Are you a big fan of government regulation?  Thanks to the EPA, you can win $2500 if you help them create 90-second videos propagandizing for the nanny state:

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are “important to everyone.”

The contest, which ends May 17, will award $2,500 to the makers of the video that best explains why federal regulations are good and how ordinary citizens can become more involved in making regulations. The videos must be posted on YouTube and can be no more than 60-90 seconds in length.

In the current contest, each video must include the slogan “Let your voice be heard,” and it must direct viewers to the government’s regulatory website www.Regulations.gov. The winning video will then be used by the entire federal government to promote the regulatory process and enhance the public’s participation in it.

For some reason, this bit of irony seems to have escaped the EPA and the Obama administration:

As explained in the EPA press release announcing the contest, the purpose of the videos will be to remind the public that federal regulation touches “almost every aspect” of their lives and to promote how important those regulations are.

Maybe the fact that federal regulation touches almost every aspect of our lives already is reason enough not to cheerlead for it, and especially not to produce propaganda for an expansion of regulation.

The EPA’s motives are rather obvious.  They have declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, despite its natural presence in the atmosphere, in order to give the agency leverage to vastly increase its regulatory powers.   That will create a big increase in energy costs, which will have an exponentially inflationary effect on the economy as prices rise at every stage of production and distribution.  That effort won’t make the EPA any more popular, which is why they need an Army of Peons to sing hosannas to the regulatory state.

Government shouldn’t produce or publish videos about how great it is, or how much more government is needed.  If interest groups and elected officials want to debate those issues through advertising, that’s their right.  This smacks of a government propaganda campaign that Congress should nip in the bud ASAP, before the EPA gets around to bestowing its first annual Leni Riefenstahl Award.

Update: I wrote “90-minute videos” but it’s actually limited to 90 seconds. My apologies for the momentary brain fade; I knew it was 90 seconds, but typed “minute” instead.