Obama's EPA devotes $7 million Environmental Justice campai
Obama's EPA devotes another $7 million to 'environmental justice' campaign
By: Mark Tapscott 01/16/11 7:38 PM
Comments 1
Not even sure what the "Environmental Justice" noted in the headline above might be about? It's likely that neither are most other Americans but that doesn't prevent President Obama's EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, from sending $7 million of the taxpayers' money to dozens of groups mounting academic and propaganda campaigns organized around that theme.
Judicial Watch reports that Jackson's agency announced late last week that the $7 million will be awarded "to study how pollution, combined with stress and other social factors, affects people in 'poor and under-served communities.' The agency refers to it as cumulative human health risk assessment research and the goal is to rid under-served communities of extensive pollution-based problems."
Environmental Justice is a left-wing activist concept in which poor communities are assumed to be more heavily affected by pollution because they are politically defenseless against polluters, and therefore it is up to the government to step in and provide assistance to redress the alleged imbalance.
Obama hasn't made environmental justice a front-line theme of his administration to date (though a White House forum on the issue held last month suggests could change in 2011), but EPA has been steadily earmarking federal tax dollars to provide supportive funding to groups associated with the concept.
Judicial Watch fills in the blanks on this latest Obama initiative designed to send millions of tax dollars to activists groups whose members are likely to be among his core supporters for his re-election campaign in 2012:
"It’s all part of the administration’s effort to bring environmental justice to low-income populations by helping them obtain the same degree of protection from health and environmental hazards as wealthy communities.
"Here’s how it works; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives money to leftwing groups—including some dedicated to helping illegal immigrants—that teach black, Latino and indigenous folks how to recycle, reduce carbon emissions through “weatherizationâ€
