EPA Picks on Farmers

3 thoughts on “EPA Picks on Farmers”

1. Well put. Also, as democracies grow the concept of “minority” becomes strained. If 49% of the population of the USA seceded, they could form the eighth most populous country in the world. Politicians and activists love to toss around the word “majority” and skip past the fact that “minority” can mean more than 155 million people. Even if 88% of Americans agree on something, the number of people who disagree is larger than the population of Canada. This first caught my attention several years ago when an Australian actor on a late show pointed out that the least popular prime time TV show in America was watched by more people than the population of Australia. When you start to wrap your head around what the word “minority” really means in America, the winner-takes-all attitude loses a lot of merit.

2. I like the term “thugocracy”. Our modern Western democracies tend to foster totalitarian tendencies. This was something that was first identified by de Tocqueville
   “Tocqueville warned that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny…..Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as ‘perpetual children’, and which doesn’t break men’s wills but rather guides it, and presides over people in the same way as a shepherd looking after a ‘flock of timid animals'” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville ).
   I call this “totalitarian democracy” where the majority impose their will on the minority for the purpose of social engineering. As you may recall, a “bolshevik” was a member of the majority party. A Bolshevist believes that in a democracy the majority have the right to impose their will on the minority. A Menshevik believes that the majority should respect the rights of the minority to live according to accepted customs without being forced to participate in social engineering schemes.
   A simple example is the right to use incandescent light bulbs, the denial of which was typical Bolshevism in the context of American democracy..

3. I like the “please send back” the originals. Right, and if the unredacted documents came back, it certainly would be after copies had been made.
   The crazy part of this is CAFO’s generally require permits which are in the public domain and, in some places, show up on web-searchable databases as permits with addresses. In addition, you can pretty much figure out the locations of high concentration animal operations from Google Earth. Some information ought to remain confidential. However, confidential business information on an application generally means that you can’t get a copy of the information but it doesn’t prevent you from going into the local office and reading the file and taking notes.
   Sounds like the EPA personnel wants to make life easier for their buddies and those folks need to be out of the Agency.