by Smitty
I crashed at the end of the first paragraph from Ezra Goober:
Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone, greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash—it’s all getting regulated. And, not surprisingly, some lawmakers are grumbling.
I’ll give you one more ‘graph for context:
Industry groups such the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, and the American Legislative Exchange Council have dubbed the coming rules “EPA’s Regulatory Train Wreck.” The regulations, they say, will cost utilities up to $129 billion and force them to retire one-fifth of coal capacity. Given that coal provides 45 percent of the country’s power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer jobs. The doomsday scenario has alarmed Republicans in the House, who have been scrambling to block the measures. Environmental groups retort that the rules will bring sizeable public health benefits, and that industry groups have been exaggerating the costs of environmental regulations since they were first created.
So what is missing?
Recall Article 1 Section 1:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States
What’s not obvious is how Congress creates an EPA, and we’re left with ‘lawmakers are grumbling’. In a representative Democracy, those lawmakers should, well, make laws. If the people grumble, the lawmakers get voted out on their ear.
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies. The over-arching question of our time is not how to prevent the Executive from hyper-extending itself. That joint has already been tortured beyond recognition. The question is how were going to re-set that Executive joint, and constrain it with public diligence to operating within its proper, Executive range of motion.
This blog calls for courageous candidates who will begin removing federal bureaucracies outright. Just send those fat-cat GS dudes packing. I’ve seen some of those slugs moving from meeting to meeting, lost in an acronym-driven PowerPoint daze. While the Left spews hate on corporations and their jets, bear in mind that the threat is the self-entitled homo bureaucratus slug, who will emerge from torpor quickly to address threats to funding.
Can’t figure out whether Klein just isn’t very bright, and misses the point, or is very bright, and paid to run interference for these creeps who threaten the health of the country.
