With all that power, it was also famous for its incompetence and corruption, in that it had a problem obeying rules other people obeyed and always got away with it. Gold King Mine on the very yellow Animas River, anyone? That also applies to the behavior of its Obamaton leaders, who communicated with secret email accounts (remember Richard Windsor ?) and got rewarded with fabulous Silicon Valley social media jobs in the revolving-door aftermath. They were amply augmented in their activities by the Obama State Department and the Obama National Security Council, which conducted business pretty much the same way.

Under President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency grew to gargantuan proportions, issuing 4,000 regulations, adding more than 33,000 pages to the Federal Register, and dumping $50 billion in compliance costs on business, making itself one of the biggest and most powerful agencies in the U.S. government – quite a feat for an organization without a Cabinet seat.

Now it turns out this same corrupt bunch is at it again, in a new Competitive Enterprise Institute report called "Government for Rent," put on by the respected Christopher C. Horner.

According to the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard:

A shadow government made up of former Obama climate change aides and funded by wealthy environmental advocates is supplementing liberal governors in an "off-the-books" operation to help them win approval of sweeping global warming changes and defy President Trump, according to a new investigative report. In it's [sic] "Government for Rent" report, the Competitive Enterprise Institute published dozens of emails detailing the scheme and the efforts by governments to have the activists draw up official state climate change agenda paid for by private donations. The report, written by Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow CEI, focuses on this week's Global Climate Action Summit hosted by California Gov. Jerry Brown and co-chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, United Nations representatives, and others, that is being produced by outside interests. "The summit is part of a larger scheme, in which governors' offices are coordinating with activists and donors, who in turn are underwriting a massive, off-the-books campaign to provide staff and other resources to elected officials," said CEI.

Billionaire lefties are supposed to pay for it, with a spare $50 million they have lying around, but the Deep-Staters involved have gotten themselves free office space and other emoluments based on their political connections, the better to foist their plan onto us unawares.

According to Bedard, Horner warned that it was a shadow Cabinet amounting to another de facto Deep-State bid to Get Trump. As if there weren't enough of those already:

"Public records reveal a sprawling dark money enterprise to underwrite governors' political advocacy for implementing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the climate change agenda more broadly, because as some staffers said, 'it can't always be us staff,'" said Horner. "This unprecedented scheme of activist donors bankrolling governors committed to advancing their climate agenda is very concerning. It raises serious questions about the use of public offices to serve private interests, transparency and the reporting of these dollars, compliance with gift laws applying to elected officials, and restrictions on private financing of official activities."

See, they can't justify their existence without the Paris Climate Agreement, and thus, they are organizing in secret to act as a Deep State that can get it through by other means – by any means necessary, in fact.

This is about par for the Obama environmental crowd, which never got any punishment for its sneaky, off-the-books activities at the Environmental Protection Agency, and the State Department, come to think of it, as well as the unmaskings-happy Obama National Security Council. What it shows is that unpunished activity, and a lefty Alinskyite by-any-means-necessary mentality, has an amazing capacity to morph into something as legally questionable as this effort to undercut President Trump, complete with taxpayer financing.

Back in the George W. Bush days, when I was a journalist, I would occasionally meet with Bush Cabinet officials and would always notice how scrupulous they were about not politicizing those offices, being there to serve all the people, being there to execute Congress's laws faithfully. I never got a partisan word from any of them. That apparently has been thrown out the window in proof of how Obama, like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, managed to politicize the government. That politicization was not only not sanctioned, but extended, to what we see today in the shadow government. We never heard about shadow governments seeking to undercut an elected president before Obama, did we? It's because they no longer think it necessary to hide their politics.

If this isn't a signal to shut the whole mess down and start busting miscreants, what is?