When it comes to rules, religions are rarely moderate. There’s little wriggle room: Thou shalt not worship other Gods. Period. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Period. Not even a little bit.
Good? Bad? That’s in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, although I have a certain sympathy for some of these positions. But when this attitude leaks into politics, not only does it lead to a no-compromise mindset that results in governmental freeze, it also leads to dangerous policy moves – for the citizenry. Steve Benen has a lovely example:
For much of the last few years, Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to ease rules on mercury pollution from power plants, not simply as part of a general hostility toward environmental safeguards, but specifically to help the coal industry, which the president sees as a political ally.
What I did not expect, however, is for the Republican administration to go further down this road than even the industry expected or wanted. The Washington Post had a striking report on this yesterday.
For more than three years, the Trump administration has prided itself on working with industry to unshackle companies from burdensome environmental regulations. But as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to finalize the latest in a long line of rollbacks, the nation’s power sector has sent a different message: Thanks, but no thanks.
The article noted that Exelon, one of the nation’s largest utilities, told the EPA that its effort to change a rule that has cut emissions of mercury and other toxins is “an action that is entirely unnecessary, unreasonable, and universally opposed by the power generation sector.”
Coarse fixations on fine-grain issues inevitably results in bad policy. Here we’re seeing it in regulations, as a frequent refrain from the Republicans is Regulation is bad!
It’s not hard to find others. Taxation should leap right to mind, as illustrated by the Kansas debacle I far too frequently reference. Another is the 2017 Federal tax reform bill, which independent economists have waved off as ineffective – and measurements of the economy have confirmed as not reaching its pie-in-the-sky goals.
But I note a party suffused with religion, primarily the evangelicals, married to a set of political positions with an absolutist tenor that is absolutely inappropriate and marks adherents as second-raters. This is what Barry Goldwater warned us about – and, for those of us older than I, doesn’t he look like a moderate these days?
Next time you run into a Republican screaming we’re overregulated, point him at that Post article, and then tell him that, no, he’s not done doing government. Not even close. Government doesn’t guarantee corporate profits; it tries to ensure citizen safety as balanced against freedom, etc.
