To Reclaim America, Abolish the Federal Agencies

It would take another civil war to make it happen, and there is no great clamoring from a populace mostly happy to drive down the road to serfdom at full speed, so I expect a continued lurch toward increased statism for the remainder of my life, but this would be the first step at reversing it.

From Michael Walsh:

The decline of America, perhaps surprisingly, can be traced directly to the Nixon administration. Surprising, because the Left hated Tricky Dick with a passion that can only be compared with the passion that animates the never-Trump crowd: sheer, animal loathing. Surprising, because Nixon was the most domestically liberal, if not actually leftist, president we've had until Obama. Surprising, because to this day old Nixon-haters still foam at the mouth at the very thought of the man who took down the "pink lady," Helen Gahagan Douglas, and saved Israel in 1973; a year later, of course, they finally sacked him over Watergate.

But it was during the first Nixon administration that the hideous monstrosity of theEnvironmental Protection Agency came into being by executive order, along with its ugly twin, the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Seemingly innocuous and well-intentioned at the time, both agencies have metastasized, their original missions completed and now forever on the prowl for something else to meddle with. They're both unconstitutional, of course, but what's even worse is that they've turned into rogue agencies, issuing edicts, orders and regulations largely devoid of congressional scrutiny -- pure instruments of executive power, with none to gainsay them.

To get an idea of just hoe obnoxious and intrusive these do-gooder agencies have become, get a load of this from Lou Ann Rieley, who owns a farm in Delaware:

This week a young rancher in Wyoming, Andy Johnson, won a battle for private property rights against one of the bureaucratic entities that strikes fear in the hearts of farmers and ranchers nationwide, the Environmental Protection Agency.

Johnson fought back against a mandate from the EPA to dismantle a pond that he had built on his own land with the required state permits. Fines totaling $16 million were imposed before they were finally overturned in the wake of his court victory.

As I read about his ordeal I thought back through the years that I have managed our small family farm and the many times we have been harassed by government busy-bodies who thought it was in their purview to question us, investigate us, intrude on us, and regulate us.

Let's stop right there. (You can read all about the Johnson case, which ought to outrage every real American, here.) Sixteen million dollars in fines? For what?

A Wyoming man threatened with $16 million in fines over the building of a stock pond reached a settlement with the Environment Protection Agency, allowing him to keep the pond without a federal permit or hefty fine. Andy Johnson, of Fort Bridger, Wyoming obtained a state permit before building the stock pond in 2012 on his sprawling nine-acre farm for a small herd of livestock.

Not long after construction, the EPA threatened Johnson with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $37,500-a-day fine -- claiming he needed the agency's permission before building the 40-by-300 foot pond, which is filled by a natural stream.

Read the rest here.