Union CEO: 'We Can No Longer Afford to Consider Air and Water Common Property'

Nick Kangadis | September 13, 2017
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Some in the government want to regulate the air you breathe and the water that you use. Well, even more than they already do.

A group called Save the U.S. EPA held a news conference Wednesday afternoon at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. in order to...well, save the EPA.

Chief of Staff at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Brian DeWyngaert raised some eyebrows when he suggested that water and air should no longer be considered free use for everyone.

“We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property,” DeWyngaert said, “free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources.”

Anyone else feel like the air they breathe is becoming scarce? [Crickets]

What you should really know is the motivation behind DeWyngaert’s stern words.

According to AFGE’s website:

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Workers in virtually all functions of government at every federal agency depend upon AFGE for legal representation, legislative advocacy, technical expertise and informational services.

Ah, okay. Basically, DeWyngaert doesn’t want to see a downsizing of government employees, because it would affect his union’s bottom line.

But, the EPA isn’t going anywhere. President Trump isn’t getting rid of the EPA, like so many tinfoil hat-wearing, climate change enthusiasts would have you believe. The president, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, have simply rolled back or cut some of the superfluous Obama-era EPA regulations and calmed the climate change fervor that gripped the agency for the last decade.

DeWyngaert continued his plea to save the income his agency receives from thousands upon thousands of government workers by admitting that “we don’t see” the air and water impurities “like we used to.”

Now we can't see the air impurities, the water impurities, necessarily like we used to,” DeWyngaert said while he shrugged. “We don’t see those so easily. We depend upon our scientists to tell us that information.”

In other words, you should trust the government to tell you what is and isn’t good for you, so that his agency can keep writing checks to its employees off of the hard work of other people.

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