Doug Bandow

Increasingly Lost Property Rights

by Doug Bandow on January 30, 2009

in Environment, Legal, Politics as Usual, Regulation

Most people probably think “wetlands” should be wet.  But not in the view of federal bureaucrats.  Land can be perfectly dry–indeed, never have the slightest pool of standing water–and still be a “wetland” in Washington’s view.  And it turns out that having the Supreme Court on your side isn’t enough to protect you.

Writes Reed Hopper in the Detroit News:

After hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees and 14 years of court battles with no end in sight, Michigan’s John Rapanos finally gave up his fight to defend himself against accusations that he illegally filled wetlands on his private property in violation of the Clean Water Act.

Despite winning his case in the U.S. Supreme Court, Rapanos recently settled it with the federal government. He agreed to pay fines and mitigation fees approaching $1 million. Federal prosecutors immediately hailed the settlement as a vindication of their virtually limitless power to regulate local wetlands nationwide.

But this settlement only demonstrates the inability of individual citizens to stand up for their rights against the overwhelming resources of Big Government.

The federal Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of fill material into “navigable waters” and expressly recognizes the rights and responsibilities of state governments to protect and maintain local waters. Who could have foreseen that federal bureaucrats would stretch the language of the law to encompass mostly dry, inland wetlands lying in the middle of a Michigan cornfield?

Certainly not ordinary citizens like Rapanos, whose private property was 20 miles away from the nearest navigable waterway. No wonder he told federal officials to take a hike when they accused him of a federal crime for the ordinary activity of “moving sand from one end of his property to another,” as one judge described it.

But federal bureaucrats in the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency are not used to being ignored. Rapanos was perceived as a threat to the agencies’ ever-expanding claim of authority. So they sued Rapanos criminally and civilly.

James Hansen: Ideologue or Scientist?

by Doug Bandow on January 30, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

James Hansen of NASA is one of the leading climate alarmists, and possesses a scientific credibility lacking in the Goracle.  But Hansen really has become a parody of himself, more activist than scientist.  His supervisor at NASA was a skeptic.  And as Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote a year ago:

If you’ve paid any attention to the global warming debate, you’ve heard of James Hansen.

Hansen is the politicized NASA climate scientist who virtually invented the global warming issue in the broiling summer of 1988 when he was the star doomsayer at Senate hearings called by Al Gore.

Since then, Hansen has received better press than Mother Teresa. In hundreds of interviews and glowing profiles, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been treated as objective and/or infallible by an adoring mainstream liberal media.

Yet Hansen’s not even close to being an objective scientist. He is openly ideological and rabidly partisan. His political pals and financial patrons are liberal Democrats — Gore, John Kerry and left-wing groups funded by George Soros and Teresa Heinz.

Nor is Hansen part of the hallowed scientific “consensus” on global warming. He’s much more apocalyptic. He still predicts faster and much greater sea-level rises, ice-sheet meltings and species extinctions than the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Hansen’s Teflon credibility wasn’t even scratched after the August revelation that since 2000 he and his fellow scientists had been incorrectly crunching the data from about 1,200 ground weather stations that NASA uses to take the country’s annual average temperature — and which the unquestioning mainstream media used as “proof” the country has been getting hotter every year since 1998.

Maybe Hansen will be proved right.  But these days he seems more interested in ideology than science.

We’re Here from the Government to Hurt You (the Toymakers)

by Doug Bandow on January 30, 2009

in Economy, Politics as Usual, Regulation

That old line about “we’re here from the government to help you” always garners a laugh.  But small toymakers are crying.  Investigative columnist Timothy Carney looks at how the big toymakers are using new regulations to their benefit:

Thousands of self-employed businessmen, artists, and boutique owners who make or deal in hand-crafted children’s toys, clothes, or furniture could be out of work next month. A 2008 federal law, with the salutary-sounding name “Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act,” could drive these craftsmen out of business.

Big toymakers, who helped write the bill, are ready for the regulations that will go into effect Feb. 10, while smaller toymakers look likely to suffer. It’s another example of how Washington, when it regulates an industry, often helps the biggest businesses in that industry while crushing the smaller guys.

This toy story begins in the summer of 2007 when toy-making goliath Mattel was thrice forced to recall products made in China after discovering dangerous levels of lead. That fall, as Congress took up the bill reauthorizing the Consumer Products Safety Commission, consumer groups pushed for stricter safety standards on toys and other children’s products.

In September 2007, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., introduced a bill in response to the lead-in-toys scare. The bill became law in August 2008, making it illegal to sell children’s products—toys, furniture, clothes, et cetera—that have not undergone third-party testing for hazardous materials.

The bill also declared that any children’s product was a “banned hazardous substance” if any portion of it had a lead content greater than 600 parts per million. Also all manufacturers of children’s products—big or small—are required by the law to create registries of every product they sell and put unique tracking numbers or marks on each product.

This third-party testing portion of the bill goes into effect Feb. 10, which has small toymakers up in arms. The Handmade Toy Alliance is one of many groups mobilizing to keep the CPSC from destroying artisan toymaking.

Large manufacturers who mass produce toys or children’s furniture will face some added costs from the bill, but these are costs they can bear—especially because the costs will be industry wide thus passed onto consumers.

Indeed, many of the bigger manufacturers have already implemented testing procedures to comply with the federal requirements. Their smaller competitors, however, will suffer under the burden.

Ah, yes.  The government is here to help us–well, at least some of us, if we have big lobbying operations!

What NASA Thinks of James Hansen

by Doug Bandow on January 29, 2009 · 3 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual

James Hansen of NASA has become one of the leading climate alarmists.  Quite simply, the world is about to end.  That being the case, industry executives who don’t toe the line (only wrecking the economy can save humanity from destruction) should be tried in a kind of environmental Nuremberg Trial.

It turns out that Hansen’s supervisor, at least, was not so enamored of his work.  Reports the Spectator in London:

But now the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reports that James Hansen’s former supervisor, retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Programme at NASA who was responsible for all weather and climate research in the agency from1982 to 1994, has said he thinks man-made global warming theory is anti-scientific bunk:

‘I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,’ Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. ‘I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation… Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress…

Theon declared ‘climate models are useless.’ ‘My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,’ Theon explained. ‘Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,’ he added.

It’s too bad Dr. Theon’s views don’t get the same attention as those of Dr. Hansen.

Land of Liberty? No Longer in Belmont, California

by Doug Bandow on January 27, 2009 · 3 comments

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

I’ll confess that I’ve quietly applauded the spread of no smoking establishments.  I don’t believe the government should ban smoking in restaurants, bars, and airplanes, but I’ve enjoyed the new smoke-free atmosphere.

Nevertheless, it should not be a matter of the law.  The health argument misses the larger point:  people should be free to make choices, and that includes not only smoking, but smoking in restaurants, bars, and airplanes so long as the owners will let them do so.  People who don’t like smoke can go (and work) elsewhere.

There’s no reason that every business must have the same rules.  Why, for instance, in California, a state of 37 million people, is it illegal for even one bar in one city to allow smoking?  This is fascism with a human face, the demand that everyone else submit to one’s personal preferences, never mind what everyone else desires.

Now a town in California, naturally, has taken neo-prohibition one step further:  apartment buildings.

Reports the New York Times:

During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home.

Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings.

“I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms. Frederickson, 72, pulling on a Winston as she sat on a concrete slab outside her single-room apartment. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.”

And that the ban should have originated in her very building — a sleepy government-subsidized retirement complex called Bonnie Brae Terrace — is even more galling. Indeed, according to city officials, a driving force behind the passage of the law was a group of retirees from the complex who lobbied the city to stop secondhand smoke from drifting into their apartments from the neighbors’ places.

“They took it upon themselves to do something about it,” said Valerie Harnish, the city’s information services manager. “And they did.”

Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air. Not surprisingly, habitually health-conscious California has been ahead of the curve on the issue, with several other cities passing bans on smoking in most units in privately owned apartment buildings, but none has gone as far as Belmont, which prohibits smoking in any apartment that shares a floor or ceiling with another, including condominiums.

“I think Belmont broke through this invisible barrier in the sense that it addressed drifting smoke in housing as a public health issue,” said Serena Chen, the regional director of policy and tobacco programs for the American Lung Association of California. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace.”

Again, the obvious answer is to let apartment owners set their own rules.  Over time I suspect that some apartment complexes would cater to nonsmokers and others to smokers, if nothing else by creating nonsmoking and smoking floors.

This sort of prohibition is far more offensive than the ban on smoking in restaurants and bars, since it invades the home, which traditionally is accorded the greatest privacy.  And imagine what enforcement will inevitably entail:  apartment raids to check the smell if not catch residents “in the act.”

It becomes ever more difficult to refer to America as “the land of the free.”  Unfortunately, that phrase increasingly has come to mock America’s former heritage of liberty.

The Thrilling Feeling of Spending Other People’s Money

by Doug Bandow on January 27, 2009 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

There’s nothing quite like using someone else’s credit card. No wonder the Washington Post headlined a front-page article today: “Stimulus Bill Sends Thrill Through Region.” It’s enough to give a local pol or bureaucrat the chills! Just think of the fun of wasting cash provided by people around the country for local boondoggles that your own taxpayers would never pay for!

Reports the Post:

As Congress prepares legislation to pump more than $800 billion into the economy, governments in the Washington region are lining up for their share: dollars that could mobilize stalled projects to mend water mains, repave roads and rebuild schools, as well as plug other budgetary holes.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) said yesterday that a stimulus bill pending on Capitol Hill would bring the state as much as $2.9 billion over 27 months for Medicaid, education programs, worker training and “fiscal stabilization” and an additional $1 billion for transit, school construction and clean-water projects.

Virginia officials said the state could be eligible for as much as $800 million for highway projects alone.

“There are many, many projects that are ready to go as soon as we know the criteria and how much money we’re getting,” said Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).

The stimulus plan is viewed in the two states and the District as something of a bailout. But it remains unclear how much money local governments will get and how many items on their wish lists will be funded, given the vagaries of funding formulas and the evolving nature of the legislation.

Governors and members of Congress are being deluged with inquiries and wish lists from local governments, which see the American Reinvestment and Recovery Plan as deliverance from a fiscal nightmare.

I live in Virginia.  Instead of taking my money and giving it away to local politicians in, say, California and Colorado, how about letting me keep it and fight with my own elected officials about how much they get to seize?  Me thinks they would be a lot more careful since I can vote against them in the next election.

Which is precisely the point of the expensive boondoggle moving through Congress.  And why the mammoth spending bill sends a “thrill” through not just the Washington, D.C. region, but through city halls, county commission buildings, and gubernatorial mansions across the country.

Shock, Shock–Politics Infects Federal Bail-Out

by Doug Bandow on January 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Politics as Usual

Who would have imagined that the honorable Barney Frank, head of the House Financial Services Committee and chief culprit in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac disaster, would manipulate the bank bail-out for the benefit of his friends!?

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn’t look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department’s bank bailout fund last fall.

The Treasury had said it would give money only to healthy banks, to jump-start lending. But OneUnited had seen most of its capital evaporate. Moreover, it was under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives’ use.

Nonetheless, in December OneUnited got a $12 million injection from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. One apparent factor: the intercession of Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Frank, by his own account, wrote into the TARP bill a provision specifically aimed at helping this particular home-state bank. And later, he acknowledges, he spoke to regulators urging that OneUnited be considered for a cash injection.

I am truly shocked, shocked to find politics going on on Capitol Hill!

Waste Not, Want Not … Or Else!

by Doug Bandow on January 21, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Stimulus to Nowhere

The British government is looking after its people, in a motherly sort of way.  It plans to send government officials door-to-door to tell people not to waste food.  Really.

Reports the Daily Telegraph:

Householders are to be visited by officials offering advice on cooking with leftovers, in a Government initiative to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away.

Home cooks will also be told what size portions to prepare, taught to understand “best before” dates and urged to make more use of their freezers.

The door-to-door campaign, which starts tomorrow, will be funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a Government agency charged with reducing household waste.

The officials will be called “food champions”. However, they were dismissed last night as “food police” by critics who called the scheme an example of “excessive government nannying”.

In an initial seven-week trial, eight officials will call at 24,500 homes, dishing out advice and recipes. The officials, each of whom has received a day’s training, will paid up to £8.49 an hour, with a bonus for working on Saturdays.

The pilot scheme, which will cost £30,000, could be extended nationwide if it is seen as a success. If all 25 million households in the UK were visited in the same way, 8,000 officials would be required at a cost of tens of millions of pounds.

Can such a step be far behind in America?  Sounds like a great new job for all of the young Obamacans looking for their next crusade.  Of course, going door-to-door to nag people about their cooking might not be the best tactic in areas where gun ownership is widespread!

President Barack Obama Already Dealing with Global Warming

by Doug Bandow on January 20, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual

Anyone who lives in the nation’s capital knows that it has been FREEZING, with well below average temperatures. Even today, inauguration day, started out with the wind chill in single digits. It’s good to know that the president already is seeking to fulfill his promise to halt global warming. After all, as candidate Barack Obama told us in his June speech celebrating having locked up the Democratic Party nomination

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Of course, I have to say–as a warm weather person, I think we’ve had a bit too much planet healing lately!

We Can’t Afford Much More Stimulus!

by Doug Bandow on January 15, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

The deficit for this year already exceeds that for all of last year.  Reports Reuters:

The United States racked up a record $485 billion deficit for the first three months of fiscal 2009, exceeding the $455 billion gap for all of the previous year, the U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday.

In December, the government posted a deficit of $83.62 billion versus a year-ago surplus of $48.26 billion — a wide swing that the Treasury attributed to a steep drop in corporate tax receipts and outlays from its financial rescue fund.

The December budget gap was in line with consensus forecasts of an $83 billion deficit from economists polled by Reuters.

The combined October, November and December deficit was nearly five times the year-ago budget hole of $107 billion, according to Treasury data.

The ballooning deficit could constrain President-elect Barack Obama’s ability to revive the U.S. economy with a massive fiscal spending program this year. The deficit for fiscal 2009, which started Oct. 1, is expected to hit a staggering $1.186 trillion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. This is even before an estimated $800 billion in proposed tax cuts and stimulus spending from Obama.

The December U.S. budget outlays rose to a $321.44 billion, a record for that month, from $228.72 billion in Dec 2007. The outlays included about $55 billion in spending from the Treasury’s $700 billion financial rescue fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

We just can’t afford much more of this stimulus!

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