Everything in Washington, D.C., established to do X, ends up doing X, Y, Z, and triplets of every letter in the alphabet. This anti-federalism is fueled by several basic precepts. Of course DC wants as much power as it can grab. The more power it wields - the more it can lord over us and the more favors it can dole out. And the more coin it can spend - and the more coin it can justify taking from us.
But the states bear a lot of the culpability too. The more the states off-load onto the Feds - the less for which they themselves are responsible. Politically and financially. The more the Feds do what states should be doing - the more coin the states have for other silliness.
And here is a vitally important component: States can’t print money and have to at least pretend to balance their budgets. The Feds are not constrained by either of those two tethers to Reality. (Hello, $4.5 trillion in phony Quantitative Easing coin and $19 trillion in debt.)
Want yet another example of the DC alphabet growing? Behold the United States Army Corps of Engineers: “A 23,000-employee federal agency that works on a wide range of infrastructure projects for military and civilian purposes. It’s an honorable history in helping build everything from the Washington Monument to the Panama Canal. But like many federal agencies it is prone to mission creep, pork-barrel projects, and outrageous cost overruns.”
Here comes the creep: “On a recent trip to Missouri, it now looks as if Corps may be expanding into the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. Since the country has hundreds of these, this is a worrisome precedent. The West Lake Landfill, near St. Louis’s Lambert International Airport, has been a local eyesore since 1974 but has posed no discernible danger to local public health and safety despite some radiological material left over the 1940s Manhattan Project being present….(A)fter 25 years, (the Feds) have completely dropped the ball and now there has been no cleanup.”
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This itself is a lesson. Perhaps we should stop waiting (decades) for the Feds, get off our respective scnheids - and do things for ourselves.
But the awful Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally awoke from its tax-dollar-gorging-induced slumber. “(T)he EPA announced it would clean up the site and also build a physical isolation barrier preventing any subsurface fire from spreading. The plan was to involve to the West Lake site, all in 2016. Crucially, the plans involve private sector parties paying much of the cost of the cleanup.”
Wait - We the Taxpayers aren’t on the hook? How refreshing. And after all that wasted time - this privately-funded cleanup is up and running and ready to go.
But of course this federal-government-less problem solving cannot be allowed to stand. Enter the Missouri politician contingent: Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat Representative William Lacy Clay and Republican Representative Ann Wagner (because the DC insanity is absolutely bipartisan). These three are waving around our National Debt credit card - and looking for even more things for the Corps to do.
“The U.S. Senate passed a ($400+ million, zero-hearings-held) bill to give the Army Corps of Engineers the authority to clean up the radioactive waste. ‘With the passage of this legislation today, the Senate has demonstrated that voices of the community around West Lake Landfill are being heard,’ Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri proclaimed. Missouri Reps. William Lacy Clay and Ann Wagner have introduced companion legislation in the House (HR 4100) - and also demanded it be passed immediately with no hearings.”
Oh look - another terrible bill DC pols are jamming through with zero examination. But after a quarter century of federal lameness - why this sudden urgency? “One possible reason for the haste is that a main backer of the McCaskill bill is the Teamsters Union, a politically powerful player in the St. Louis area. The union says it is concerned the landfill represents ‘a human rights violation.’”
But for the preceding 25 years it did not? Wait for it… “It also worries that landfill workers at the site ‘lack a union and are left without a means to voice concerns without fear of retaliation.’ Transferring control of the project to the Corps of Engineers could mean more union involvement in the cleanup….”
There it is. Favors for some, at the exorbitant expense of the rest of us.
The West Lake, Missouri Landfill is a mess - and has been for a long time. But finally, it is on the verge of being solved. With private coin, no less. Washington, D.C. is a much bigger mess - and has been for a much longer time. The Feds mandating DC’s harmonic convergence with West Lake is a quintessential visual aide of all that is wrong with Washington.
Anti-federalism, overreach, zero transparency, cronyism - and redundancy via unnecessary meddling and ridiculous and unwarranted spending. Bravo, Senator and Representatives. And everyone else that voted or intends to vote for this utterly-unnecessary disaster-in-the-making.
This, like so much in DC, brings to mind the words of World War II-era theater producer Martin Gabel: “Don’t just do something - stand there.”
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