US Politics Mega-thread - Page 411

On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:


Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.

Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law.

On July 04 2018 22:30 Nebuchad wrote:
Don't you still have a Border Patrol on top of ICE?

On July 04 2018 22:30 Nebuchad wrote:
Don't you still have a Border Patrol on top of ICE?

On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:


Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way.

On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:
They have different functions. But the idea of rolling ICE into the BP doesnt make that position any different, unless you view your own favorite government agency as sacred and irreplaceable.

On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:


I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting?

On July 04 2018 22:39 Nebuchad wrote:


The difference is that in that case abolishing ICE wouldn't lead to an open border, even if there's no replacement.

On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:


Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.

Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law.

On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:


I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment.

On July 04 2018 22:46 Introvert wrote:

I'll try to come back to this later if I remember, have to go now.

but quickly, it would require an act of Congress to expand the BP, just like it would to abolish ICE or the EPA. and you have to have internal enforcement as a matter of principle, although you also have to have in the case of the US because crossing the border isnt as hard as it should be. tey enough and you get in. You have de facto open borders without internal enforcement.

On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:


I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment.

On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:

The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge.

ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced.

So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core?

On July 04 2018 23:17 Gorsameth wrote:
If someone wants to argue that the EPA is rotten and needs to be abolished I would first ask for evidence of them being rotten.
We have mountains of it on the ICE.

This leads us to what I call Dietrich's Law: "No one in the EPA is ever sent to jail, or loses their job, or suffers any career setback for failing to do what the law requires." And the corollary: "Many people ruin their careers in the EPA by trying to do what the law demands."

To understand why the Environmental Protection Agency is the way it is, you have to start at the top, and since the EPA is part of the executive branch, that means the White House. The President (any President, Republican or Democrat) and his immediate staff have an agenda of about a half dozen issues with which they are most concerned. These are usually national security, foreign affairs, the economy, the budget, and maybe one or two others; call them Class A priorities. All others—housing, education, transportation, the environment—are Class B.

The President expects performance in Class A. He will expect the military to be able to deploy forces anywhere in the world when an emergency arises, and if it isn't, he will bang heads until it is. If Congress doesn't support his budget, he will bring the budget director into his office and slam his fist on the table. But can you picture the President bringing the Secretary of Transportation into his office and yelling because of poor bus service in Sheboygan? Or calling the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency into the Oval Office to chew him out for pollution in the Cuyahoga River? I can't. That is the difference. The President expects performance in Class A; in Class B he expects peace and quiet.

But regulatory agencies, by their very nature, can do little which doesn't adversely affect business, especially big and influential business, and that disturbs the President's repose. The EPA, for instance, cannot write regulations governing the petroleum industry without the oil companies going to the White House screaming "energy crisis." If it tries to control dioxin emissions, The New York Times (whose paper mill in Canada has been sued for dumping dioxin into the Kapuskasing, Mattagami, and Moose Rivers) writes nasty editorials. If it tries to enforce the Clean Air Act, polluters run to Vice-President Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness for "regulatory relief."

"Nothing has changed. The whole process of federal regulation in America is dreadful. It
is stupid, corrupt, ineffective, inefficient, and is just as bad now as it was then. The insight I have gained “for effective decision making” to help make the system work is just as valid now as it was then."

1) Agencies which enforce regulations should not write the regulations. Specifically, the
President of the United States, the nation’s chief enforcement officer, should not have authority
over the drafting of regulations he is charged with enforcing.

2) The revolving door should be shut. Regulatory agency employees should be prohibited from
working for companies they regulated for a fixed number of years.

3) Whistle blowers should be protected, encouraged and rewarded. They are the most effective
and inexpensive enforcement personnel.

4) To the greatest extent feasible, those whom the regulations are intended to protect should
participate in writing and enforcing the regulations.

I believe that implementing these reforms would make regulatory agencies smaller, more
efficient, less susceptible to corruption, and less likely to write stupid regulations

On July 04 2018 23:39 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Have we talked about affirmative action here? If so what pages can I go back to?

On July 04 2018 23:51 micronesia wrote:
In my work area the EPA regularly enforces their regulations, and everyone I deal with abides by them. Occasional minor deviations are immediately reported to the EPA and resolved. What I'm reading in this thread makes it sound like the EPA is dysfunctional which may depend on which branch of the EPA you are talking about, but definitely isn't true overall.

Regarding the suggestion that Agencies that enforce regulations not write the regulations, who should write the regulations? I'm willing to acknowledge that, at a minimum, the enforcement agency shouldn't write the regulations in a vacuum, but it's not very helpful to say they shouldn't be writing the regulations without saying how the regulations should get written.

On July 04 2018 23:51 micronesia wrote:
In my work area the EPA regularly enforces their regulations, and everyone I deal with abides by them. Occasional minor deviations are immediately reported to the EPA and resolved. What I'm reading in this thread makes it sound like the EPA is dysfunctional which may depend on which branch of the EPA you are talking about, but definitely isn't true overall.

Regarding the suggestion that Agencies that enforce regulations not write the regulations, who should write the regulations? I'm willing to acknowledge that, at a minimum, the enforcement agency shouldn't write the regulations in a vacuum, but it's not very helpful to say they shouldn't be writing the regulations without saying how the regulations should get written.

Look at the flow chart in Appendix 2. If an EPA inspector finds a violation, this only triggers a lengthy complex process with many levels of warning, review, appeal, negotiation, and adjudication before any action is taken (or, more often, avoided). The agency enforcement
procedure resembles the child’s game of “chutes and ladders.”

Compare this with what happens when you park under a “No Parking” sign. A policeman writes a ticket, and you can either pay the fine or tell it to the judge. If the EPA wrote the rules for parking violations, the officer would first have to determine if there were sufficient legal parking available at a reasonable cost and at a reasonable distance, and would then have to stand by the car and wait until the owner showed up so that he could negotiate a settlement agreement*. I propose that the complexity of EPA regulations is a consequence of the fact that the
people who write the regulations are in the same organization as the people who enforce them. Furthermore the complexity is a way of hiding loopholes put in the regulations in order to protect the regulators.

Picture a world in which the police force is part of the district attorney’s office and the district attorney writes the laws that the district attorney is charged with enforcing. This is analogous to the situation that exists in EPA.

As a first step let’s separate EPA into two agencies, one to write regulations and one to enforce them†. This removes the problem of EPA writing regulations to make the enforcement look good while it’s not doing much enforcing. Second, let’s take the regulation writing agency away from the president’s control and make it a commission. Call it the Environmental Regulatory Commission (ERC.) I have not really decided on whether the enforcement arm should be a commission as well. For the time being let’s call it the Environmental Enforcement Agency (EEA.)

Sometime later I realized that it would not be necessary for Congress to expand its staff to write regulations, the staff already existed. EPA has units for drafting regulations, located in its headquarters in the Washington, DC area, and units for enforcing regulations, located mostly in the ten regional offices with a small unit at headquarters. If my scheme were followed the those units which draft regulations would become the body of the Environmental Regulatory Commission (ERC.) It would not be necessary to hire a single soul or to move a single desk. The only thing that would change would be the organization chart. Likewise the enforcement units of EPA would become the body of the Environmental Enforcement Agency (EEA.)