So Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and EPA administrator Gina McCarthy had their day before the House Government and Oversight Committee on Thursday, where they were grilled on the poisoning of the people of Flint, Michigan. Sides got chosen fairly early on: The Democratic members of the committee were anxious to put Snyder on a spit, while the Republicans clearly wanted to hang most of this on the EPA. The hearings were somewhat startling in their ferocity, and most of the interrogations ended with congresscritters demanding resignations and yes or no answers. Yes or no, dammit!

Jesus, what a mess. But the howling hypocrisy of conservative Republicans feigning concern about environmental safety, and the howling hypocrisy of conservative Republicans pretending that they expected the EPA to take care of this crisis, was extraordinarily hard to take. Nine days out of ten, they'd be baying at the moon about regulations strangling business and about devolving federal functions to the states, which are run by people like Rick Snyder. Today, though, rather than confront the complete failure of that entire theory of government in this awful episode, it was time for them to argue that the EPA wasn't tough enough in regulating Snyder's bungling. Where were the jackboots, they seemed to be saying, when the citizens of Flint could have used them.

(Snyder, of course, was terrible, constantly saying what a "humbling experience" this episode was and how fervently he has apologized. Hey, dude, it's a helluva lot worse for the people who are washing their hair once every couple of weeks with bootleg Poland Spring. And this guy had to be blackjacked into appearing before Congress at all.)

It was profoundly nauseating to listen to Congressman Jason Chaffetz waxing wroth about what was done to the poor people of Flint, smirking his way through his questioning, over and over again, and blaming "career bureaucrats" in the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for letting down poor Rick Snyder. Chaffetz has had the knives out for the EPA ever since he slithered into Congress. He has a lifetime rating of three percent from the League of Conservation Voters. On at least three occasions in 2015 alone, Chaffetz voted in ways harmful to clean water regulations. He's a climate denier. He's one of the leaders of the movement to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. He wants to privatize federal lands for the purpose of exploitation. And his basic point yesterday was that Barack Hussein Obama's EPA didn't do enough to force the Republican governor of Michigan to do his freaking job.

(Congressman Bill Clay of Missouri caught him at it and made a tasty cocktail out of the chairman's crocodile tears. He also ran down the list of people, including He, Trump and Tailgunner Ted Cruz, and my new friend, Joni Ernst, who want to do away with the agency and hand its responsibilities over to Rick Snyder, as well as Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, who wants to turn the EPA into some sort of glorified mediation service to resolve the disputes that arise when one state's pollution poisons another state's water.)

It was profoundly depressing to hear Congressman Glenn Grothman, one of the dimmer bulbs in the chandelier, use his time to sympathize with Snyder at how the poor man was hamstrung by civil service employees. "Some of us like less government because it's hard to get it to work," Grothman observed. This is especially true when people like Glenn Grothman get elected to work in government, and Glenn Grothman believes that a farm family can keep its well water safe from a 1000-foot deep open-pit mine being blasted open a mile from their home if they just "caulk it." And his basic point yesterday is that there is not sufficient inexperience among our government employees.

It was profoundly ridiculous to hear Congressman Buddy Carter of Georgia, who seems to be something of a clown, suggest that McCarthy had a responsibility to go beyond the law in warning the citizens of Flint. "The law, the law," Carter fumed. "I don't think anybody here cares about the law." Congressman Buddy also was proud of his ability to find and use a dictionary. "I looked up the word, 'protection,'" he inveighed. Why don't we just change the acronym?"

Congressman Buddy is the proud owner of a Zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters. He has voted against, among other things, a bill that would have informed the public of the dangers of coal ash, and another bill that would have protected wetlands that provide drinking water for the communities around them. He has also voted for a bill that would have reduced public input on water issues in the western states. And his basic point yesterday was to yell about the word "Protection" in the name of the EPA.

Regardless of who sent what memo to whom and when they sent it, the crisis in Flint is the result of a full implementation and exercise of a philosophy of government that noisy pissants like Chaffetz, Grothman, Carter, and Rick Snyder have proposed as a solution to almost all the nation's problems—government is bad, government bureaucrats are always incompetent, devolve federal powers to the states, and that government is best that is limited and, preferably, run like a business. The two primary contenders for the Republican presidential nomination want to eliminate the EPA. Absent as a cudgel against environmental protections that he wants to gut, the 100,000 people in Flint wouldn't matter a damn to Jason Chaffetz. "A government is not a business and it shouldn't be run like one," said Rick Snyder to Congress, and his tongue did not burst into flames.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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