Trump on a Rampage To Destroy the Environment
2GreenEnergy supporter Thomas Blakeslee posted a note on Facebook regarding this article from EcoWatch called Trump Gives Pen to Dow Chemical CEO After Signing Executive Order to Eliminate Regulations. Tom writes:
This is evil incarnate.
This executive order will put Trump’s unvetted corporate minions above experts at our federal agencies in charge of protecting our water and our land. They’ve already neutralized the regulators. Here are the first 245 pages of one of hundreds of scientific papers that they ignored about Roundup (Glyphosate).
I’m with you, Tom. It’s really hard to believe that this isn’t some nightmare, and that any minute I’m going to wake up panting for breath. It really is surreal; I never imagined for a second that this could happen in the country I love.
Fortunately, this thing with Jeff Sessions and Russia generally is going to be a huuuge problem for the conman-in-chief.
Craig,
I hate to say this, but the extremely earnest and engaging young reporter with “Eco-Watch”, is also very disingenuous.
So disingenuous at to give you and your reader excuse to fume and rant against the “evil” man in the White House.
Compare the headline :
“Trump Gives Pen to Dow Chemical CEO After Signing Executive Order to Eliminate Regulations “.
With reality;
The order, called “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda,” directs each government agency to create a task force to evaluate existing federal regulations and recommend whether they should be kept, repealed or modified.
Now nearly every modern nation has already had such task forces in existence for years.
The allegation made by Greenpeace “This executive order will put Trump’s unvetted corporate minions above experts at our federal agencies in charge of protecting our water, our land and our climate”, is hysterical nonsense.
All government servants are “vetted”. There are no “corporate minions”.
What Greenpeace hates is the idea elected representatives will resume control of policy instead of Obama’s unelected and unaccountable employees.
While Lorraine Chow’s article is obviously very biased, she does concede opposition to the executive order is based on speculation of what might occur if the order was abused, rather than reality.
What she doesn’t make clear is the order has no affect on regulations contained within legislation. In any nation governed by representative government, legislation can only be removed or repealed by the Legislature.
Government agencies are empowered to create regulations within the framework of the law for the purpose of implementing the law, but they can’t actually create laws.
Trump’s reforms may be inconvenient for a bureaucracy that imagined itself free of legislative control for the last eight years, but in reality all this order does is place many issues back into the political arena where the American people can decide.
The stated objective of this order is to cut and reduce the contradictory and often incomprehensible mass of regulations and red tape so beloved of bureaucrats.
Actually, it may prove a blessing for the bureaucracy, and a curse for politicians ! Politicians will no longer able to hide behind a maze of incomprehensible bureaucratic regulations, they will be forced to explain and be accountable to the voters for policies.
No system is perfect and Congress must remain vigilant to ensure any action by the executive branch to subvert the spirit of the law is dealt with by better written, and more coherent legislation.
Trump’s executive order may contain an opportunity for abuse, it’s one of the problems of an executive style of Presidency. However, it should be possible to establish a system which should keep the benefits while eliminating abuse.
Just condemning minor reforms with indignant outrage and wild accusations isn’t helpful.
Presently companies see no consequences to a smaller government or deregulating their industries.
At some point, if the government fails to take legislative or regulatory responsibility then it will be popular media that attempts to sway opinion against entire companies. Anyone with an ego or an “ax to grind” and some media savvy will be a “spokesperson.” Rather than professional civil servants administrating regulations, entire companies and perhaps even industries will suffer boycott or worse.
Industry will try and save the situation with a media campaign but may have lost all credibility. This is where the uncertainty of marketplace anarchy and indiscriminate deregulation leads.
Hi Breath,
Interesting scenario, but surely a tad bleak ?
Government perform a valuable role as regulators. However, the political arm of government must ensure the regulations are kept useful, relevant and beneficial.
Elected officials have a duty to ensure the bureaucracy is held to account and enforces regulation within the remit of the legislation.
It’s all a question of getting the balance right.
Ah yes Marco, the perfect world. That world without inferiority complexes or avarice. That world in which we “are all created equal.”
But just maybe it is sometimes useful to understand the world in terms of “who wins” and “consequences,” in our miserable attempt to discern some version of reality. It is an attempt to bypass thinking of people as static fixtures in some psychological analysis and recognize that they are variable motives with variable goals, but such forces govern us all.
Bleak? The subject here is the destruction of the environment. If your environment is destroyed, your stored wealth, your lands, your relationships do you even know who you are? That is bleak.
Trying to foresee logical consequences in some, perhaps vein, effort to avoid them is by comparison hopeful.
Breath,
Yes, a bleak doomsday scenario is always possible, but is that really what;s happening here ?
On face value the Presidential order simply seems to introduce a level of accountability and reduction of red tape and unnecessary complexity in bureaucratic regulation and administration.
Hardly a new concept, and one which is implemented in some form by nearly every Western government.
I don’t understand you objection to creating a task force to “evaluate existing federal regulations and recommend whether they should be kept, repealed or modified “.
Almost any initiative can be misused and abused, but that can’t be used as an excuse to continue to allow the bureaucracy to remain unfettered, unaccountable and unsupervised by elected officials.
“On face value,” to use your phrase, you’re perfectly correct. But the inferences given Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks are horrifying.