To_President_Obama_on_Behalf_of_the_Environmental_Defense_Action_Fund

Dear Mr. President, I am so proud to be an American with such an intelligent and forward-visioning president at the helm of our country. Thank you for all you and your team do every day on behalf of every one of us. Sir, please reconsider your decision to withdraw the important new smog standard that has been years in the making. If not now, when' If not you, who' While it will clearly and admittedly be a costly requirement for the business community from a strictly short-term analysis, and therefore not the right time from the perspective of the business community, to enact the tabled clean-air procedures, I and tens of thousands of my fellow citizens urge you to consider this issue again from a purely rational, long-term cost-benefit analysis rather than the short-sighted approach so regularly used by the business community, with such tragic results for their wider stakeholder communities. PLEASE consider again what is the greater cost to the whole of society, and not just the business community, of this decision. From a long-term cost-benefit analysis, is it actually prudent and conservative, and wise stewardship, to continue the policies that have created and are creating the health troubles and tragedies resulting from poor air quality, and all the societal costs associated with these' The business community doesn't bear these costs. To this limited community these are transaction spillovers, costs external to their costs of doing business. Of course they would rather these costs not be there, but because they are not held responsible for them, it doesn't really matter. But our society, and the government that serves it, does bear these costs directly. So what's the right way to deal with them from a social justice and far-sighted economic perspective' Unfortunately, ever since the Ford vs. the Dodge Brothers Michigan Supreme Court decision nearly a century ago, the for-profit business community in this country, particularly but not only the corporate sector, has held itself to be somehow obligated, even if not legally, to pursue short-term gain over long-term benefit for all stakeholders. That tragic approach, I hope you will agree, is doomed, or destined, to pass from accepted practice, and hopefully within our lifetimes. Until that happy time arrives, however, fortunately the government is not under any such self-accepted obligation, and in fact it is its duty to counteract that tendency in the business community. One could say it is its fiduciary duty! From within the greater context of the most prudent decision for all the stakeholders involved, a context within which all our actions will ultimately be judged, is withholding the important new smog standard even for a year the best decision' Perhaps it all does come down to a question of timing, which you, Mr. President, like a champion chess player, are a master of comprehending and acting upon. In the strict light of right or best timing, Sir, will there ever be a "right" or "best" moment when the recalcitrant U.S. business community will embrace this legislature' I think it being a given that there won't, it becomes a question of when is the best time to do the right thing, even if the right thing is not in the business community's perceived short-term best interest. Let's recall that many of the older and more set-in-their-ways African-Americans, at the time of the emergence on the national scene of a young and brash Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not feel that the timing was right for pushing forward the Black community's civil rights. They knew, correctly, that the White community was not yet "ready" for the radical changes this push would involve. "Wait a bit longer," they counseled Dr. King. "The times are changing, and the time will eventually be right at some point, maybe within our lifetimes." Dr. King rejected this logical objection. He knew that doing the right thing automatically took care of the issue of the right time. In conclusion, Sir, is it really worth holding this up NOW in order not to upset or to get along with this rigid and regressive sub-group of our culture until a better day (a sub-group, by the way, whose extreme values they demonstrate consistently are way out of alignment with the sound and prudent conservative values of the greater culture), at the cost of the health of so many of our fellow citizens' The shrill demands of the radical Right and their business allies grow daily more bizarre and irrational. When will it be the right time to say no to these, and yes to what's simply right by any sound and rational long-term analysis' At some point, Mr. President, you, our leader, will simply have to take the radical Right and their allies in the recalcitrant U.S. business community by the horns (even if with a lasso) and tame them. They won't like it, They will buck and fight to maintain control of their system, just as many confronted by the Civil Rights Movement didn't like it, and fought like demons to shake it off. Just as Dr. King did then, by putting "by the people, for the people, of the people" first, I am certain that the rest will take care of itself, and work itself out. Then the mighty forces for good that are at the heart of this great country will be free to lend their help to the cause of justice and our moving forward out of this dark valley we are currently sloshing through. Thank you for allowing me, a regular guy and passionate citizen, also a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, to share these thoughts with you. I trust you will do the right thing as you understand it, and to the best of your abilities. Sincerely,