EPA now to regulate spilled milk -- Really !
Thomas Sowell

Despite the old saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that.

We all understand why the EPA was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But not everyone understands that any power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose.

In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file "emergency management" plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train "first responders" and build "containment facilities" if there is a flood of spilled milk.

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming-- and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.

It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers' reports and prosecute farmers who don't jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be "creating jobs," even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.

Does anyone seriously believe that any farmer is going to spill enough milk to compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the BP oil spill?

Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?

It doesn't matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has expanded its definition of "discrimination" to include things that no one thought was discrimination when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to expand its jurisdiction to cover things that were never included in its jurisdiction, and that have no relationship to the reason why the FCC was created in the first place.

Yet the ever-expanding bureaucratic state has its defenders in the mainstream media. When President Obama recently mentioned the possibility of reducing burdensome regulations-- as part of his moving of his rhetoric toward the political center, even if his policies don't move-- there was an immediate reaction in a New York Times article defending government regulations.

Under a headline that said, "Obama May Find Useless Regulations Are Scarcer Than Thought," the Times writers declared that there were few, if any, "useless" regulations. But is that the relevant criterion?

Is there any individual or business willing to spend money on everything that is not absolutely useless? There are thousands of useful things out there that any given individual or business would not spend their money on.

When I had young children, I often thought it would be useful to have a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica for them. But I never bought one.

Why? Because there were other little things to spend money on, like food, clothing and shelter.

By the time I could afford to buy a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the kids were grown and gone. But at no time did I consider the Encyclopedia Britannica "useless."

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions-- and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

No doubt the EPA's costly new regulations may somewhere, somehow, prevent spilled milk from pouring out into some street and looking unsightly. So the regulations are not literally "useless."

What is useless is making that the criterion.

Examiner Columnist Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/epa-now-regulate-spilled-milk-really#ixzz1CqBMiPYI

"Political viewsWhen Anschutz started the Examiner in its current format, he envisioned creating a conservative competitor to The Washington Post. According to Politico.com, "When it came to the editorial page, Anschutz’s instructions were explicit — he 'wanted nothing but conservative columns and conservative op-ed writers,' said one former employee." The Examiner's conservative writers include Byron York (National Review), Michael Barone (American Enterprise Institute, Fox News), and David Freddoso (National Review, author of The Case Against Barack Obama). Conservative blogger Matthew Sheffield is in charge of the Examiner's web site. "

If you read it on a right winged blog...

Category: Tabloid

How dare they require people to clean up after themselves...
(BTW, spilled spoiled milk in large quantities would be a major odor and potential health hazard)


A truckload or broken pipe at a dairy? Yeah, they can spill a lot of milk fast.
Regulations are a good thing.

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Janice

I hereby declare all milk to be imported from overseas.

No further regulation needed; U.S. dairy farms close.

Brilliant!

I hereby declare all milk to be imported from overseas.

No further regulation needed; U.S. dairy farms close.

Brilliant!

That is regulated as well.

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Janice

and a bit more strictly than just domestic food products

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Examiner

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I lived on Bahrain Island '69-'70, when only a handful of Americans had heard of it.

I lived in Awali. It was south of Manama. Well, everything was.

It is where we bought our Milk.

There were two kinds of Milk. One, the cows were fed fish. The other, they were fed grain. Or so told. Well, the fish Milk was yucky and the grain Milk was good enough.

We bought the grain Milk.

Point? Well, I would think neither was regulated. I drank it like a fish. HeHeHe. And I lived to be an Old Worm.

iWorm 'em.

Try some chinese milk?

secret ingredients were water and some harmful chemicals if I recall.

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Janice

Try some chinese milk?

secret ingredients were water and some harmful chemicals if I recall.

You get mercury and radioactive iodine and radioactive caesium as added ingredients to Japanese milk and certain other produce at the moment...


Going back on-topic:

For ANY bulk storage or bulk transport of ANY fluids, there should be safety/emergency procedures prepared and practiced in case of a spill or whatever accident.

In olden days, that used to be all by 'common sense' and 'honour' and 'care' and the volumes involved were usually small enough to be manageable. Unfortunately, the modern ways seem to be to hire unconnected carefree (or couldn't care less) casual underpaid monkeys to cheaply transport maximum sized bulk who then do a runner at the first accident they cause...

Even milk can kill or cause a localised disaster, especially when you have 20 tons of the stuff in one gulp...


Perhaps we need to enforce "responsibility and duty-of-care" as part of all training?

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Try some chinese milk?

secret ingredients were water and some harmful chemicals if I recall.

Won't matter. When you run farms out of business, what CHOICE will you have?

You put onerous feel-good regulations out there and then family farms don't turn enough profit to cover the regulatory controls. If a regulation costs thousands to implement (environmental impact plans, legal paperwork, etc), and the farm doesn't turn the profit to cover that cost, what are they to do except declare bankruptcy?

Either the business closes and the demand is take care of from overseas or only large agricultural companies (like ADM) survive because they can afford to follow the regulation. That means the cost of milk and cheese goes up because there is less competition (farms) in the market.

The numbskull part of regulation is you have some bureaucrat in Washington DC who has never been on a farm or run a farm in his life writing "policy" for a living because it "sounds good". Gubment regulators and bureaucrats don't live in the real world. They're paper pushers and their ignorance is very destructive.

Try some chinese milk?

secret ingredients were water and some harmful chemicals if I recall.

You get mercury and radioactive iodine and radioactive caesium as added ingredients to Japanese milk and certain other produce at the moment...


Going back on-topic:

For ANY bulk storage or bulk transport of ANY fluids, there should be safety/emergency procedures prepared and practiced in case of a spill or whatever accident.

In olden days, that used to be all by 'common sense' and 'honour' and 'care' and the volumes involved were usually small enough to be manageable. Unfortunately, the modern ways seem to be to hire unconnected carefree (or couldn't care less) casual underpaid monkeys to cheaply transport maximum sized bulk who then do a runner at the first accident they cause...

Even milk can kill or cause a localised disaster, especially when you have 20 tons of the stuff in one gulp...


Perhaps we need to enforce "responsibility and duty-of-care" as part of all training?

Regards,
Martin

What are you talking about? What spilled milk has killed anyone? What "olden-days" comparisons are you making? Give us some details. "Underpaid monkeys"? Is this thread about the EPA regulating spilled milk or is this another agenda to centrally control the wages of everyone in the United States?

Things aren't "small enough" because the government is running small out of business and only big survives. Another unintended consequence of democrats.

What are you talking about? ... Another unintended consequence of democrats.

Mmmm... As diagnosed...

Blinded by politics with delusions divorcing from reality. Prognosis of monochromatic oblivion.


Good luck! (If that might help at all.)

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)