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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (63248)	5/4/2008 7:39:16 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542301

Don't you feel a little odd posting an article supporting pounding the table over global warming? The cognitive dissonance of that is a little alarming. No, I don't feel odd. The article supported my point very well so I used it. The point was that the party in the WH at any given time has been irrelevant to the introduction of runoff, in case you have lost track of it. And my sub-point that, with one brief exception, there was not a significant difference in the greenness of EPA administrations during my time there. I don't see how cognitive dissonance plays into that. And I don't see anything that you have posted during this colloquy that undermines my assertion. And no, I don't believe you. As anticipated. The admin sets the tone for how forcefully the agencies will advance their agendas. You seem to be forgetting that it is Congress that makes the laws, not the administration. And states and localities, which are key in this case. If there is no law, the agency has no agenda to advance, withhold, or undermine. To the best of my knowledge, no federal administration, no matter how statist, has yet to ban the all-American lawn and the all-American car and none is likely to do so. Some localities may have addressed these pollution sources but not on a scale large enough to matter. As for the federal role, withholding support for that part of the extant program makes no sense. No one, regardless of party or greenness, favors dumping untreated municipal waste into the ocean. In all this partisan rivalry, sometimes people forget that established environmental programs are generally popular across the board. I know people who work in agencies- I know you think you are the expert par excellence, but some of my good friends from law school work in DC in agencies. There is a lot of variation among agencies. We were discussing the operation of one agency, the one about which I can speak with the most authority, and one program, to which I had some exposure but on which I am far from an authority. I have friends in other agencies, too. A friend at the SBA was jerked around something fierce with every change in administrations, as you might imagine. But the SBA has not been a player in the runoff problem so that's neither here nor there. Re my second (of two) points, that overload from global warming alarmists ironically compromises opportunities for environmental improvement, that is just an opinion on a topic to which I cannot bring any authority at all, only observation and logic. It's my opinion and just my opinion. It's a sincere and thoughtful one, if odd, one in which I have confidence but can in no way validate, and not one I would expect to resonate here.