Part of the idea of draining the swamp in favor of a fair government is stopping, and in most cases reversing, the massive amounts of federal rules and regulations that U.S. citizens are force to follow.
Somehow, it became possible for the government to not only dictate land use, personal property use, or anything similar use, but hold you accountable for breaking regulations, most times without any sort of due process.
There have been numerous horror stories regarding how the government banned people from building a pond in their backyard to water stock because it would somehow affect national waterways or something.
I’ve also pointed out recently that in the Biden administration, regulations were being considered to change how washing machines worked, and even ban natural gas appliances, such as central heating units and stoves, because reasons.
The environmental torchbearers in D.C. also have dictated that Americans can produce only very low GPM toilets and must stop producing incandescent light bulbs in favor of LED or those weird swirly fluorescent (and apparently economically unsound) bulbs.
The EPA isn’t the only organization in Washington that puts out these mandates; the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, just to name a few, all take ceded authority from Congress and the administration and put forth regulations, all without legislation or even input from the population.
The FDA decides what medicine you can have, the USDA decides what goes into school lunches, the Security and Exchange Commission decides how you can invest, ad infinitum. Want to spend your money? Don’t take out more than $10,000 from the bank, or it will be reported to the feds.
A couple of things come to mind about this: since the inception of the numerous agencies and their propensity to regulate everything from the weather to recommended daily allowances of zinc, everything has gotten more expensive, and everything takes so much longer to complete because ridiculous paperwork requirements.
For instance, I heard a commentator on talk radio show point out that the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile project to ship natural gas, has taken 12 years to complete; the Empire State Building, however, a 102-floor edifice in the heart of New York City, was completed in 1 year.
The second, a larger problem that I hope is addressed, is whether or not the federal government has the constitutional authority to oversee the environment, and light bulbs, and stoves.
So it was refreshing to see, as reported last week, that the new director of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, is starting to chip away at the agency’s interference. While it’s not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen, it’s a start, one that I hope that is the first domino in a long chain of deregulation efforts.
Personally, I would like to see them include TSA in that, and maybe make travel great again.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He writes opinion articles and his views do not necessarily reflect those of this newspaper. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
