Ace Of Spades calls this mission creep*. That, my friends, is an understatement.

Do you envision people fleeing their homes, as a flood of milk comes pouring down the mountainside, threatening to wipe out the village below?

It doesn’t matter. Once the words are in the law, it makes no difference what the realities are. The bureaucracy has every incentive to stretch the meaning of those words, in order to expand its empire.

…In a classic example of this process, the EPA has decided that, since milk contains oil, it has the authority to force farmers to comply with new regulations to file “emergency management” plans to show how they will cope with spilled milk, how farmers will train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” if there is a flood of spilled milk.

Since there is no free lunch, all of this is going to cost the farmers both money and time that could be going into farming – and is likely to end up costing consumers higher prices for farm products.

It is going to cost the taxpayers money as well, since the EPA is going to have to hire people to inspect farms, inspect farmers’ reports and prosecute farmers who don’t jump through all the right hoops in the right order. All of this will be “creating jobs,” even if the tax money removed from the private sector correspondingly reduces the jobs that can be created there.

It’s too much… Just, too much. I hate to make this short, but I am at a loss for words.

[Cross-Posted On Practical State.com]

*He also notes that Senator Barosso is introducing a bill to ban all federal agencies from regulating greehouse gases. Oil or Milk is not a gas, so I don’t really know how he makes a connection. Maybe he’s making the EPA connection, I don’t know.