Quote:
Originally Posted by sperbonzo
Right now, the biggest problem with regulations is that there is NO congressional oversight.
All of the federal agencies that are churning out 10s of thousands of regulations on businesses every year, are doing so without ANYONE in congress voting on, or even seeing, them first. Remember that regulators are only composed of two types of people. 1. A political administrator that has never started or run any kind of business and has ZERO appreciation of what affect his regulations will have on trying to run a business. 2. A representative of the largest players in a given field of business who is strongly motivated to create a situation where the cost of starting a business in that field is so high that only the biggest players can cope, and it keeps out any small competition or competititve startup. This is the reason that regulations are out of control, and giant monopolistic corporations are taking over more and more.
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Actually these lax regulations come down to the states themselves and their zoning codes. Congress doesn't tell anyone where they can place a chemical storage tank or where they can't. The EPA has regulations that say how it has to be constructed and what has to be in place, but it's the states that have the final say where stuff like this can be built.
In both instances they both could have been prevented had state zoning regulations been in place that didn't allow a chemical storage facility next to a water way or didn't allow schools to be built 600 ft from a fertilizer plants and houses even closer.
It's simply state officials whom are to blame and had they taken the proper zoning regulations into consideration, chemicals would be leaking into a river right now, but rather on ground away from water that could of been decontaminated if a spill like this took place.