Have no Illusions
I was under the impression that the “P” in EPA stood for “protection,” but after reading an article on MSNBC on how the EPA is increasing pollution exemptions to power plants because they are just too expensive, I’m not so sure.

I feel like an idiot. I know the rules. I simply choose to ignore them and get irritated when the results turn up. Rule #1: If you have the dough, you can do what you please. Sure, pollution from the plants will increase, but it will cost the plants to stop the pollution, so we best eliminate the rule.

This leads us to Rule #2: The little guy is going to pay for the big guy. Massachusetts emissions testing provides a great example. In the last few years, stricter emissions laws were passed in the name of cleaner air. This costs us twice what it used to to have our cars inspected, and the standards are so strict that even cars manufactured in the last ten years could fail. That sounds ok, right? Twenty extra bucks a year to have cleaner air sounds like a deal to me?

There’s a catch. There always is. If you have a Honda Civic, you have to put the car on the dyno and have its emissions tested not only at idle, but under load, to make sure that your little 4 cylinder, clean burning Japanese engine isn’t putting out the smallest bit of pollution. coughBallBusterscough. Now, if you own a fleet of dump trucks with dual smoke stacks and no catalytic converters, you can continue belching untold amounts of pollution into the air.

Why? Testing would hurt businesses: Businesses that would have to pay to have the problem corrected. Businesses are favored over people by government. Like the Greek Gods sat at mount Olympus, American gods sit in American board rooms, buying and selling our freedoms, our health, and anything else that they can get their hands on under the protection of the very system that was created “By the people, For the people.”

There are no people in power anymore. Just blameless corporations, and an expansive government; entities without bodies making the rules just like the gods of old. And, if history teaches us nothing, it’s that if you ignore the gods, they vanish into the air that they’re made of.

It’s all an illusion.

Posted in Anger, Philosophical BS