Is the Environmental Protection Agency trying to worsen our ailing economy, or does it just look that way?
As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
But let's not quibble over the appropriate label for EPA bureaucrats or try to fathom their motivations. If the EPA's increasingly Draconian regulations are destroying jobs and businesses and wreaking havoc on our economy, do we really care whether they're well-intentioned or not?
The important thing is to stop the enforcement of new regulations before more crippling harm is done.
To his credit, West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw has joined with colleagues from 24 other states and Guam to file an amicus brief urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to delay the latest round of stringent EPA emissions regulations for at least one year.
The EPA's proposed "utility rule," scheduled for implementation next month, would establish air pollution thresholds that offer no significant health benefits and are so low as to be unachievable for many coal-fired plants. Many of those plants would be forced to close.
This is hardly an unintended consequence. On the campaign trail in 2008, Candidate Barack Obama promised to set standards for coal plants that could put them out of business.
He's only doing what he said he would, and EPA bureaucrats are only following orders.
Frankly, we don't care if they are ducks or not. It's enough that they look like ducks.
As far as we're concerned, the only relevant question now is: Are ducks in season?
Judging from the reaction of McGraw and other attorneys general, it appears that they are.
Whatever these feathered, web-footed, quacking things are, there's too darn many of them, they're making a national nuisance of themselves, and it's time to do some culling.
McGraw is on the right side of this issue. To him, we say: "Go get 'em!"
