
Trump Prepares to Unveil a Vast Reworking of Clean Water Protections - macawfish
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/climate/trump-clean-water-rollback.html
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mindslight
It is truly amazing how well these shitheads prey on our understandable
frustration with the government to gather support, and redirect that energy
into just creating more corruption to pad someone else's pocket.

Even if downsizing pressure is applied evenly across the board, soft targets
like the EPA take the damage while any reform that would actually cut into
someone's bottom line remains unaffected.

And the worst part is there will be countless cheerleaders who rationalize
this action because the "other team" is upset.

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dmix
Yup I'm deep into the reducing government waste camp but of ALL the things to
focus on that hurt business they focus on the one thing that's a compromise
for something better, not just straight up wasteful interference in markets.
There are a hundred better things to spend time on.

There is an endless legacy of old agency mandates and legislation that started
with good intentions to 'help the little guy' or whatnot that are a completely
net negative for everyone (except a few politically connected companies).

The EPA is not even a 'soft target', there are plenty of low hanging fruit.
It's just a very public and obvious economic intervention, so it gets plenty
of attention. Meanwhile the million other things the government has their
hands in goes unnoticed.

Politics is cancerous.

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gdubs
Vernal pools are an extremely important part of the ecosystem and also play a
role in carbon sequestration.

The background of all of this begins with a farmer named Duarte who plowed a
wetland on his property and ended up with a huge fine. It became a divisive
issue; some cried government overreach, others said he should have listened to
the army corps of engineers.

But there’s a reason we have an Environmental Protection Agency — people by-
and-large aren’t going to go out of their way to protect these natural
resources. There are exceptions, and I know conservation minded farmers — but
if you look at the aggregate of farming in America, well, it’s pretty terrible
for the environment.

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__Joker
Yes. There is a reason governments should be involved in this. Climate
control, environment protection are classic game theory problem. Individual
can profit from destroying a little bit of the environment but as a group we
lose. Essentially governments do the group bargaining. Unless there is a group
which represents all people government has to play that part.

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masonic
Text of the Obama administration rule:

[https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/29/2015-13...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/29/2015-13435/clean-
water-rule-definition-of-waters-of-the-united-states)

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cimmanom
And by “reworking” they mean “undermining”?

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masonic

      “They’re definitely rolling things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era,”
    

This is a flat lie, given that the Obama rule wasn't even put in place until
the last 18% of his administration (barely _14 months_ before Trump's
election).

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cazum
The Bush rule is that "wetlands will keep their federal protection"

The Obama rule is "farms near those wetlands cannot do bad thing to the
wetlands"

By repealing the Obama rule, they are inherently repealing the Bush one.

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mc32
Sure, but that is not the same as the tacit claim "They’re definitely rolling
things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era".

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addicted
Except that comment is likely referencing the regulatory environment, for
which it is correct to state that the regulations are being rolled back to
what they were before HW’s changes in this area.

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dsfyu404ed
This is what we get for putting so much power to interpret and enforce law in
bureaucratic agencies.

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FlyMoreRockets
So, we should empower corporations to do the right thing without oversight?

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dsfyu404ed
We should make the legislative branch exercise more direct control over the
alphabet soup of administrative agencies.

I thought that was obvious but I guess not.

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oculusthrift
don’t get why you’re being downvoted. it legislation was passed then it would
be much harder to revoke with the next president on a whim

