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Bureaucracies — if they won’t do their job, it’s time to get rid of them.

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September 23, 2008

EPA won’t limit toxic pollutant in drinking water

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there’s no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

This should be a crime. If this was China, or some other country, we would be in an outright uproar.

Well, if the officials at the EPA, FDA, FCC, etc. etc won’t do their high paid jobs and protect the people of the USA from this crap, it’s time to just get rid of them altogether.

We’re so deep in debt right now, that we could use the extra money. Let these damn bureaucrats see how the Average Joe lives without a Federal job and all it’s cushy benefits.

Posted by on September 23, 2008. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

14 Responses to Bureaucracies — if they won’t do their job, it’s time to get rid of them.

  1. pollchecker

    September 23, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Just goes to show what you know — NOT! I actually voted for Ron Paul in the primaries.

  2. griff

    September 23, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Careful pollchecker, you’re starting to sound like a Ron Paul girl.

    “Most departments, with the exception of State, Defense, and Justice, deal with matters that our Constitution properly leaves to the states or to the people, and the people should no longer be exploited to support them. For too long, swarms of Washington bureaucrats have grown fat with wealth and power – all in the name of the ‘common good,’ they assure us – at the expense of the beleaguered American people. That must come to an end.”

    -Ron Paul (The Revolution: A Manifesto, 2008, Grand Central Publishing, p. 161)

  3. sherry

    September 23, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    Never mind our water is polluted with Pharma. Anti depressants, pain killers, etc.
    I have a water filter which makes my water taste delicious. When I shower however or wash my hands, the stench of chlorine is overpowering. It scares me to think what I could be ingesting sans filter.
    That said, I live on a beautiful river. Whatever fish there are cannot be consumed. There are chemical plants all along the river. A neighbors father used to test for an enviornmental company on the river. There was one set of tests for the EPA and another for the company.
    Surely the EPA was smarter than that.
    Or not.

  4. pollchecker

    September 23, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    Here is another example I just ran across. I could find dozens of them in fact.

    “Chemical equator” divides hemispheres: scientists

    I say get rid of the EPA if they are not doing their job. We need all the money we can get to pay off GW’s debt. Give the environmental issues back to the states. That’s how it is suppose to work in the first place anyways.

    Let’s sell off the Post Office as well. All we get in the mail these days is junk anyways.

    If the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats can not do thier jobs, then they should not have a job.

    Besides, they aren’t looking out for us. They are looking out for the Lobbyist and thier clients.

  5. griff

    September 23, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    I knew you had it in you.

  6. pollchecker

    September 23, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    I did it only because I wanted to vote against a corrupt DA in my county who happened to be a REpublican. Additionally any time I can vote against John McCain, I will gladly take the opportunity unless he is running against a man with the last name of BUSH.

  7. gazelle1929

    September 23, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    I think you are misplacing your anger and concern. It is not the bureaucrats who are perpetrating crap like this, it’s the political appointees who run the top-level policies of an agency that are screwing you over.

    Regardless of what you may believe, bureaucrats are for the most part good workers, people who have sacrificed higher-paying career offers because they want to help their fellow citizens. There are some who view the bureaucracy as an unofficial fourth branch of government, whose very existence is a control on the three branches set forth in the Constitution, particularly the executive.

    For example, James G. Watt, who may have been one of the worst appointees in American history (and that’s saying a lot) was kept in check not by the people above him, but by the people below him at the Department of Interior. They dragged their collective little feet for three years, nitpicking to death regulatory changes Watt wanted to get through, resisting evil changes, often at the expense of their careers, ameliorating to a large extent the damage Watt did to the United States and the environment.

    Someday an enterprising grad student is going to write a book about that time and I hope she’s a shoe-in for the Pulitzer Prize for History.

  8. pollchecker

    September 23, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    I’m quite sure there are good bureaucrats however, my contention is that under this administration or McCain’s administration, they must abide by the administration’s expectations or else lose their job. I can cite a multitude of examples to back this up.

    The good guys end up quitting because they either can’t abide the political s**t or they under up being a whistleblower and lose their job anyways.

    I’ve tried to think of a bureaucracy that is actually doing their job. The only one I can come up with is possibly the CDC.

  9. gazelle1929

    September 23, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    I can think of several offhand.

    FAA — I am certainly not worried about the technical part of airplane flights. Their first concern is and always has been the safety of the citizen-passenger.

    The auto safety people — no matter what anyone else thinks, in my view there are tens of thousands of people alive today because they insisted on higher safety standards for automobiles.

    The drug part of FDA — within the limits set by Congress they do a darned fine job of keeping bad drugs off the market. Thalidomide is my favorite instance of a bureaucrat’s winning the big important one.

    The TVA — they produce an awful lot of electricity at very competitive rates.

    The Coast Guard — what can anyone say bad about them?
    They just get it done and get it done right.

    The Government Accountability Office (formerly General Accounting Office) — There are many unsung heroes there, people who work tirelessly to expose the worst of government practices.

    The National Weather Service — it’s not their fault that people don’t heed their advice.

    To a great extent NASA — I know people complain that we should be spending money for planetside stuff, but we would be scientifically moribund without their contributions over the years. NASA has its downside, but overall they get a B or a B+ in my grade book.

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — parent of NWS and excellent scientists who work diligently to tell us more about our environment. Parenthetically one of only two uniformed services in the US Government which are not also armed services. The other is the commissioned officer corps of the Public Health Services.

    USPS — I care not what negative things others may say of them, but the Postal Service in our country is superb. If you haven’t thanked your postal carrier recently you should do so soon.

  10. pollchecker

    September 23, 2008 at 10:59 pm

    I have a friend who works for the FAA and since Bush privatized a large part of it, well, it’s not as good as you might think. But you won’t know that until we have another air disaster.

    Nasa was responsible for the deaths of people in the space shuttle.

    The Coast Guard is military so I don’t consider it a bureaucracy.

    The Post Office I disagree totally and feel they should be the first to be sold off and privatized. They suck!

    As for the TVA, our electric grid is out of date and if I remember correctly, didn’t we have a massive power failure in the Northeast a few years ago?

    The FDA is up for sale ESPECIALLY the drug part. Remember Vioxx?

    As for the rest, I’ll give you them FOR NOW.

    But as I said, we’ll give them all one more chance and if they can’t do what is right, then get rid of them. I know it’s extreme but why waste good money that we really need to pay down this HUGE debt.

  11. gazelle1929

    September 24, 2008 at 8:58 am

    Vioxx? Yes, I remember Vioxx. It was taken off the market because the FDA published research showing how unsafe it was, not in spite of it.

    People don’t understand how the FDA works. Their charter is to study the data the drug companies present and decide if that data supports a decision to allow the drug on the market. They rely on the honesty of drug companies. If the drug companies falsify data the FDA gets the blame. Sheesh. But I think you will find that there have been no lawsuits in the Vioxx aftermath that either blame the mess on FDA or have resulted in judgments against the agency.

    As to the TVA and the power outage in the northeast: the TVA’s grid doesn’t come anywhere near where the outages happened. IIRC the big one in NYC was caused by something that happened either in Canada or along the border with Canada. How can that be TVA’s fault?

    Yes, NASA had fourteen astronaut deaths. The Challenger tragedy probably should not have happened, but the second one was a total accident. Space exploration is a risky business, and all of the astronauts know there are huge risks involved. There are also huge payoffs. I personally cannot tell you whether the payoffs are worth the risks; having said that I will say I’d take a seat on the shuttle any time. The chance to see the Earth from space would be worth dying for in my opinion.

  12. pollchecker

    September 24, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Gazelle, I don’t mean to imply govt is bad, I mean to imply BIG GOVT is irresponsible which is bad and this has to stop.

    I’m pissed off just like a lot of people in this country.

    And the bottom line, is either these damn bureaucracies start working more efficiently for WE THE PEOPLE or they need to go bye-bye because we just can’t afford to continue to pay for political lame ducks any longer.

    I’m just sick and tired of it! And I know I speak for a lot of people out there.

  13. pollchecker

    September 24, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Just another example of waste although this is no surprise. Anyone familar with Medicare understands the fraud that goes on daily. Every time I watch a TV commercial that says Medicare will pay for something, GUARANTEED, I want to throw my shoe at the TV. Check this out.

    Shoes for amputees? Medicare waste revealed

    The government paid more than $1 billion in questionable Medicare claims for medical supplies that showed little relation to a patient’s condition, including blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and special diabetic shoes for leg amputees, congressional investigators say.

    Billions more in taxpayer dollars may have been wasted over the last decade because the government-run health program for the elderly and disabled paid out claims with blank or invalid diagnosis codes, such as a “?” or “zzzzz.” Medicare officials say even smiley-face icons could have been accepted.

    The report by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee, obtained by The Associated Press, is the latest to detail lax oversight in the $400 billion program that has been cited by government auditors as a high-risk for fraud and waste for nearly 20 years.

  14. pollchecker

    October 1, 2008 at 10:37 am

    With revenues falling, the post office owes its future to stuff we throw out.

    I still say the Post Office should be the first bureaucracy to go. Sell it to UPS, or Fedex or DHL or some other guy.