I just got off a conference call with the Environmental Protection Agency (I do this regularly just to try stay in the loop as to what these seditious bureaucrats are up to). The call featured EPA chief Lisa Jackson who shared an "important announcement" regarding "the Obama administration's commitment to environmental justice."

If the term environmental justice is new to you, take heart: my soon to be released book (Eco-Tyranny) will expose the whole damned plan. In a nutshell, environmental justice is a government-sponsored ploy to fleece for-profit businesses for imaginary pollution crises they have supposedly caused which have -- again supposedly -- impacted lower income minority communities.  The businesses in the crosshairs are hit with fees, fines, penalties, and lawsuits, with the resulting funds going to pay for welfare handouts.

In today's announcement from the EPA, Jackson stated, "If we aspire to build an economy and a society that works for every American, we can't allow the heaviest burdens of pollution and health threats to fall on our poorest citizens. Bringing together our federal partners to tackle these challenges is a major step toward health, environmental and economic benefits in communities across the nation."

Among the special announcements today:

• The Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration is finalizing an environmental justice circular to help organizations that have received federal EPA grants to determine whether there are any minority or low-income populations that may be adversely affected by a proposed transit project. If there are, then either the project will be stopped or altered, or the people affected will likely be eligible for a paid-for-by-the-feds move to a better neighborhood.
• The Department of Labor is translating educational materials and hazard alerts into Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese to ensure that minority workers have access to information they need to avoid environmental hazards on the job. The result will be more minorities (including illegal aliens) filing lawsuits against their employers.

The whole shebang was best summed up by Elizabeth C. Yeampierre, Executive Director of the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park and chair of EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, who said, "Communities that have historically been the reluctant hosts to the country's environmental burdens have endured the consequence of poor public health, housing, employment and education inequities to name a few. The Administration deserves praise for recognizing that these complex problems require a holistic approach."

Rather than heap praise upon this administration, we need to boot them out of office and return to Constitutional principles.  If states and local governments want to try con their constituents to go the route of environmental justice, so be it.  But at the federal level it's akin to tyranny.