Be careful what you wish for because sometimes you might not like the result. And big-government advocates should be particularly careful since government rarely meets the goals it sets. That’s what some leftists are learning about the European Union’s chemical law called REACH, which stands for “registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals.” It sounds bureaucratic because it is. In fact, even its supporters are learning that it is a green regulatory monster. And Animal rights activists, which relinquished their opposition…

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When it comes to things such as environmental policy, the Progressives have been rather successful at promoting their world view.  They realized that it would be futile to argue that property rights and human ingenuity could not solve anything - so they did not try (immediately) to socialize oil or other sub-surface minerals but they did succeed in derailing the evolutionary process by which institutions emerged to resolve emerging problems.  The economist Ronald Coase  noted this in an essay pointing out…

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I was cheered this morning by the news that Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago is to be the next head of OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. While not someone a libertarian conservative would necessarily appoint, he is possibly the best choice possible that Obama could have made, and his friendship with the President-elect suggests he will have some power. In particular, Prof. Sunstein has been a very strong opponent of the Precautionary Principle, which is the…

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