This post dates from early September, and was one of those odd occurrences that I reported in Political Reboot. It seems like ages ago. It's worth a quick look for environmentalists, and haters of bureaucrats and shills for industrial polluters.
Sept. 2, 2011
Obama is stopping implementation of regulations proposed by the EPA.
(Apologies for that sentence, but that's what it takes to put the idea into the fewest words possible. Two agents: Obama and the EPA. Two objects: proposed regulations vs. their implementation. I'm bored already.)
I'll try to rouse myself by talking about things that matter: jobs and people's health. Very few people (other than Ron Paul) want to go back to the 1960's when pollution was rampant, our rivers were poisonous to varying degrees, and there were basically no controls.
We want some regulation, but we don't want it to be the fief of bureaucrats who use miniscule test results to build up their own sense of power and importance by protecting us from an almost imaginary danger. I've intentionally put this is derisive terms because I think it's true of some regulators. On the other hand, some regulators are trying to save us from small but real threats that could kill or disable perhaps 2 out of 50,000.
Republicans are corruptly using the focus on regulation to help big industry avoid important regulation. Under the mantle of protecting small businesses from choking regulation, the repubs are trying again to allow power generators to avoid the requirement for better pollution scrubbers.
Call me skeptical, but I don't think there are many small businesses that run coal-fired power plants. But of course it would be terrible to waste this opportunity to delay pollution controls yet again. After all, eight years of avoiding updating under Bush weren't enough. I'm holding on to this article to refute the inevitable talking pointy-heads on the comment threads [alternative link, but same article].
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