When your TeaParty friend starts up again this fall, calling for deep federal discretionary spending cuts, here's a great example to (figuratively) shove in her face of an industrial regulation that we may not be able to live without.
This gas pipeline example involves faulty welds holding together the Millenium Pipeline Company's line through the southern tier of New York State. Cities I know well -- Spencer, Oswego to name two --are in the pipeline's path. For a map of the track of the pipeline through New York's southern tier, see NaturalGasWatch.org.
ProPublica has a good article on how bad the situation with the pipeline is. If you know people who live in the southern tier of NY State, pass this information on.
We should start a catalogue of federal government "discretionary" programs that are endangered by steep budget cuts. I betcha our teaparty friends would say, well, of course not THIS program, but the other, wasteful, programs are the ones that need to go. Or, maybe they would say this is just an outlier situation that the company will handle on its own quite nicely. (I wish the company had addressed the issue somewhere in its web site. I would sleep better at night on behalf of my friends in Oswego and Spencer if I thought the company was taking safety issues seriously enough to inform the public.)
We middle-of-the-roaders should start to catalogue federal discretionary programs, especially regulatory ones, that are worth their costs beyond a shadow of a doubt. And, ask our teaparty friends to start listing the specific programs or regulations that are not worth their costs. Let's see what we all come up with.
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