What is going on at the EPA is nothing short of amazing.

The workforce at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is on course to fall to its lowest level since Ronald Reagan was president, an agency official said on Tuesday.

…

After buyouts and retirements, that number could drop to 14,428 by October, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in an email.

That would be below the fiscal 1988 level, when EPA staffing was 14,440, the official noted. A further 2,998 employees, or just over 20 percent of the total, are eligible to retire now, the official said.

C. Northcote Parkinson, British economist and writer of age-of-sail fiction, once wrote about The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates in his essay called Parkinson’s Law. The EPA has epitomized this phenomenon. What makes it worse is that the EPA hires smart, energetic, myopic, true-believer, enviro-nazis who are not content with an “eight-and-the-gate” mentality but willingly put in extra hours to make sure you feel the hand of the Environmental Deity… and law enforcement, if need be.

Over time, the EPA has ventured out from its core functions to worrying about livestock flatulence as a cause of global warming and rating appliances on energy efficiency…when it is not causing massive toxic waste spills and running from responsibility.

Though I fully realize that this if merely another futile gesture by the Trump administration and doesn’t really count as an accomplishment because it is an act that can be changed by any future president, I do have to say the strategy of forcing the EPA to restrict its activities, despite its penchant for do-gooder nannyism and outright legal thuggery, to core functions by starving it of personnel is welcome.