Turning the Aircraft Carrier on
Obama’s ‘Waters of the US’ Rule
American Spectator,
by
Greg Walcher
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
2/25/2020 4:32:01 AM
Since the days of George Washington, presidents have wished they could make government employees do what they are told. Actually, that frustration is much older than America. Peter the Great once said, “People think I rule Russia, but a thousand bureaucrats rule Russia.”
That’s one reason presidential candidates’ promises are often more difficult to deliver than they expected. It is a common comparison that “moving the bureaucracy is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier.”
Actually, turning an aircraft carrier is far easier than turning a bureaucracy. (Snip)When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, among other commitments, he vowed to repeal the unpopular Obama-era “Waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) rule.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
LoneVoice 2/25/2020 5:09:33 AM (No. 328929)
We have become a government of the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.
And the bureaucrats all vote Democrat.
13 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
John C 2/25/2020 6:09:43 AM (No. 328951)
Just yesterday I wrote the President about one of the EPA rules.
Towns can not remove rocks from beaches, nor return sand where it has washed away. Just nuts.
6 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
lakerman1 2/25/2020 8:24:45 AM (No. 329073)
i post this story about once a year, to illustrate a point.
when FDR became president, he made a practice of taking a daily ride in his limo. and each day he would be driven past a shabby temporary building controlled by the Department of the Navy. (some speculate that the limo ride was used to hook up with his girlfriend, for some 'afternoon delight.' But I digress.)
Each day that he passed the shabby building, he would order his staff to have it torn down. It never was, outlasting FDR's 13 years in office.
and as for his girlfriend, she was at his side when he died in Hot Springs, Georgia. Eleanor was not in attendance.
I'd like to think that his funeral procession passed by that shabby building, standing as a monument to the bureaucracy.
5 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
mc squared 2/25/2020 8:32:04 AM (No. 329083)
Here in FL, a neighbor had a house built and installed sod around the house. Looked great. Some agency (I don't know which) made him remove the sod, at more great expense, but he could PLANT grass seed, which he did.
No one could explain why there is a difference.
7 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Mass Minority 2/25/2020 9:34:04 AM (No. 329147)
I believe that the full quote is that its harder than turning an Aircraft Carrier around in the Potomac river.
1 person likes this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
iraengneer 2/25/2020 9:35:22 AM (No. 329148)
And the concept of total ABOLITION of these agencies and bureaucracies and FIRING Every Single One of these tinpot meddlesome bureaucrats, never seems to occur to our self-proclaimed "betters". Including the Republicrats, who have created and empowered many of them.
4 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
GO3 2/25/2020 9:47:59 AM (No. 329159)
IIRC the saying about trying to turning around an aircraft carrier was uttered by Gen. Creighton Abrams when he was Chief of Staff of the Army under Nixon. He was referring to the military establishment but it applied just as much as the civilian bureaucracy, which is why I agree with #3. Abrams trying to implement a change in strategy (if there was one) concerning VN with the war's competing interests of military leadership in the field, the Pentagon, and contractors, who Abrams specifically disliked intensely, stymied any meaningful progress in the war. Hence, his aircraft carrier comment. IMO, we never really did escape the VN war when it came to the DC military cabal. Witness our stalemates (at best) in Iraq and Afghanistan, until Trump came along and put the generals in their place.
1 person likes this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
sgt ski 2/25/2020 11:12:18 AM (No. 329237)
we have witnessed conditions these past several years, relative to the Administrative State... or the DEEP STATE of you prefer.... that far exceeds any past observed slow bureaucracy pace.. or.. over extension of "legislation via administrative regulations" ... but has moved well into the operational area of & been exposed as.... active RESISTANCE to the Constitutional authority of the President & his appointed agencies director's directives.... smells like&sure walks the walk of sedition from my viewing position..
good step in counter-resistance ops would be drastically reduce size of bureaucracy.... oh & "lay the wood" to those inclined to disclose classified into to their sheet-mates or spin cycle partners in media
Semper Fi
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Strike3 2/25/2020 12:05:36 PM (No. 329298)
Concernine the environment, there are abuses that go both ways and it comes down to allowing common sense to prevail, which is where it all falls apart. Protecting a small pond to avoid disturbing a couple of frogs is lunacy, but regarding tributaries, if one dumps raw sewage into a three-foot wide brook, it eventually ends up in one of those wide rivers and if multiple polluted brooks feed that river, the river becomes polluted. I can see where the simplicity turns into complexity and where one-track mind bureaucrats soon become impossible to work with.
1 person likes this.
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