The bootleggers and Baptists strike again

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Trump, oil & gas, methane emissions, U.S. federal deregulations, EPA, vested interests, and other fun stuff.  

Change Management is generally a challenge to implement successfully, due to entrenched resistance to actual changes.  

This one makes for some odd alliances to resist changes.

 

The bootleggers and Baptists strike again

President Trump’s efforts to lighten the load of federal regulation felt by American industry has reached a “strange bedfellows” resistance point. “Bootleggers and Baptists” (interest groups that support the same regulation for entirely different reasons) are beginning to raise a ruckus. In this case, major oil companies and leading environmental groups alike are saying, “Enough, already. We want enforcement of the costly rules that are currently on the books.”  ...

 

 

... Perhaps eager to raise their smaller rivals’ costs, the major oil companies play the bootlegger role in this story. They have a similar incentive to that of the backyard distiller who wins customers when his county cracks down on legal liquor sales.

Environmental groups, who point to protecting the moral high ground, are the “Baptists” with the more straightforward motivations. In this rendering, the oil companies also have donned Baptist slippers, arguing that they wish to preserve the clean image now enjoyed by their natural gas product.  ...

[Boat + 1,315]

Kinda makes sense to want your competitors to follow the law if you do. Especially if following the law drives up costs. So a Trump type reverses a regulation and now the cost of following the law for cleaner air may keep the air cleaner but those costs are now a spent penalty. The non complying competitor who never spent the money is now rewarded for polluting. 

Illegal Immigration is like FF regulations in that respect. Those who comply with the law are disadvantaged by those who hire them. So what does Trump do to help companies that do not hire illegals? Spend billions on walls instead of simply enforcing the law and prosecuting those who hire the illegal and removing the magnet of jobs.