Big Environment is outraged over the fact that Florida is opposing Big Government's latest outrageous power grab.
So, what else is new?
Big Media, predictably, is piling on. Stories, columns and editorials permeate the liberal media, all claiming that the attorney general of Florida and the governor are in league with evil polluters.
What's really going on? Nothing of the sort.
President Obama is a serial job-killer. His Environmental Protection Agency is one of the weapons he uses to keep the economy stagnant and put people on the dole.
Obama is killing the coal industry. He refuses to allow the Keystone pipeline to be built in spite of the fact that it is no threat to the environment, according to his own administration, and for political reasons has blocked a safe storage location for hazardous nuclear waste.
Within the past few years, the EPA tried to impose water nutrient standards on the state that would have cost Florida families millions of dollars. It failed when Florida stood up in protest.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently filed a brief joining 20 other states in litigation protesting the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint.
This is a plan to require reductions of more than 20 percent for nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment entering the Chesapeake Bay.
That is a laudable goal, perhaps. The problem is that the federal government is inclined to demand the impossible by setting standards that are beyond what is technically feasible, or so expensive that it will shut down industry.
For example, it has demanded that electric power plants retrofit pollution controls without regard to the cost to consumers or the job losses.
Bondi notes that the federal Clean Water Act does recognize, preserve, and protect the primary responsibilities and rights of states to prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution, [and] to plan the development and use ... of land and water resources.
That means the federal government sets standards and the states decide how best to meet them.
What EPA is doing is exactly what the outlaw president is doing: claiming authority to do what Congress expressly said they could not do.
Florida has done a good job of protecting its environment. No one, conservative or liberal, wants to foul our own nest. It is a question of methods.
Liberals worship the federal government and are inclined to treat as gospel any edict emanating from above. But more rational people question authority and realize that local decisions by those most affected generally are best.
The caterwauling by liberals also is tainted by the fact that they are trying to run Gov. Rick Scott, Bondi and all other Republicans out of office this year. This current flap is just part of that yearlong effort and has less to do with protecting the environment. It also is a distraction from the governor's stellar record on supporting the creation of jobs by the private sector, despite the harmful efforts by the Obama regime.
Don't be distracted.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
