http://trib.com/opinion/columns/the-epa-join-in-the-power-abuse-targets-wyoming-farms/article_3a598ea2-0ff3-5f24-b966-83b40b74cd54.html

The EPA join in the power abuse, targets Wyoming farms

This week, we learned the Environmental Protection Agency illegally released personal names, phone numbers, emails and addresses of 80,000 farmers and ranchers in 30 states to activist environmental groups interested in prosecutions under the EPA’s Clean Water Act. Family farmers with fewer than 1,000 animals were included in the list, even though they do not have to comply with the regulations. The departments of Homeland Security and Agriculture had told the EPA to not even compile such lists, as it endangers our farm families and the security of our food system

In other recent scandals, federal bureaucrats released the names of donors to traditional marriage groups to a gay marriage organization known for intimidation and harassment of opponents. Individual donors to the Republican Party, the tea party and other conservative causes have found themselves audited by the IRS. And of course, Tea Party groups across the country were intimidated and harassed by the IRS, neutralizing their impact on the 2012 election.

This is far larger than the work of a few rogue activists in the federal bureaucracy. The entire Democratic Party has crossed a line.

It all starts with demonizing political opponents by ascribing to them malevolent aims. Do this for long enough and ordinary citizens will persecute people different from themselves because they fear them.

Calling conservatives and Republicans racist has been going on for five years now. Then they say: The economy failed and the whole country is suffering because of the party of the greedy rich. Throw in that Republicans are indifferent to human suffering, want the old to die and poor to starve. Say they hate women and homosexuals as well. Say they are destroying the planet by exploiting oil and gas. Then you say their voice does not deserve to have a place in the public square alongside liberal nonprofit groups.

Is it any wonder that employees at the IRS, FBI, EPA, and OSHA were willing to follow orders to illegally harass all sorts of conservative groups and individual Republican donors leading up to the 2012 election? They felt self-righteous about it.

Ordinary Democrats thought Obama was strong when the president made campaign speeches telling his followers to go after Republican “enemies” to bring a gun to the fight, to redefine bipartisanship as Republicans keeping quiet and going to the back of the bus. They didn’t mind when the president disparaged the tea party as “teabaggers,” an obscene term referring to a homosexual act.

Political targeting was directed from Washington and carried out by the FBI, the IRS, HHS, and the EPA. It hit small mom and pop tea party groups with as few as 60 members and budgets of a few hundred dollars. It hit individuals who made donations to causes unpopular among Democrats. They hit a group started by a Texas woman to fight voter fraud. And now we learn that the names and addresses of 80,000 ranchers and farmers were illegally sent to liberal groups by the EPA.

For the first time in American history the full weight of federal investigative harassment and intrusion has been launched against ordinary citizens who the people in power feared might unseat them from power. It doesn’t matter if the orders came from Obama, or only from his appointees and supporters. Hundreds of people in his administration knew this was going on. The entire IRS office in Washington got the emails by mistake, so they all knew. No one spoke out.

Democracy — our precious constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly — has been grievously undermined by the Democrat Party demonizing political opponents.

When we turn political opinion into utopian crusade where only your side is morally good, we undermine our democracy. It makes civil political discourse impossible. Without respectful listening we never hear the best ideas of our opponents, making compromise impossible. And it ultimately leads to abuse of power.

Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka, Ala., tea party, said it this way, before the congressional committee investigating the IRS: “What the government did to our little group in Wetumpka is un-American. It isn’t a matter of firing or arresting individuals. The individuals who sought to intimidate us were acting as they thought they should, in a government culture that has little respect for its citizens. Many of the agents and agencies of the federal government do not understand that they are servants of the people. They think they are our masters. And they are mistaken.”