This is mainly for 1poorguy who happens to like following what EPA is doing. Although the following list says 2012, it is the list of regulatory actions EPA is planning to take in 2013.

http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaMain;jsessionid=BDA2...

PSUEngineer says

This is mainly for 1poorguy who happens to like following what EPA is doing. Although the following list says 2012, it is the list of regulatory actions EPA is planning to take in 2013.

http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaMain;jsessionid=BDA2......


Is it the sheer length of the list that is making your feel faint? An engineer should know better.

Thanks for thinking of me. That's quite a list. It would take a while to wade through all that, though the first item could be bad (withdrawal of federal guidance for water standards??). So some (many?) of those regulatory actions appear to be easing of regulations instead of actually trying to protect the public.

Sad given that we have a Dem POTUS.

Problem is not the POTUS, problem is that the upper management spots in the EPA are still leftovers from the prior administration, tightly tucked in, spending their time stymying efforts by staff to move forward in may areas... Various old mining sites are not getting better, will release nasties (heavy metals, compounds) into the watershed, creeks, rivers, and need to be addressed. Instead the boss shelves them, they are still in the mill, but there will be some serious results one day, that could have been fixed, or at least slowed cheaper today than they ever will be down the line.. And as folks retire out, how many do you suppose there are to dig into old cases?


A hasty mess in the EPA, and I bet similar in all the other Federal Departments where this admin has not been able to clear the decks of dummies put in place by GWB.... Sickening.. Literally..

Problem is not the POTUS, problem is that the upper management spots in the EPA are still leftovers from the prior administration, tightly tucked in... A hasty mess in the EPA, and I bet similar in all the other Federal Departments where this admin has not been able to clear the decks of dummies put in place by GWB.... Sickening.. Literally..

Naive question:

If Bumbler Bush could manage to squeeze his Brownies into every nook & cranny of guv'mt, then why can't super-intellect Obama manage to do the same?

If Bumbler Bush could manage to squeeze his Brownies into every nook & cranny of guv'mt, then why can't super-intellect Obama manage to do the same?

Short answer: There are fewer nooks and crannies. Republicans held up Clinton appointments, which kept a lot of top slots open. Lower slots weren't filled until the top slots were except oops, they couldn't get confirmed. All that changes in 2001, of course, with a Republican Prez and Republican Congress.

More than that, during the period 2001-2009 the KIND of person appointed was different. Where before they might have been competent and moderate, the Bush White House (and its appointees were extreme hard liners (just look at the number of DoJ appointees from Right Wing Religious Whacko "Law Schools") who only hire more hard liners.

Now comes the meltdown of 2008, people don't leave for the private sector because there is very little private sector hiring, Federal hiring isn't exactly booming, and you have a lot of Right Wing extremists in positions that would normally be filled by moderates and/or appointments from the current administration.

My SIL was in HHS since Nixon, and she said whenever saw anything like it. She tried to hold on to keep her slot filled with someone who wasn't a nut job, and as soon as Obama was elected she retired. But her job still went to someone of the Right persuasion, because she was second or third tier, not a job that the President gets to appoint.

Better question is why confirmations of replacement appointees were held up in Congress?... I just read an article that a big batch were finally pushed through as Congress closed... The Gonzo's & Brownies were plopped all over all departments.. I only know of the EPA problem because of a few cases my BIL tried pushing...

Obama can make the appointments just fine, but the confirmation process is the culprit in the cleanup... I think he managed to slip a few in if Congress actually closed down, but remember they kept one guy on the floor over holidays, earlier in his term to stop those.. The Party of No is still up to it's mischief...

... during the period 2001-2009 the KIND of person appointed was different. Where before they might have been competent and moderate, the Bush White House (and its appointees were extreme hard liners (just look at the number of DoJ appointees from Right Wing Religious Whacko "Law Schools") who only hire more hard liners. Now comes the meltdown of 2008, people don't leave for the private sector because there is very little private sector hiring, Federal hiring isn't exactly booming, and you have a lot of Right Wing extremists in positions that would normally be filled by moderates and/or appointments from the current administration.

Ummm... then, fire them. Obama was the head of the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States of America the last time I checked. If he can't for some legal reason, then sideline them and put an Acting in charge. Assign the righties to lead the EPA Dumpster Inspection Service or the Extraordinary Lawn Chair Hazards Unit. Send them on sabbatical to Tierra Del Fuego or to Branson MO or Slab City CA. Make them patrol the Mexican border where the drug lords operate, collecting samples to document the environmental risks of ordnance-derived lead poisoning. Assign them to clean up nuclear waste in New Mexico. Or (best of all) assign them to write 1,000 page Archival Project Reports. Since righties hate to read or think, let alone write - this would cause them to self-deport from the planet via suicide.

Do you think for a minute that Dick Cheney would stop at less? Or is Obama just a big wimp? Why the heck did we vote for a guy who can't even clean out low-level Brownies?

If Bumbler Bush could manage to squeeze his Brownies into every nook & cranny of guv'mt, then why can't super-intellect Obama manage to do the same?

Couple of reasons.

1. Bush had a complacent and compliant Congress that allowed him to put these people into the positions (who usually knew nothing, were political treu followers, many from Bob Jones <ahem> University and similar <ahem> schools of <ahem> higher <ahem> edumacation).

2. The number of open positions was extreme and large due to almost a decade of Republican blockage of any reasonable people that Clinton could have put in place (This was and is still a Republican SOP).

3. Once in place the Bush appointees ignored the standard meritocracy system and started selecting only similar minds below them who then also selected similar minds on down. A few years of this and you have stuffed the department with political hacks who then are there for decades.

4. Obama now struggles with the same thing Clinton had to contend with times 10 with the Republicans who are still trying to both corrupt and make the departments totally dysfunctional.

You can destroy a meritocracy system quite quickly this way and it then takes decades to both flush the system of the moles, retire them, or fire them. The best move is to make a department of "Special Peoples", laterally move them, and then let then count sands of grain on the beach at Point Reyes, Oregon. A nice remote and very windy place where they can enjoy fog, wind, and cold.

http://www.nps.gov/pore/historyculture/people_maritime_light...

It is easy to destroy things, systems, machines.....much more difficult to create them, maintain them, or repair them.

md

Ummm... then, fire them.

You don't know how it works, apparently. Because of abuses like 'random firing' in the 19th century (actually since the beginning of the Republic) this thing called "civil service" was enacted. It had become a dysfunctional feature of government, almost like a regime change for dictators, so most jobs were put beyond the reach of a new incoming administration. It was thought that this would provide better continuity of services - and it did, but not without some problems of its own.

Assign the righties to lead the EPA Dumpster Inspection Service or the Extraordinary Lawn Chair Hazards Unit. Send them on sabbatical to Tierra Del Fuego or to Branson MO or Slab City CA

You seem to think there are thousands of Federal workers just sitting around with thousands more ready to take their place when they are assigned to these useless fantasy jobs you have concocted. There aren't.

Further, there are layers, and the President only gets to appoint to the top layers. So all those legal mopes from Bob Jones University (who have limited prospects in the real world anyway) are marking time, gaining seniority, and hiring other fanatics (almost like sleeper cells) until they control a significant part of the machinery. Where are you going to out them and still get anything done?

I've already mentioned my SIL. She was in HHS for 40 years, through plenty of both R and D administrations, but during the Bush years she would say "They're hiring people who absolutely think there should be no HHS Department!" But who would do the minimum necessary to stay. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I know it sounds fantasmagorical, but from her inside perspective it's exactly what has happened (lately.) it sounded so perverse to me, and then I remembered I have a BIL who is a hard core Libertarian, who hates government, who works for the City of Philadelphia. Seriously. He's an electrician, could easily get a job in the private sector, but takes the government job because it's "secure" and the benefits are decent.

I have this vision of all thse Bob Jones University regulation hating zealots in the very agency that's charged with enforcing regulations, looking over the shoulders of bankers, etc. and I despair.

There has always been politics with civil service, but it's being played at a whole new level lately, just like appointments for the USSC and elsewhere. The Left had better up its game, because the Right is winning in many levels. Heck, the "Leftist" President is to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon. What does that tell you? (And I happen to believe it would be nearly impossible to elect someone to the left of Obama.)

If Bumbler Bush could manage to squeeze his Brownies into every nook & cranny of guv'mt, then why can't super-intellect Obama manage to do the same?

The issue is not whether Obama can get them in or not so much as can he root out or rout the large majority of the obstacles?

The people that should be in those positions should have administrative capacities and usually environmental expertise with modestly specialized knowledge of their areas. The people that should not be in these positions only need to be capable of obstruction, using their powers to sabotage. This can be done in a variety of ways, legal and illegal, and is typically a lot easier. When these people are stooges for the industries that they are supposed to regulate, they can be incredibly obstructive by keeping industry and lobbyists informed of goings on; the industry and lobbyists can work with industry to get any perceived threats neutered.

People who shouldn't be there can often count on industry to reward them handsomely should they be ousted from their jobs. People who should be often have much less attractive options.

Finally, when push comes to shove, hookers and blow can be very effective in corrupting, blackmailing, or otherwise effectively neutralizing competent employees.

It's highly asymmetric.

rj

NTJ: Ummm... then, fire them. Obama was the head of the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States of America the last time I checked. If he can't for some legal reason, then sideline them and put an Acting in charge.

There are a lot of details here, and they matter.

There are political appointments, and they must be approved by the senate (IIRC, they are listed in the "plum book"). The Republican minority has done a more than credible job of blocking Obama appointees. Obama's appointees for the most part are rather centrist/corporatist, despite what many would have you believe. The president can appoint many of them when congress is in recess, but there are significant limitations there.

Below that are the civil service positions. These are positions that to significant degree are protected against political influence, and make up the ranks of government service. Getting political hacks into these position can be, and is, done (and is called "burrowing"), but it takes a lot of time and will, and is made much harder by not having the top-level appointees in place, and is much easier if certain CS positions have been subverted (IGs, the GSA, personnel dep'ts, ...).

[Disclaimer: it has been many years since I lived near DC and knew a few people in the GS hierarchy.]

rj

MDGluon: You can destroy a meritocracy system quite quickly this way and it then takes decades to both flush the system of the moles, retire them, or fire them. The best move is to make a department of "Special Peoples", laterally move them, and then let then count sands of grain on the beach at Point Reyes, Oregon. A nice remote and very windy place where they can enjoy fog, wind, and cold.

Back in the '70s, when the Social Security Administration was located in Woodlawn, MD, it occupied a complex of four large buildings. The largest of these was called "The Turkey Farm" by outsiders, and was reputed to have very strict attendance standards.

rj

Ummm... then, fire them.

That was my thought also. Even if Obama can't get his guys in, getting the incompetent/malevolent people out is a positive. Better NO head than one who will stonewall attempts to regulate and monitor polluters.

The Left had better up its game, because the Right is winning in many levels.

But the Right people seem so... well, unintelligent. Bush. Cheney. Hannity. McCain. Palin, for god sakes. Everyone who watches Fox News. And the entire Repug House of Representatives.

How can the smart people like Obama lose to such dopes? Are you saying that intelligence is a handicap in Government?

Are you saying that intelligence is a handicap in Government?

I'll say it, and I'll go you one further.

Intelligence is a handicap in the minds of at least half of America and that is why America is seeing its lunch being eaten.

The dumbing of America is moving along at a frightening clip.

Too many people don't value education.