LISA JACKSON'S OPERATING ROOM

As someone who once foolishly attempted to make some sense of our regulatory scene, I couldn't help watching Lisa Jackson, Environmental Protection Agency Secretary as she did her usual best to avoid answering questions before a congressional committee a few days ago.  Through all the double talk and rote answers I managed to winnow out the basis for her drive for crippling new air quality standards.  Her objective is simply to eliminate all particulate matter injected into the air from man-made sources, because it causes "People to die sooner than they otherwise would."

Sounds reasonable until one realizes that she means people in the last six months of life may arguably pass away slightly faster if the air they breath is not as filtered to operating room purity.  As Jack Paar used to say...."I kid you not."  Asked over and over to quantify her reasoning re: particulates, she kept up making the same assertion.  Any level, including all but undetectable ones, shorten life and thus must be regulated out of existence.  Insanely, she is also contemplating applying this standard to farms.  How farmers are supposed to employ their plows is just not her concern.

I've seen this many times before.  Preposterous claims in the service of otherworldly expectations made by public "Servants" callously unconcerned with the havoc they bring on the rest of us.  On this level, environmentalism surely lapses into some sort of religion of ritual purity.  Yes, granny will die if we don't put all the factories out of business.  Madness, madness.