2 is REQUIRED for life and not an irritant like SO2 or NO2. This entire problem of government “mission creep” shows the truth that there is no competent oversight (or anything else that is remotely competent) in DC. The whole shitshow that is Washington has to collapse some day.
http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2013/07/reverse-epas-carbon-regulation-mandate.html

Totalitarian Leftists would like to hire CO2 police to visit every business in the country to “rule” on their operations and to bill CO2 taxes. Can you even imagine??? Just like they’d like to have hate speech police. And they’d add huge and expensive bureaucracies paid for with your money–that wouldn’t do anything useful–only ruin the country!

The whole CO2 thing is about the search for yet more taxes, as any kind of cap and trade tax scheme would literally do nothing to stop the ascent of CO2 in the atmosphere–just freeze current CO2 output at higher rates than the ocean can absorb. See the following to show the earth’s CO2 balance:
(http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2012/11/cap-and-trade-all-about-taxing-not.html)

Anonymous
Anonymous

People seem to have forgotten the EPA poisoning an entire river:

comment image?w=700&q=20&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0eb0d766d8a0454e4d8ed4a32f2e6b97

Maple Curtain
Maple Curtain

If a smear falls in the forest, and no one is tuned in, is it still a smear? 🙂

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