Bad EPA! The Truth, the Bumpersticker Two Words Speak Volumes Coeur d'Alene--"The EPA has replaced the IRS as Public Enemy #1," said U.S. Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) at a town hall meeting at North Idaho College last year. Since its inception in 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has grown from being a 7,100 employee, $1 billion bureaucracy under William Ruckleshaus to a $7 billion federal octopus with over 19,000 employees. According to the Forbes magazine article "Carol Browner, master of mission creep" (October 20, 1997), U.S. businesses spend $3 billion and 115 million hours each year to comply with the EPA’s massive reporting system. Prior to President Clinton’s approval of the EPA’s new ambient air quality standards, the EPA estimated that the proposal would cost $8.5 billion. The agency revised the estimate up to $47 billion after the president’s approval. Americans pay taxes (and fines) to support the EPA. The EPA is the federal enforcement arm of militant environmentalism. Militant environmentalists, according to their own literature, want to return a substantial proportion of American soil to wilderness areas that are off limits to humans. Bad EPA! John Wiegman of Osburn was pleasantly surprised with the response he received after a recent mass mailing of BAD EPA! bumper stickers. Wiegman, himself a victim of abuse by environmental activists, produced and mailed hundreds of the fluorescent green BAD EPA! bumper stickers to businesses throughout Idaho in mid December. "Things are looking up for people who oppose environmental extremism," commented Wiegman, whose bumper sticker story was reported in the Coeur d’Alene Press last December 14. Wiegman, 55, a former broadcast engineer, said that people called, wrote and emailed him with their stories of abuse by government agents and agencies and environmental organizations. "I find that many other people have been damaged by the EPA far worse than I have. This is a big iceberg and the part under water has teeth and venom," Wiegman said. Wiegman also said that some of his respondents have been medium-sized businesses that have been targeted by armed government officers. "It is especially frightening to innocent people," he said, "when government officials do not explain themselves. One of the responses to BAD EPA! bumper stickers was a graphic description of how armed EPA agents walked into a business and took records and whatever else they wanted," Wiegman explained. One respondent to Wiegman’s direct mail campaign said that an agency took him to court alleging environmental law violations. The defendant "won" his case but was forced to pay the government’s eco-activist lawyer thousands of dollars in what were called "legal fees." Litigation "The litigious aspects of militant environmental extremism are really mind-boggling," Wiegman said. "If I am correct, environmental extremists make accusations against environmentally sound businesses. Then the extremists, working with lawyers, file or threaten to file suits. Often the suits are frivolous. When victims discover how expensive it is to defend themselves in court, they typically settle out of court by paying attorneys thousands of dollars for nothing," Wiegman explained. In the case of OZ Technology, an environmentally sound company which produces environmentally sound refrigerants and which has been in perpetual litigation with the EPA since 1993, nearly $2 million has been spent on attorneys over the last five years. Wiegman calls it, "the scam of the 90’s," though it is hard to prove that the "scam" exists. What can be proven are the government’s own printed threats of imprisonment and fines for dubious crimes. Most middle management executives in the U.S. receive regular EPA demands for reports on innocuous subjects. Wiegman says that he was once required to prepare a 29-page report to explain what happens to rainwater that falls on three small buildings and a parking lot. The price of the yearly report was $3,000. Wiegman said, "We did the work because government’s printed demands warned that the company executive, a petite grandmother with a terminal disease, would go to jail if we didn’t. Prison would have killed her in weeks. We figured the government would merely have claimed that it had been working within the framework of well-established law had she died while being imprisoned for non-compliance." Wiegman described one heart-tearing response to his bumper sticker mailout by recounting the story of a recent suicide of a North Idaho man who was refused help in his legal battle with the EPA. Rather than testify in court in a vain attempt to defend his innocence, he took his own life. Government officials are alleged to have told the man, "We’ll ruin you." They did, and when the widow showed up in court on the dead man’s behalf, the EPA officer blandly said, "I’m sorry." The same officer continued business as usual. No charges against the government are pending. "One has to wonder how many Americans have decided to take their own lives rather than allow them to be stolen by the EPA through the court system," commented Wiegman. "These are hard times," says Wiegman. "But I am very happy about a strong response to the mailing and I believe you will see many more cars with bumper stickers that say BAD EPA! Wiegman said that his goal is to win people over to the side of industry and the planet. "The people who opposed environmental extremism with spotted owl recipes on T-shirts had a joke and nothing more. That joke failed to win people over or interest them in the issues. Most likely, it only made environmental activists mad," he said. Wiegman wants to win friends to his way of thinking. He says he will do it by selling bumper stickers, $34.50 for 20, and by asking schools to teach children about the tight links between industry and the planet’s health. "Extremism is a bad deal any way you look at it." Wiegman, who is committed to exposing people to the rights-usurping reality of environmental extremism, is not stopping at BAD EPA! bumper stickers. Weigman is also seeking the funding for a feature length animation called "Sprockety Saves The Planet."(tm) Wiegman can be contacted through email at fouronkey@nidlink.com ------- When the employees of organic, hydrocarbon refrigerant OZ Technology of Rathdrum heard about the BAD EPA! bumper stickers, they ordered 30 of them. Though the owners of the vehicles pictured never put bumper stickers on their cars, they made an exception in this case. Since the day OZ began producing the answer to the world’s post-Freon era refrigeration dilemma in 1993, the EPA has done everything in its power to put OZ out of business. OZ has been forced to spend over $2 million in attorneys' fees defending the integrity of its environmentally sound refrigerants against the federal agency which is supposed to be protecting the environment. Perpetual EPA Persecution Hydrocarbon refrigerant manufacturer OZ Technology of Rathdrum was raided by the EPA September 4, 1996. The EPA seized all of OZ’s records, including insurance papers and articles of incorporation. The EPA even seized attorney/client privileged documents which were to be used two days later in Idaho Federal District Court in Boise where OZ’s motion for temporary injunction against the EPA was to be heard. OZ’s motion for temporary injunction was ultimately denied seven months later by Presiding Federal Judge Edward Lodge "on jurisdictional grounds." The EPA was ultimatelely court ordered the following May--eight months after the raid--to provide OZ with copies of the documents it had seized. The raid was ostensibly conducted under a warrant to secure documents which will aid the EPA’s never ending "conspiracy" investigation against OZ. Though over a year has come and gone and no charges have been filed against OZ, the EPA continues to subpoena OZ documents and similarly harasses OZ customers and distributors throughout the country.