Obama halts controversial EPA regulation is an AP news story. The subheading for the story and the first paragraph appear below:
Obama directs EPA to withdraw controversial proposed regulation on smog standards
President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration’s controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.
Later in the article, we have this amazing statement.
In his statement, the president said that withdrawing the regulation did not reflect a weakening of his commitment to protecting public health and the environment.
“I will continue to stand with the hardworking men and women at the EPA as they strive every day to hold polluters accountable and protect our families from harmful pollution,” he said.
He should have said that he will stand with the citizens of this country hacking their lungs out over the cancer causing pollutants that he is too cowardly to try to stop.
When the President indicates that he has already bought into the Republican propaganda before he even sits down to negotiate, you know our lungs haven’t got a prayer.
I wonder when Obama will tell us that gravity is what keeps the apple connected to the tree branch and prevents it from falling.
In an earlier post, I explained the use of the word tautology. I figured I needed the antonym here. One suggestion was oxymoron.
- (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which two words with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.
- (loosely) A contradiction in terms.
- A paradoxical juxtaposition of two seemingly contradictory words.
A more complex reason for bringing up the term, oxymoron, can be seen by comparing another paragraph from the article referenced here:
The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.
and the quote from my subsequent post Regulations, Taxes Aren’t Killing Small Business, Owners Say.
Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.
The part about reducing the regulatory burden is just dumbfounding. I heard a news report of an estimated cost of the regulations as $19 to $90 billion dollars. The President was reported to have said that this was too big a burden at this time. Does he think that the money was going to be used directly to plug up smoke stacks and be burned in the process? That $19 to $90 billion would have been spent buying pollution control technology. That would have meant job creation for the people producing and installing the technology. The money might have had to come from industry’s cash reserves that are sitting idle. This President apparently understands nothing about economics and how to stimulate an economy. Why did I ever think he had the intelligence to understand this?