Bureaucrat: "There's Just No Data to Support That"

These days being an unelected bureaucrat involves the wielding of enormous power. How so? First, YOUR job is among the safest on the planet no matter what you destroy. Second, you can burn all the fossil fuel you want driving around in your government-owned vehicle. Many bureaucrats burn plenty of gasoline every day while purporting to save our planet. Third, despite being a scientist in an unrelated field, if you are a government bureaucrat, you can actually make economic assertions at news conferences without having done any research to support your claims. And most of the time, the news media will print your claims without question let alone dispute. Accordingly, bureaucrats often enjoy the profound luxury of simply ignoring all of the little people while developing and implementing reckless economic policies. Defending the resulting destruction of other people's jobs becomes a involuntary reflex. A bureaucrat's power includes the ability to drive up the cost of energy as well as New Mexico's state budget deficit. Need some proof of these claims? Just take a look at the claims made in this editorial piece disguised as a news story. It ran in many of the New Mexico media outlets earlier this week.

No Data to Support That!

Here is the rest of the story. After using the spotted owl as an environmental ruse to destroy thousands of timber industry jobs in New Mexico a few years ago, the radical environmentalists in charge at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are at it again. This time their New Mexico industry target is the oil and gas business. And their "species du jour" is a lizard. New Mexico citizens are finally starting to push back. With jobs and energy revenues dwindling here, many people are finally beginning to make their voices heard. They are learning how the industry killing game gets played. And they know that these unelected bureaucrats don't even have to bother do any economic impact studies before they kill jobs. All they have to do is "purport" to save a type of owl, minnow, or lizard. Recently when confronted with the damage their radical agenda could do to oil and gas production in New Mexico, the unelected bureaucrat's response during a so-called press conference was predictable. "There's just no data to support that," said Charna Lefton, a spokeswoman for the wildlife service's regional office in Albuquerque. How wonderful it is to get paid to regularly to study lizards while leaving the desperate fighting for real jobs to somebody else. Apparently if you want to save your way of life from the vagaries and whims of a radical bureaucrat, it is YOU that needs supporting data, not the bureaucrat. Mel Brooks needs to do a new movie. It could be a dark comedy entitled, "It's good to be the bureaucrat."

Bureaucrat: "There's Just No Data to Support That"