I think there is room for the establishment of some reasonable standards that would be administered by an agency - I’m old enough to remember when raw sewage ran in the Hudson, there was no living plant on the banks of the Ohio, and the Cuyahoga caught fire. Reasonable standards are not a bad thing, and somebody has to be responsible for overseeing them.
The problem is that all of these agencies seem to be able to take off on their own and are not accountable to the legislative branch or anyone else. Agencies have to exist and they can do good things; but we have to think up a way of controlling them.
In addition, the method of appointing their heads makes them essentially an arm of the Executive Branch, and when you have a nutcase in the White House, as we do now, this can be a problem.
Or then you have the situation of Bush, who obviously wanted to rationalize things but wasn’t strong enough to buck the lower level of civil servants who occupy these posts, combined with the fact that the press attacked him every time he appointed someone to a leadership office and made him afraid to do anything after the first year or so.
The idea of an environmental agency isn’t bad and in fact is necessary, but there has got to be more control over what it’s doing and who is creating the policy. All agencies seem to be off on their own now, carrying out missions that they were never designed to do and implementing policy that has never been publicly discussed or agreed upon anywhere.
Ah, a ray of light shines through. Thank you sir.
“I think there is room for the establishment of some reasonable standards that would be administered by an agency - I’m old enough to remember...”
THAT NEVER HAPPENED. LOL. Just kidding. While I understand the anger at EPS, the people that think businesses would use scrubbers, cars would use catalytic converters, and water would be sanitized prior to discharge without laws in place are NUTS. The first company that takes catalytic converters off its cars gets a competitive advantage, and it’s game-over. In fact, if all of the pollution controls were removed from cars, their price would drop by thousands. Sounds good, until you’ve had the experience of driving through air so dirty (in an underground parking garage) that your engine couldn’t even keep running (much less you breathing normally).
Will states step up? Maybe. But same thing, if one state, like Texas says no regulations...then business goes there and other states are forced to cut way back on their regs - and we’re back to pre-EPA.
So, I like Newt’s approach. Rip out the old EPA and start over from scratch, with new people and a clear mission to HELP BUSINESS, while still having reasonable laws to keep the air, water, and ground clean.