Business and conservative interest groups that want to limit the power of federal regulators think they have a winner in the Atlantic herring and the boats that sweep the modest fish into their holds by the millions.
The 1984 decision in the case known colloquially as Chevron states that when laws aren’t crystal clear federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details.
Supporters of limited government have for years had their sights set on the decision, which they say gives power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.
“If you’re deferring to the agency’s interpretation of the law, you’re allowing the agency to be a judge in its own case,” said Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing fishermen based in Rhode Island. A second case, involving boats based in Cape May, New Jersey, is also being argued Wednesday.
The alliance, funded by conservative donors including the Koch network, says it’s “committed to cutting the administrative state down to size.”
I feel your cynicism. It definitely expresses how I feel much of the time.
But I remind myself, the US can’t really be dead, because it is merely the amalgamated expression of hundreds of millions of people’s desires and goals.
If, magically, we all decided that we won’t stand for regulatory capture, or people going bankrupt because they get sick, or the attack on trans people., it could stop in a day. The machine is simply us. We are changeable. And often the way things change (like gay marriage, for example) is that it slowly changes in enough people’s minds that it reaches an inflection point, and all of a sudden (in a few years) the majority agrees and the thing that seemed impossible for centuries becomes commonplace and obvious.
So if it seems hopeless at the moment, I get it. But the more we talk about it, the more we get fed up with things as they are, and the more we convince others to feel the same, the closer we are to that inflection point. The only thing that can defeat us fully and finally is not trying, becoming resigned or nihilistic.