Gosh, it seems like every time I turn on the TV news one of the Republican contenders for the presidential nomination is talking about how the regulations handed down by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are job killers. The idea here is that said regulations are so complex and cumbersome that they stymie small business and large corporations alike.
I would agree that there is a certain degree of truth to this charge. Most of the rules are overly complex and many can be hundreds of pages long. Because of their complex nature, these rules require business to employ a lot of lawyers and scientists to sift through the rules to see what is permitted and what is not.
What is missing from the narrative of all these GOP hopefuls is the why of this situation. Why are the rules overly complex?
The answer to that question is very revealing.
Whenever a rule is established, large corporations immediately get to work trying to find ways around it. In time, with all their financial resources, they usually do find ways around the regulations. So, government has to come up with new rules to thwart these efforts! The corporations then try to figure how to get around the new rules.
It's a cat and mouse game with no end. So, what started out as a straightforward rule to protect public health and safety becomes a tangled patchwork of rules meant to try to thwart the corporations that are trying to avoid being constrained in any way, shape or form.
Since conservative politicians tend to represent the interests of conservative corporations, they end up attacking the complications in EPA rule making that their primary constituency created in the first place. Conservatives don't mention this fact because they hope the American sheeple are too ignorant to put two and two together.
Sadly, they tend to be right on this score!
I would agree that there is a certain degree of truth to this charge. Most of the rules are overly complex and many can be hundreds of pages long. Because of their complex nature, these rules require business to employ a lot of lawyers and scientists to sift through the rules to see what is permitted and what is not.
What is missing from the narrative of all these GOP hopefuls is the why of this situation. Why are the rules overly complex?
The answer to that question is very revealing.
Whenever a rule is established, large corporations immediately get to work trying to find ways around it. In time, with all their financial resources, they usually do find ways around the regulations. So, government has to come up with new rules to thwart these efforts! The corporations then try to figure how to get around the new rules.
It's a cat and mouse game with no end. So, what started out as a straightforward rule to protect public health and safety becomes a tangled patchwork of rules meant to try to thwart the corporations that are trying to avoid being constrained in any way, shape or form.
Since conservative politicians tend to represent the interests of conservative corporations, they end up attacking the complications in EPA rule making that their primary constituency created in the first place. Conservatives don't mention this fact because they hope the American sheeple are too ignorant to put two and two together.
Sadly, they tend to be right on this score!
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