Accountability is a Four Letter Word

     When I was in high school I read a book entitled "Fahrenheit 451," a futuristic cautionary tale in which firemen actually started fires. This week I was reminded of that great novel as I read and heard the news of the massive toxic spill perpetrated by the Environmental Protection Agency in Colorado. The spill, which released millions of gallons of toxic heavy metals into the Animas river, will potentially have a damaging effect on the eco-systems stretching into New Mexico.
     It is odd that I do not hear the same rhetoric in this ecological disaster caused by a government agency, as was being spewed from the Obama administration during the BP/deep Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago. There is no talk of "keeping a boot on the throat" of the responsible party, or a phalanx of government lawyers being sent to the scene by the Department of Justice. There is no talk of compensation for the victims of the spill, or talk of the innocent wildlife being put at risk by the actions and callousness of those responsible.
     One of those responsible whose name has barely been mentioned, if at all, is Sean McGrath. Mr. McGrath was an Obama White House politico who was bestowed with a regional directorship in the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. McGrath, like most of the Obama administration, has no real environmental experience or education (beyond being a congregant of the global warming church), but was placed in charge of the region now threatened by his own agency.
     This incident should be educative of the utter futility of the kind of top-down, centralized government model being advocated by those on the Left. It is illustrative of the need for state and local control of such issues instead of a distant bureaucracy in Washington. It is as well exemplary of the counter-productivity of political hacks being appointed, not for their skill and knowledge in a particular discipline or area of expertise, but because of their political favorability with the president. To the extent that an agency like the Environmental Protection Agency is needed, it should be formed and populated by the people of the states, and not used as some kind of political ATM to payoff loyal subjects of an imperial president.
     Of course this unconstitutional empowering of the bureaucratic state to make law through an out-of-control regulatory structure pre-dates the Obama administration. And the tyrannical nature of the Environmental Protection Agency was evident from its beginnings when its director banned the chemical DDT based not on the reams of scientific data, but a book called "Silent Spring" written by environmental fanatic, Rachel Carson. The recent spill, and the closed-mouth explanation by those responsible, i.e. the Environmental Protection Agency, is just another example of the arrogance of government where authority is placed in the hands of the incompetent but politically connected, and accountability is a four letter word banned from the DNA of the bureaucratic state.