We have all seen the mid-level EPA
administrator in the video talking about his philosophy of enforcement, which might
be summed up as: “We make a few examples and everyone else stays in line.” And I’m glad that he is no longer in
his post, though he should have been fired, not allowed to resign.
The problem is not simply with
Mr. Armendariz; it is not simply that he is not a satrap for some absolute
monarch, free to interpret the law as he pleases. (It was clear that he wanted the law to work that way, that
is exactly what he said – more than a year ago. And we must assume that he pursued that policy as much as he
was able until this public airing of the video forced him to recant.
What he demonstrated, and the
reason why he should have been fired, was that he demonstrated precisely how a
nation of laws does NOT work.
Further, I suspect that his actions were an indication of more than the
extent to which the Obama administration hates the oil and gas industry. That hate is relatively insignificant
when placed against a much larger issue: the issue of the corruption and abuse
of power.
Now the abuse of power is not
new; it has been going on for 6,000 years at least. But it seems as if it has been increasing over the last
several years (in the US and world-wide).
While we can debate what it is about power that is so corrosive of
morals and behavior, the simple fact is that it is intolerable in a democracy,
in any nation that believes that bureaucrats and elected officials are the
servants of the people, and that they must be held to strict accountability at
all times.
Mr. Armendariz’s video
demonstrated at a minimum a flippancy to the rule of law. It is probably more accurate to say
that he believes, as do many in government, certainly many that worked for him,
with him, and presumably those he worked for (who did not correct his behavior,
but whose hands were forced only when – more than a year after that video, a
member of Congress made it public) that the law is what they say it is. It is all well and good for people to
assert that ‘he was just saying this for effect,’ and that ‘he
apologized.’ But the fact is that
the abuse of power is part of the process of usurpation of power by those in
government. And it must never be
tolerated to any degree if we wish to keep our freedoms.
While elected officials are at
least subject to recall by irate voters, the bureaucrats who work in the vast
regulatory agencies of the federal government are not. In fact, with the exception of the most
senior officers in those various agencies, getting one removed for anything
other than clearly illegal activity is difficult at best. Yet these same regulators have, over
time, come to assume the de facto power of Congress. Legislation is passed creating an office and giving it
general powers. (Sometimes, there
isn’t even legislation, simply a decision by the President, as President Nixon
did in establishing the Environmental Protection Agency by executive
order.) Once the office is created
the bureaucrats expand on these general orders with the crafting of
regulations. The only boundaries
on those regulations are the imagination of the regulators, and the willingness
of someone to sue them when the regulations become truly onerous. There is no process of review unless
people – citizens – object. And
then you have a citizen or business fighting against an entrenched bureaucracy with
all the power of the federal government behind them.
This lack of any serious review
of the expansion of powers has stripped the citizenry of real powers and
transferred it into the hands of bureaucrats like the would-be petty dictators
at EPA. At a minimum there should
be a thorough investigation of the EPA, as well as the dismissal of Mr.
Armendariz’s immediate superior.
The nominal Inspector General’s office in the EPA should also be
reviewed. Then Congress must take
up the debate of just how much latitude an agency had to draft regulations and
what procedures might be implemented to force some sort of real, rather than
cursory, oversight of these bureaucrats and petty dictators.
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