Many people wonder why we have such a hard time cleaning up Indiana. Consider this: Hoosier Environmental Council worked long and hard to get a rule to protect Indiana's groundwater only to be torpedoed by an industry-friendly ruling from Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM).

IDEM has adopted a dreadful rule that makes the owners of polluting factory farms beam and ordinary citizens literally hold their noses.

Regardless of popular sentiment, The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) is determined to waste a fortune to carve up southwest Indiana with a new terrain highway, I-69.

The list of pro-industry, anti-environmental actions by state and federal regulatory agencies goes on and on. What on Earth is going on here? Aren't these agencies here to protect citizens? Why are they actually fighting the citizens? To get some insight, I did a little research on the origins of government regulation of industry.

The first federal regulatory agency was established in 1887 - the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). I was eager to learn the names of the brave populists who fought to form and expand the powers of this ground-breaking agency. Let' see there was steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, banker J.P. Morgan and several railroad presidents and…whoa… Aren't those the guys they called the original Robber Barons?

Bingo! It turns out that the first regulatory agency was set up to protect these obscenely rich men from what the king of the Robber Barons, John D. Rockefeller, called "ruinous competition." Another railroad baron, Charles Adams, set the requirements for regulatory agencies for the next hundred years when he wrote, "What is desired is something having a good sound, but quite harmless, which will impress the popular mind with the idea that a great deal is being done, when in reality, very little is intended to be done."

President Cleveland's Attorney General pointed out to the happy railroad executives that the ICC would be a "sort of barrier between the railroad corporations and the people…" What this agency and subsequent incarnations accomplished exceedingly well, has been to defuse popular movements to rein in corporations. Instead of making pollution illegal, it's "regulated" by an understaffed, essentially toothless agency. It's still ok to dump tons of cancer-causing chemicals into the air, water and land, but don't forget to do the paperwork.

These agencies serve a further important purpose. They act as a whipping boy for both citizens and industry. When industry wants to blame someone for layoffs, moving factories to Third World countries, etc., what better excuse than "these horrible regulations are killing us!" Citizens in turn blame the agencies or government in general for not doing enough to protect the public.

When there's a popular demand for reform, we get another toothless regulatory agency! Want to oversee pollution but not inconvenience industry too much? Establish an EPA or an IDEM! It's amazing.

When a regulatory agency fails to protect the public, it's good to remember it is succeeding magnificently in doing what its historic mandate has always been-protecting industry and a new generation of Robber Barons.

Jack Miller is president of the Hoosier Environmental Council and a frequent contributor to the Bloomington Alternative.