Al Armendariz, head of the EPA's South and Southwest region in Dallas, has resigned. He has been criticized for using an unelected position at the EPA (he was appointed by Pres. Obama in 2009) to circumvent Congress and penalize energy companies - but only the energy companies that did not get $72 billion from the Department of Energy in the last two years, i.e., he was only penalizing successful ones.
Naturally the EPA says his personal beliefs did not impact his work in the oil-deep Southwest region. If you believe that, you probably also believe putting a Bishop in charge of science education would make no difference. His appointment was pushed by Texas environmental lobbyists, not scientists. He was the person who went around state agencies and issued an order against Range Resources, claiming fracking was polluting ground water - because the state was not moving' fast enough'. It turned out the data he was acting on was falsified.
The inflammatory quote was his EPA strategy for energy companies (well, successful ones, as I said) - namely to do what the Romans did and arbitrarily kill some people for show: "They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them.
"And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not complying with the law. Find people who are not complying with the law and you hit them as hard as you can and make examples of them."
And if you couldn't find people not complying with the law, you pretend to find some. It takes real work to make Sen. James Inhofe look like a good guy. Nice work, EPA.
