bullcrap:
Running a winning presidential campaign is tough, and sort of self-selecting: if you can win, presumably you and the people around you are capable of imposing order on the vast federal bureaucracy as well (which, at this point, constitutes governing). That nobody in the White House saw fit to stop EPA from trying TO BAN AMMUNITION, of all things, (or to stop CBD from filing the petition in the first place) speaks volumes to the actual incompetence wandering those halls. At least force EPA to delay consideration of it until after the election? Anybody? Bueller?
Just to argue the point, it's possible that they're either
A: so fixated on their ideology that they think it's worth it to push this or
B: so busy being Obamites they didn't think this would make that much of a stir.
Or, of course, it could be some combination of the above.
Or the gentleman could be right, the crew in the White House right now is just plain damn stupid.
(Awright, he says incompetent, I said stupid, I know)
1 comment:
That nobody in the White House saw fit to stop EPA from trying TO BAN AMMUNITION, of all things, (or to stop CBD from filing the petition in the first place)
Huh?
How can the White House stop them from filing a petition?
The petitions are part of the law; the Toxic Substances Control Act specifically allows them.
And since the petition deals with fishing weights as well as the protected category of ammunition, there's little excuse for refusing the petition a priori by the EPA.
If the petition solely dealt with ammunition, the EPA would be perfectly justified in throwing it out on sight on the grounds of being beyond its power; but since part of the petition is within its power, the EPA is legally required to give reasons for denial or to accept it, in part or in whole.
Assuming, as I see no reason to doubt, that the EPA won't start a million lawsuits it's doomed to lose by trying to ban ammunition it has explicitly no power to ban under the TSCA, the only question is what they'll do about the fishing weights part of the petition.
All they've done so far is asked for comments, which appears to be absolutely normal for such petitions.
The EPA is, as far as I can tell, simply following the law Congress laid down, so far.
They're required to accept petitions, after all, and since this petition contains at least some content that is not prohibited, they can't just throw it out with a "we can't do that".
By all means, send in comments pointing out that there's explicitly no authority to ban ammunition, and that banning lead fishing weights is a stupid waste of time and money and won't save the environment.
But I'm not seeing a powergrab here, or that this has anything to do with who's President. Petitions under TSCA happened under President Bush, too, and were affirmed or denied without any obvious regard to what the President might want... as it should be.
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