I completely agree with you. Steering a ship is trivial compared to leading a nation in deep trouble. My unstated assumption was that it is the quality of the captain and his helmsmen that matter. The rudder is just a piece of the ship.
Good to hear from you.

They want a smooth transition in entrenching their rules on behalf of their ideology. Agency rules, once inserted, are often very difficult to overturn because of procedural requirements and insider entrenchment of personnel.

They, Obama , the admin and the agency chief keep saying that want a smooth transition for the next president. I have heard Obama say one thing and do the other for 8 long years. I think he will do as much damage as he can before he is out.
Also "she concluded ...blah blah...still lies ahead"
With the left always keep in mind that there are always, lies ahead.

It's hard to fire protected 'civil servants'. They're entrenched. Some might leave or retire early but the dedicated ideological power seekers will remain as long as they can to do whatever damage they can. Obama political appointee agency head Gina McCarty, a radical viro activist http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045...

"After Trump's inauguration in January, 'I will be coming to work and continue to be paid for the work that I do,' said the career EPA employee. 'Whether I like it, whether they like it, that remains to be seen.'"

and http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045...

"The agency chief said she would continue to run EPA through 'the finish line of President Obama's presidency' and noted its past work on combating climate change, fighting water pollution and its outreach to local communities.

"She concluded, Thank you for taking that run with me. I'm looking forward to all the progress that still lies ahead.'"

These emotional basket cases are professional adults?
I hope they hear this "your fired"

EPA employees given sick leave to mourn Clinton loss: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045...

"'People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed,' said John O'Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, 'people were crying,' added O'Grady, who works in EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago. 'They were recommending that people take sick leave and go home.'"

The main political task now is to get Trump to go in the right direction. Compared with the philosophical trend in this country an aircraft carrier is a speck in the sea. Besides, aircraft carriers have rudders to steer them. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

The New York Times Nov. 11, 2016 just caught on to the significance of Myron Ebell as head of the EPA transition team: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/sci...

"In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell.

"Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly."


"Mr. Ebell has said that 'a lot of third-, fourth- and fifth-rate scientists have gotten a long ways' by embracing climate change. He frequently mocks climate leaders like Al Gore, and has called the movement the 'forces of darkness' because 'they want to turn off the lights all over the world.'

"No one, it seems, is immune to his criticism. He called Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, issued in mid-2015, 'scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.'”

Do you ever switch flavors of cool-aid?

As near as I can tell, she's still in the running.

I was questioning the quality of measurements from the beginning. I later arrived at exactly the same conclusions as yours.
Besides, some of the international politicians are careless or arrogant enough to say openly that the whole exercise is to get money from the rich countries to pay the poor. As vast majority of poor countries are deeply corrupt dictatorship (you wonder why they are poor?) the charitable benefits are out of the question.

Exactly right! And it will take time. My image of it is turning a huge aircraft carrier to change course 180 degrees. It will take much more than one presidential term to reach and establish a new course. The main task now is to not disappoint the voters who voted yes and explain to them that it is a long term process and why the goals are worth while. There use to be a saying that palaces are built a stone at a time. Dismantling them will also require "a stone at a time".

Picking anyone to lead the EPA is admitting that the EPA will still exist. It will not change even if the leader is a 'climate skeptic'. There are far too many entrenched Bureaucrats that feel the opposite and they will get their way. If he (Trump) were truly a skeptic and wanted a constitutional republic he would simply eliminate the bureau (which is unconstitutional) ridding Americans of the problem.

I would like to see Congress abolish the EPA. I doubt the Demo's will support it. At least here in Az I rejoice that I still can use my wood stove this winter.

I half-expected Trump to pick Sarah Palin for Secretary of the Interior.

It could get some bacterial contamination.

To be sure, auctioning away grazing rights, mineral rights, and building easements would solve a great deal of problems. But I'm not sure it would solve the hazard that a multinational force, the troops of which would own no loyalty to their sending countries, would pose. Remember: under the Constitution, Congress may "exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever,...over such places as may be purchased with the consent of the governors of the States in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings." As long as you even have federal armies and a navy, those forces would have places to base and stage out of. And once a governor gives consent for a purchase, how does the State buy its land back? Last time I looked, consent for a real-estate sale was irrevocable.

The only guarantee I see against a federal force acting like an army of occupation, is that "well-regulated militia," consisting of citizens "keep[ing] and bear[ing] arms" and knowing how to use them, of which the Second Amendment speaks.

Okay...I stand corrected.

Thank you for the clarification.

The article is old but still true. Myron Ebell is much more than a climate hysteria "skeptic"; he is very good in his principled, knowledgeable opposition to the nihilistic, power-seeking viro movement in general. But its impact in Federal agencies is much more than EPA, including the Dept. of Interior overseeing the National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS); Agriculture overseeing the US Forest Service; Defense overseeing the Army Corp of Engineering ("wetlands" land use prohibitions); and Energy. The viro activists are lobbying to influence political appointments in all of them in a major battle. The agencies, which were created by law and could not be eliminated by an executive decision, are also infested with activists in protected career civil service positions, and all of them routinely collaborate with the pressure groups and their friends in Congress. All of it includes prominent Republicans. It is also difficult to change the rules because of agency rule-making procedures and enabling legislation that favor the viro activists inside and outside the agencies. Fighting this entrenched cancer is a combination of politics and a major ideological battle.

There are plenty of Republicans who would vote for the viros in the lame duck session. A big threat is permanent authorization of funding for Federal land acquisition, which includes eminent domain.

The best way to prevent this kind of surprise in future administrations is to move powers out of the federal government. In particular, Trump should auction off most federal lands in the West, including all the oil rights in places like Wyoming and Alaska. Once privately owned, they will not go to waste.

Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, which created EPA. It would take another bill from Congress to abolish it, unless the Supreme Court were to rule invalid the whole thing called administrative law.

Here is what I recommend Trump do in this regard.

Formulate a list of executive orders he wishes to rescind. Call Ryan and ask that the House initiate a Bill to require the President, with majority affirmation by both houses of congress, to rescind all subject executive orders.

Alternately: Call a meeting with Ryan and McConnell and ask that they call to the floor each measure for a formal vote. Should each pass, then Trump issues an executive order BASED ON THE PASSAGE BY THE CONGRESS OF THEIR FORMAL AFFIRMATION OF SAME.

The purpose of either of these measures is to stop the executive branch of the government from further usurpation of the congressional branch's responsibilities. Failure to so act will result in the next time a collectivist zealot reaches the White House, he or she will simply issue whatever batch of executive orders they cannot get the congress to lawfully enact.

Absolutely disgraceful. No one will put up with this crap in the longrun, butin the meantime it's running up a debt that future generations will have to pay.

Whoa! He's starting as promised. That's refreshing. Let's hope he keeps it up.

I've always read that Richard Nixon "created" the EPA...have I been mislead, all these years?

There is little doubt in my mind that many of these useless agencies could be eliminated, if not by the President's direct edict, than by cooperation with the Republican controlled Congress.

Let's just see what happens...