Slouching Towards Oblivion

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Just In Case

...that Pruitt schmuck actually kills the EPA, I wanted to put up some tiny little tribute to some of the reasons we managed to clean up after ourselves.

Pollution --Tom Lehrer



Garbage --Biff Rose


The story goes that LBJ liked to work with the windows open when the weather was nice, but he couldn't because the prevailing winds brought the stench of the Potomac into the Oval Office and he wanted something done about it.

Two years after Johnson was gone, people had pressured their Congress Critters enough to finally move Nixon to issue an Executive Order in 1970 creating the agency, which was followed by the legislation that would flesh it out and basically create a cop who was supposed to keep the bad guys from poisoning us.

The air got less shitty, the water got better, there was less crap in the soil that ended up on our dinner plates. The Cuyahoga river stopped catching fire. And Lake Erie went back to being something less like a sewer and more like a reason to move to Cleveland (OK, that one's a bit of a stretch - but hey, LeBron likes it there).

Here's the thing: The infrastructure of good government never comes easy, and once it's gone it can be even harder to get it back.

And BTW, a cleaner environment is really good for the economy.

There's no sense in having a job that makes you too sick to work.

And how big does a paycheck have to be to make up for the lousy feeling you get watching your kid gasp for air, and realizing the work you do could be causing that kid's asthma to get worse?

Like they say - the guys who put Scott Pruitt where he is don't like having the EPA around for the same reason muggers and thieves don't like having cops on the beat.

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