The Administration Is Scared of Its Own Regulatory Shadow

So the Obama EPA is on a medieval campaign against business! (“The Obama Administration: Against water boarding terrorists but for crucifying American businesses,” tweeted RedState editor Erick Erickson with typical subtlety). “An EPA official appointed by President Obama,” announced Fox News host Bret Baier, “said that his philosophy, talking to other EPA folks, was like the Romans conquering villages, saying that oil companies should be crucified.”
Industry allies got in on the act, too. Phil Kerpen, who until very recently was the principal policy and legislative strategist for the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, has a new gig running an outfit called “American Commitment,” which promptly launched a website called FireCrucifyAl.com. Users can submit letters to Congress and the administration calling for Armendariz’s job, because regulators should “[allow] businesses to succeed and expand. They shouldn’t crucify.”
But as Dave Weigel and others noted last week, the quote as presented in many outlets required some O’Keiffian editing. Here’s the full quote:

The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.
And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.
And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly.
That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly.

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/167636/administration-scared-its-own-regulatory-shadow