DIVINE EMPEROR AND DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

Much has been written about the imperial presidency, but it is, in fact, the obese federal bureaucracy that has become imperial in riding rough-shod over the consent of the governed. In the Affirmative Action program, for example, HEW has perverted the anti-racist intent of Congress into a racist quota system. The imperial HEW decree has not been approved by Congress and has never been tested in court; nor is it likely to be, for any university that should deviate from the decreed path of racism will have its federal funds withdrawn.

But perhaps no bureaucracy is more imperial than the Environmental Protection Agency. Entrusted with powers to keep the air clean and the water healthy, it is now vetoing proposed shopping centers, a power that rightfully belongs to the consumer, who can let a shopping center flourish or perish.

But what has EPA, dei gratia imperator et fidei defensor, done to the environment? It has protected the gypsy moth and other pests from effective pesticides. It has, on the flimsiest evidence of health hazards, sought to ban leaded gasoline. It has rejected pollution control by high stacks and forced most electric utilities to install scrubbers whose expense is out of all proportion with their effectiveness.

Effectiveness for pollution control, that is. They are highly effective in promoting the acidity of pollutants, and in some parts of the US, rain now has the acidity of lemon juice. Not satisfied with acid raining from the skies, EPA has bludgeoned the auto industry into the use of catalysts, which spew sulfuric acid into the atmosphere; and that task accomplished, it has asked Congress to delay the new emission standards because catalysts spew sulfuric acid into the atmosphere.

EPA's doctrinaire and indiscriminate emission standards have decimated gas mileage and depleted oil supplies. EPA has also obstructed nuclear power, and in its latest joke, it has charged with much fanfare that the Rasmussen study (Oct.74 AtE) underestimates the risk by a factor of 2 to 5. ("A major nuclear accident once in 10 million years? Wrong!" triumphs EPA. "Once in 2 million years! Ha!")

Those who always look to the federal government to cure all ills should consider a new bureaucracy: Agency to Protect the Environment from the Environmental Protection Agency.