Monday, November 28, 2011

Good Government

Is minimal government. Here's someone advocating for the abolition of the EPA, which is certainly a worthy cause:

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson recently told University of Wisconsin-Madison students that she is proud to work for a President who will bypass Congress and create his own rules via executive order: ‘I’m proud to be part of an EPA that has mobilized science and the law to create modern and innovative protections for the health of the American people. I’m also proud to be working for a president who has said that “we can’t wait” on these issues.’

Jackson may think our President is a king. Yet the Constitution prohibits the President from making laws or delegating lawmaking to an extra-Congressional committee. Federalist and framer Alexander Hamilton explains in “The Federalist No. 78” that Congress controls the purse strings and makes laws while the president merely enforces the laws: “The Executive ... holds the sword of the community.”

Personally I'd settle for a rewrite of the agency's charter that would require all the rules and directives it issues to be approved by both houses of congress before being inflicted on the American people.

Along the same lines someone else is proposing essentially the same thing for the department of Transportation. You know, the folks that won't let you widen your roads unless half the money they give you (back) is spent to establish a state-wide network of barge canals.
The Golden Gate Bridge is an ironic* American structure. It was finished in just four years and came in $1.3 million under budget. Earlier this month, California Senator Dianne Feinstein acknowledged that could not happen today: “…it would take a hundred years to do it with all the permits we need.”
*O.K. it's made of iron, but I suspect the word the author was looking for was "iconic". I blame spelling autocorrection. Anyway both are good articles.

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