BEFORE THE EPA.

     The EPA was created in December of 1970, signed into law by Richard Nixon, the Republican party's 2nd-worst president in its history. Before, the creation of the EPA, environmental laws were passed by state legislatures, or more often, ignored by state legislators when the money was right. 

     Sometime around the year I graduated from high school I began to read accounts of an environmental activist in Wisconsin named, The Fox. He was not named for the television and movie hero, Zorro, the fox. He took his name from the Fox River near Greenbay, Wisconsin. Back in that time Wisconsin was a liberal state with popular Democratic politicians like Sen. William Proxmire and earlier, Governor Robert Lafollette. They also had a pretty good football team in those days. The environmental movement was in its infancy and had marginal influence outside of the youth movement that I was growing into.

     James F. Phillips was a mild-mannered biology teacher by day. By night he was an eco-saboteur who was known for his unique attacks on the corporate heads of polluting corporations in his region. A couple of of his notable attacks were against a leather tanning company on the Fox river that was releasing toxic chemicals into the river via underwater pipes. Dead fish littered the shoreline downriver from the tannery. And the air was thick with the stench of rotting fish and whatever they used to tan the leather. I remember reading history books about how the mountainmen tanned leather. They used a combination of animal brains and urine. So let's imagine that stench hanging on the shores of the Fox River combined with rotting fish. At night our mild-mannered biology teacher put on his Zorro cape and went to work harrassing the Alcalde's of unregulated capitalism. On one occasion The Fox bagged up the dead fish from the water in the vicinity of the tannery in gunny-sacks and stuffed them into the outflow pipes, clogging them. The outflow became the inflow shutting down the business until they could find the source of their problem, and clean up the mess. Our hero left a note to the owner warning them that there would be more night visits if they did not clean up their act. This was the days of J Edgar Hoover who led the FBI through 8 president's. Try as they might, the FBI could not get a bead on the Fox. The tannery, as you may have guessed, was not chastened for its environmental misdeeds. Later, when the owner of the tannery was out of state, a dump truck backed up to the front door of his mansion and dumped a truck-load of foul-smelling fish on his door-step. The history of the Great Lakes region is enlivened by these stories and teacher Phillips encouraged the emergence of environmental activists, monkey-wrenchers, tree-huggers and forest canopy campers. All over the country the underground of activism began petitioning state and federal legislatures to create laws to require business to clean up their act. Republicans you may not be surprised to hear, were not willing adaptors of environmentalism. There were a few Republicans of that time who accepted our responsibilities to the planet. One of those Republicans was our governor, Tom McCall, among whose accomplishments were the Oregon Public Beaches bill, the Oregon Bottle Bill, and the Vortex Rock Festival at McIver Park, to draw anti-war activists from Portland while the American Legion held its convention. Oh how I long for those days. Even Nixon was better than our current crop of fascists. Mostly because there seem to have been fewer willing fascists.

     Somehow or another, the party that believes government's place is in women's laps, or busting kids for a small amount of drugs, got the idea that businesses were over-regulated and over-taxed. Since that time they have been on a mission to weaken environmental laws. When they were able to get a republican in the Whitehouse and in majority control of the senate, they would appoint administrators from the businesses they were supposed to regulate. What could possibly go wrong.

     In the days after Nixon signed the bill establishing the EPA we made progress in cleaning up our rivers, curtailing air pollution and smog, the litter along our roadways, we even stopped the hole in the ozone layer from growing bigger. We can have a discussion about whether we were successful enough, but we made progress, and that hole in the ozone is shrinking. That progress stopped somewhere in the 1990s. A couple possible reasons: people were made to fear Adam's wanting to be married to Steve, meaning we weren't controlling enough of LGBTQ's. Or Democrats were coming for "our" guns, meaning we were too controlling of gun owners, and too many people of faith were insufficiently Christian, meaning I suppose they wished to control how devout we are. Oh and Roe v Wade did not exercise enough control over women. The other reason that was in play was that the Supreme Court was being stocked with Justices chosen to exemplify hard-line Republican positions (which basically is every Republican position). By the turn of the millenium the conservative-liberal divide was 4-4, with one swing justice who seemed to swing too often to the conservative side. The great mystery of this "swing justice is that, once Donald Trump was elected, this old, but otherwise seemingly healthy Justice Kennedy resigned from the court. Interestingly, his son was an executive at Deutschebank, who was the only bank that would loan Donald Trump money. Nothing to worry about here.

     Since that time the republican party has actively criticized the science of climate change and began attacking environmental laws. The newly constituted Supreme Court became less Supreme and more accurately supremely pro business in its judicial rulings. Not for nothing but the Supreme Court that stopped the presidential recount of Florida in 2000, had 4 of the 5 justices who voted favorably in Bush v Gore-Chief Justice Rehnquist, justice Alito, Justice Thomas, justice Scalia,  all had family members who were expecting jobs either with the future Bush Administration or the RNC. In addition judge Robert's and Judge Kavenaugh were part of the Brooks Brothers Brigade that would shut down the recount in Floridum, requiring a Supreme Court case. Judge Robert's would be awarded the Chief Justice position after Chief Justice Rehnquist died, and Kavenaugh would be appointed by Trump. But we shouldn't be alarmed, the principle of Judicial Restraint is still strong.

     If Donald Trump becomes president, again, next Jan 20, he will appoint people who exemplify sycophants. Any office that he considers woke will be closed and those administrative officers would be eliminated. Should their office remain we can be confident that Trump would choose a CEO of the business that that office regulates. And republican majority in both legislative chambers could, if Trump demands, suspend the constitution and make the presidency hereditary.