Posts Tagged → USEPA
Forgive Me for Asking, But I Must
Forgive me, it is not my intention to cast cold water on our collective rejoicing at having President Donald Trump re-elected, again, and thus at having dodged the Democrat Party’s communist anti-democracy bullet aimed at America’s heart. It is true that Trump’s election gives us hope that our constitutional republic is not over. However, I feel like I am watching a repeat of 2016-2017, where highly qualified conservatives and Republicans were mysteriously bypassed, overlooked, left untouched by the then-new Trump Administration.
Well do I recall someone of real stature writing publicly then (2017-2018) about how mystified he was that no one from Team Trump had contacted him about any of the unique policy strengths he had, and how the new Trump Administration seemed disinterested or lost on whatever that policy subject was. Well, here we go again, from where I sit.
Trump supporters have learned to forgive the 2016-2017 lapses, missteps, failures, and missed opportunities as due to Trump’s unfamiliarity with government, his natural reliance upon long established and unreliable DC Beltway insiders, his understandably misplaced trust in deep staters and other bad actors, his misplaced faith in the weight of federal employees’ oaths of office.
We watched as Trump’s first term slowly, painfully, peeled away the mask from the hostile administrative state, generously bankrolled by American taxpayers and yet also so openly at war with us. We grudgingly learned to accept the stolen 2020 election as the cost of doing business within the parameters set for us by the establishment media, the administrative state, and its constellation of hostile non-government organizations, who then worked furiously from outside to undermine the very rules they set.
And so we miraculously prevailed in 2024, and America as founded yet lives again. And now we have earned the right to say openly, can we please not make the same and very avoidable mistakes again, this time around?
While President Trump is indeed appointing strong leaders who are willing to assertively implement his bold vision for a better government that is closely attuned to America’s founding documents and principles, one question has not been addressed: Who exactly is going to carry out these deep reforms?
With few exceptions (the US Dept. of Commerce being one), nearly the entire federal workforce was already openly insubordinate to President Trump the last time around. And there is no reason to believe that these public employees are going to honor their oaths of office this time. And if Trump follows through on the DOGE promise to eliminate entire federal agencies, and greatly streamline those that remain, then which law-abiding civil servants will there be to carry forward in those same agencies the Trump Administration’s policies?
Put another way, if President Trump installs leaders who, for example, change the name of the radicalized US Environmental Protection Agency, then which of the old USEPA staff will there be to then follow through with the systemic change through every artery and vein inside the old institutional body? If the federal government is going to aggressively do compliance checks or reel back in billions of dollars in Biden grants to far-left NGOs, then who exactly is prepared to hit that ground running? The current federal workforce is almost entirely unreliable, and if left in place, each and every federal employee will become a road block of one. The DOGE people had better be collecting lots and lots of names of prospective civil servants who are prepared to take the place of existing staff, who should end up fired from federal service for any number of good reasons.
House cleaning is promised, but who then moves into the house to give it new life?
Ending where this essay began, it is my turn to publicly complain: No one from Team Trump contacted me, way back in 2016-2020, or now, about my unique area of expertise. I am one of a very small handful of truly conservative Republicans nationwide with extensive hands-on experience with public land issues and wildlife habitat/ land conservation policy. No Trump staffer has called to ask my experienced opinion on federal appraisal standards, especially related to eminent domain, or on rights-of-way issues surrounding federal properties. To my knowledge, none of my few colleagues have been contacted, either. I am not looking for a job. I already run a small business that I really enjoy. But I am willing to volunteer my precious time to help shape sound federal policy that is a significant deviation from the longstanding horrible status quo.
President Trump has the loyalty of so many talented and experienced conservatives, any and all of whom will jump at the opportunity to simply help this one man (and his administration) who can save America. This is the big chance to get America back on track.
So why then do I feel like America via President Trump is once again missing easy opportunities to make lasting, good policy? If the right people do not identify and help fix these longstanding horrible policies, the civil servants will keep them in place, and we will miss a once in a lifetime opportunity for good government.
Choices: Principles vs Institutions
Humans create institutions to institutionalize our values, religious practices, hopes and aspirations, cultural identity, etc. Our institutions are created in order to make permanent and carry our values forward, a sort of vehicle. Schools, libraries, government agencies, religious institutions, family foundations, charitable foundations, unions, associations, etc, every single one created with a mission to implement certain principles.
Over time people naturally identify with a particular institution, become a champion of it, and a stakeholder to it. Again, private schools, public school PTAs, library associations, the National Ukrainian Club, various church and synagogue umbrella groups, Democrat Party, Republican Party, etc, you know those particular institutions in your own life, because they reflect your values.
What happens when the institution no longer represents or reflects the founding principles that breathed life and cause into it?
Examples abound: The United Nations works against the western democracies who founded it and currently pay for it. The Democrat Party has become a wild communist orgy of anti-Americanism; the Republican Party has forsworn its abolitionist roots and has become a bunch of establishment do-nothing fuddy-duddies; the National Rifle Association accretes multiple layers of bureaucracy into everything it does, instead of spending its limited money pursuing individual freedom; school teachers unions become outlets for destructive radical politics, far outside the mainstream of American families; a local church or synagogue is poorly run by a small group of self-reinforcing, self selecting, like-minded establishmentarians who cannot and will not respond to changes in their respective demographics…
The one that got me thinking about this subject is the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, a sportsmen’s group I had a long relationship with, which then attempted to take a hard left turn into climate alarmism and gun regulation back in 2020. In one quick weekend of fake votes and heavily manipulated elections, the PFSC leadership torpedoed the institution the leaders said they loved. Their far-left politics alienated their base, and the group has not yet recovered its former standing.
With PFSC, I took a hard and public stand, and while I succeeded in stopping the old group from becoming leftist stooges of the charitable foundation trust fund sector, I also lost a lot of friends. People who were loyal to the PFSC they remembered, and who they wanted it to still be. Some blamed me for damaging PFSC’s public reputation, while I blamed PFSC’s leadership for making unpopular decisions its base rejected. For sure the messenger got shot!
In 2020, PFSC’s leaders jettisoned the principles on which PFSC was originally founded, and a great portion of their natural base stopped believing in the institution.
Recently I stepped back from a formal leadership role in a local house of worship, as the venerable institution begins to crumble onto itself. Leaders there, who fondly remember this house of worship from their childhood, cannot make the tough decisions necessary to keep it alive, and in fact keep making decisions that guarantee few or no young people will join it and keep it going. This particular institution is beginning to greatly deviate from its own founding principles, and its base, its natural adherents and admirers, no longer recognize it.
One last example: The US Environmental Protection Agency was a place I badly wanted to work in while I was in college back in the mid 1980s. When I finally got to work at the USEPA, I realized that a great deal of the basic principle that had undergirded its founding had been long since tossed overboard. In place of the simple principle of a clean environment came a whole regime of anti-capitalism, anti-America regulations. After seven years as a policy staffer at USEPA, I could not wait to get out. I now think the agency needs a whole new name and a very clear mission change.
So should we be loyal to the hollowed out shells of institutions that now exist mostly in facade, gutted of what they once stood for, hopeful that they will somehow regain their former glory, or should we seek to create new institutions that are more representative of the principles that enervated the originals we so dearly loved and identified with?
Change is a constant, evolution is healthy, and institutions that do not change to some degree become stale, immobile, static, and fragile. But those that deviate from their founding principles are destined for a much faster devolution, because most people just simply stop believing in them.
The competitive free market will cause new institutions to spring alive, bringing hope and aspiration anew to old principles, replacing the old institutions as they dry up and wither away. For me, I am of two minds: Stay loyal to the old institution until that is no longer possible, on principle, and then help found a new one, on principle.