Incredibly, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided that its mandate to prevent oil from contaminating the environment extends to the oil in milk. Dr. Thomas Sowell tells the story about the outrageous new regulations in his Tuesday column:
(A)ny power given to any bureaucracy for any purpose can be stretched far beyond that purpose….
(T)he EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file “emergency management” plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” if there is a flood of spilled milk….
Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?
It doesn’t matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire….
Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.
