Amy Ridenour is the president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. She and her husband David, the vice president of the National Center, are the parents of three third graders. David's comments, like those of other National Center staff members, directors, associates and fellows, often appear in this blog.
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British MP Charges Some Parents Have Been Threatened for Questioning Health System
A Liberal Democrat Member of the British Parliament is charging that some parents in Britain have been told they could lose legal custody of their children because they complained about the British government's National Health Service.
From the Times (UK):
Parents are being threatened with having their children taken into care after questioning doctors' diagnoses or objecting to their medical care.
John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP, who campaigns to stop injustices in the family court, said:
"Very often care proceedings are used as retaliation by local authorities against 'uppity' people who question the system."
Cases are emerging across the UK: The mother of a 13-year-old girl who became partly paralysed after being given a cervical cancer vaccination says social workers have told her the child may be removed if she (the mother) continues to link her condition with the vaccination.
A couple had all six of their children removed from their care after they disputed the necessity of an invasive medical test on their eldest daughter. Doctors, who suspected she might have had a blood disease, called for social services to obtain an emergency protection order, although it was subsequently confirmed that she was not suffering from the condition. The parents were still considered unstable, and all their children were taken from them.
A single mother whose teenage son is terminally ill and confined to a wheelchair has been told he is to become the subject of a care order after she complained that her local authority’s failure to provide bathroom facilities for him has left her struggling to maintain sanitary standards...
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Possibly It Can Be Found in the Kiddie Sex Section of the Constitution?
Where do you suppose the federal government found the authority for it to do this in the Constitution?
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D.C. Post Office Rationing Stamps (Still Excited About Government-Run Health Care?)
One of my co-workers, who is managing a particularly large mailing, has just returned empty-handed from a quest to obtain 3,000 stamps from nearby post offices.
Not even the official stamp store attached to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum - which celebrates the ability of mailmen to deliver to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and to the front lines during wartime, and which has a vault system to handle the valuable bulk quantities of stamps - could spare 3,000 44-cent stamps.
Not a square to spare.
Why? According to some of the counter staff, there is a new district manager overseeing post offices in our area. This manager is setting a limit on how many stamps any one post office can have at any one time. Therefore, area post offices are being forced to ration their stamps. If we bought 3,000 at this point, there might not be enough left later for other customers.
So the U.S. Postal Service turned away our business for lack of resources.
It reminds me of a comment President Obama made earlier this month when asked about private insurers possibly being better than a government-run "public option":
"My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining - meaning taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services and a good network of doctors, just like any other private insurer would do - then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the post office that's always having problems."
Still interested in a "public option"?
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
"I Don't Want The Folks Who Created The Mess To Do A Lot Of Talking"
RealClearPolitics has a video (51 seconds) of President Obama telling a crowd in Virginia that "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking."
Is he frustrated that Americans are turning out at town halls to express opinions different than his own?
Who else could he be referring to? Talk show hosts? Bloggers? Opposition party politicians?
Who is it he believes "created the mess"?
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10 reasons the government should take over health care (NOT).
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"Mouthing Disingenuous Assurances Isn't Leadership or Change"
Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie, writing in his personal column on WorldNetDaily, asks: "Why the rush on Obamacare?"?
Mychal (as usual!) doesn't mince any words in his conclusion:
Parading in front of teleprompters and mouthing disingenuous assurances isn't leadership or change. It is simply more of the same from another smarmy politician who will say and do anything to advance a diabolical agenda – no matter how bad it is for the nation.
You can see what Mychal has to say by reading his column here.
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The Conflicted Priorities of Britain's Government-Run Health System
Britain's public health system has said that heroin addicts may be given access to swine flu vaccine earlier than Britain's general population, as they are unusually vulnerable.
Last week, a 22-year-old man from Essex, England with liver disease died after he was denied a liver transplant by the same health system. Active alcoholics aren't allowed transplants, even if they commit to stop drinking, as Gary Reinbach did. His brother, Luke, told the press, "They never gave him the chance to show he could change."
Whether you agree or disagree with these decisions, are they the national government's to make?
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Outrage of the Day: Police Chief Calls Traffic Camera Monitoring "Cowardly"
District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier called iPhone users who monitor the location of traffic cameras and speed traps "cowardly."
Chief Lanier appears to have totally forgotten the official purpose of the traffic cameras and speed traps, which is to get drivers to follow traffic regulations.
People who stick to the speed limit because their iPhone app told them a speed trap is coming up are not any less safe than people who stick to the speed limit because they see a police car on the shoulder.
In fact, they may be safer, as the pre-warned iPhone users probably don't suddenly hit the brakes as do so many drivers when they see a police car (even if they aren't speeding in the first place -- ever notice that?).
I'm an iPhone user who drives in D.C. I had no interest in getting this app until Chief Lanier made this comment. Now I intend to find out what it is called and get it just because she said this. Few things are more annoying than a public servant abusing citizens for exercising their constitutional rights (unless it is a public servant with the power to make arrests doing it).
I will toss the chief a bone, however: When I start routinely seeing police cars -- the ones that don't have their sirens on or show any sign that they are responding to an emergency -- routinely following the speed limits and other traffic rules, I'll delete the app.
Care to tell your own officers to slow down, Chief?
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House Health Care "Reform" Bill Bans Sale of Private Health Insurance Policies
Investor's Business Daily is reporting that page 16 of the House Majority's health care bill bans new health insurance policies from being sold after the bill becomes law.
The editorial says, in part:
It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:
"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised - with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers...
...It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.
There's more in the editorial; for copyright reasons I could only excerpt it. Please go to Investor's Business Daily and read "It's Not An Option" immediately. Then ask your friends to do so.
This isn't merely a smoking gun showing the liberals are making a hard push now for socialized medicine, folks. This is a forest fire.
Addendum, 9:30 AM: A private source is telling me that, under the legislation, individual private insurance policies would still be permitted for sale through the government's insurance exchange, but the current system for the purchase and sale of health insurance would be shut down. So, as Matt Drudge would say, developing...
The Government's Penalties for Success Are Running Into Its Subsidies for Failure
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says today in an article by Matt Cover for CNSNews.com that small businesses don't make $280,000 a year, so new health care tax hikes at that level won't harm small business.
Oddly though -- as a commenter on the CNSNews.com website noted -- the Small Business Administration will provide financial assistance to firms making many times that.
If you manufacture cigarettes, for example, you are eligible for Small Business Administration assistance if you have a thousand employees. Setting aside the question of why Congress is subsidizing cigarette manufacturing while penalizing it with sin taxes, can we rationally assume a business with a thousand employees never clears $280,000 a year?
So we appear to have a case in which you are penalized for being rich at the same time you are subsidized for not being rich enough.
But there is a method to Congress' madness, says Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), as reported by Adam Brickley and Fadia Galindo for CNSNews.com. The Congressional majority's health care tax plan is designed to harm small businesses sufficiently to force them to cut their employees' health care benefits, thus forcing those employees onto the public health care plan.
So when it looks like Congress is taxing and subsidizing the same people in a completely nonsensical way, we can rest assured that there is a purpose behind it after all -- the purpose of driving as many of us as politically-possible into a substandard, inevitably insolvent public health care plan.
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Have a Disabled Child? Mom Getting Forgetful? Expect ObamaCare to Let Them Die
Longtime conservative activist Foster Friess writes on his Campfire blog of Dr. Zeke Emanuel's plans to limit the health care expenses of "individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens..."
In other words, if you are getting old, or not all there mentally, bye bye to you if you need health services that cost money.
Is Dr. Emanuel some powerless nut? If only!
No, he's President Obama's Special Advisor for Health Policy, his brother is the White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, and Dr. Emanuel laid out these views in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.
Have a severely disabled child? Mom getting forgetful? If this kind of thinking becomes policy (beware: it could), expect ObamaCare to let them die.
Video of Tom Borelli on Obama's Corporatism Strategy on Glenn Beck
Here's the video of Monday's broadcast of the Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News channel in which Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project and Wall Street analyst/Fox Business News commentator Charles Payne talk about GE's quasi-merger with the Obama Administration, GE's hiring of Linda Daschle as a lobbyist, the recent appointment of a GE executive to a top Obama Administration post at the EPA and how, as Glenn Beck put it in the segment, "the little guy gets screwed."
Carol Browner's Hijinks: They Call This Open Government?
Mark Tapscott is on the case of White House "climate czar" Carol Browner, who appears to be continuing her wily Clinton Administration pattern of dodging and weaving whenever legal niceties interfere with her left-wing agenda.
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."
Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act...
Browner should answer these charges and very specifically, too, but President Obama must be held to account as well. It's not as though he didn't know what he was getting when he appointed Browner. As my husband David Ridenour pointed out in an op-ed published around the U.S. early this year, when Browner was head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration, it made a practice of skirting the law.
Throughout [Carol Browner's] years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for 'telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress.'
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials 'distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations' and 'directly lobbied the Congress.' Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong op-ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Browner was forced to terminate the program. The following year, Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called midnight - environmental regulations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Lamberth then held the EPA in contempt for 'contumacious conduct.' As little respect as she's shown for the law, Browner has shown even less for science. During her years at the EPA, agency scientists who didn't toe the party line were subjected to relentless harassment.
David Lewis, an EPA Science Achievement Award recipient, publicly criticized the quality of science used in crafting regulations. In response, the EPA charged Lewis with ethics violations and repeatedly denied him promotion. Although he won whistle-blower judgments against the EPA, he was eventually forced into retirement.
CNSNews.com's Monica Gabriel and Marie Magleby report today that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer actually laughed when asked by CNSNews.com if Members of Congress should read a government health care "reform" bill before voting on it.
"If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn't read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes," Hoyer told CNSNews.com.
If the bill is so unimportant it's not worth the trouble to read (by people who are paid well to read it, no less!), maybe we should just do without.
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Continuing my post about the Tea Parties in New York City and Washington, D.C. attended by National Center staff, here are photos of the July 4 Tea Party in Washington.
I estimate approximately 4,000 people attended the Tea Party in Washington D.C.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
A second round of "tea parties" took place across America this week. According to one organizer's web site, there were almost 1,500 scheduled events across America to protest the unabated growth of government, particularly since Obama took office.
On July 1, Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli and her husband - National Center Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli - attended the tea party in Times Square in New York City.
On July 4, National Center executive director David W. Almasi and his wife Nancy attended the tea party in Washington just steps from the Capitol.
Below are some photos from the New York City tea party. The next post will contain photos from the Washington D.C. tea party.
Deneen Borelli
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Peter includes the role of government-backed unions in his analysis:
...[GM's management's] biggest shortcoming... was the failure to take on the unions. No executive in Detroit would dare take on the unions or build a non-union plant in a southern state. Now, there is a reason for that... That’s because of the government, because of the power of the United Auto Workers on our government. If one of them tried, they would have been run out of town. And now we have the ultimate manifestation of it where the UAW has an equity stake in the company and I predict the results are just going to be worse and worse.
Dittos to Peter on that one.
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Black Conservatives Warn of Threat to Continued Freedom
On the occasion of the annual holiday "Juneteenth," which celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S., black conservatives associated with Project 21 are warning the continued growth of government poses a significant threat to continued freedom.
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The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Clean Water Restoration Act by a party-line vote this morning.
This was expected.
Prospects for CWRA on the Senate floor are less predictable. It could go either way, although the left appears to have an advantage given 1) its control of Congress, and 2) the limited public attention (even from conservative media) the onerous provisions of this massive bill are receiving.
On a more positive note, excluding the bigger-the-government-the-better crowd, the more Americans look at this bill, the less they like it. And why would they like it? Who wants to get a federal permit, or the very least have to investigate whether they need a federal permit, just to landscape their own back yards?
It is not as though the original Clean Water Act, which is a powerful law by anyone's definition, has been repealed or expired. We don't need CWRA to have clean water.
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Senator James Inhofe's opening statement on CWRA from the hearing is a useful addition to the debate.
I hadn't previously realized the National Association of Realtors and had come out against the bill (perhaps I should stop reviewing the environmental groups' propaganda sheets, which often claim only right-wing dirty water lovers oppose CWRA).
An excerpt from Senator Inhofe's statement:
I see this bill as a significant part of a hostile agenda aimed squarely at rural America. Whether it’s new energy taxes from cap-and-trade legislation or more unfunded environmental mandates, it’s clear that this bill is yet one more raw deal for rural America.
Allowing EPA and the Corps to exercise unlimited regulatory authority over all inter- and intrastate water, or virtually anything that is wet, goes too far and is certainly beyond anything intended by the Clean Water Act. But, that is what S. 787 does. It vastly expands Federal control of private property, despite assurances contained in S. 787. In fact, the very premise of the bill is to override a State’s fundamental right to oversee waters within its borders and to usurp the power of land owners to manage their property as they see fit. The Constitution never envisioned federal jurisdiction being boundless; it carves out room for state and local governments and private property owners to manage their resources.
Two of my Republican colleagues have filed amendments to S. 787, which highlight some very legitimate concerns with the bill. I have chosen not to try and amend the bill because, frankly, I don’t think this bill is fixable. Allow me to just briefly list some of the groups that have expressed concerns with this bill that are not covered by any the amendments filed today: The Associated Builders and Contractors, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of REALTORS, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Association of Airport Executives, and the list goes on for about 14 pages...
Clean Water Restoration Act Information Webpage Created
The National Center for Public Policy Research has created a webpage with links to resources about the Clean Water Restoration Act.
The page has links to resources about CWRA published not only by the National Center, but by a variety of other organizations as well. If you are a columnist, blogger, speaker or talk show host planning to address the issue, you will find plenty of useful information on the page.
As National Center Senior Fellow R.J. Smith noted below, the legislation is scheduled for a markup and vote in the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee on June 18.
Clean Water Restoration Act Scheduled for Senate Committee Vote June 18
An important message from National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith on the Clean Water Restoration Act, which is less about protecting our nation's waters and more about expanding the federal government's power to regulate private property.
From R.J. Smith:
I received an email at 11:05 p.m. last night from Senate Environment and Public Works staff that Senator Barbara Boxer and company are going to bring the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) up for full committee mark-up and vote in their Thursday 18 June business session scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in the EPW Hearing Room, 406 Dirksen.
This is Senator Russ Feingold's S.787, which was introduced on April 2.
With the Democrats having nationalized the financial, banking and automobile industries -- bringing a strong layer of socialism to the key portions of the US economy -- they are now moving to nationalize the American land and water.
Under the Clean Water Act, the Federal government only had the authority to regulate "navigable waters" and control the discharge of pollutants and dredge and fill activities within those navigable waters.
The so-called Clean Water RESTORATION Act restores nothing. That is a hoax. Instead, it removes the restrictive and limiting terms "navigable" waters and unconstitutionally extends the Federal regulatory authority over ALL waters of the United States. This includes the driest desert areas that may only hold water for a few weeks a year during summer monsoon rains. And it includes completely isolated prairie potholes (small ponds and marshes) with no connection whatsoever to any other waters.
Furthermore, the bill will now prohibit ALL activities affecting all waters of the United States. This means that anything a landowner, a business, a county roads department, a waterfowl conservation program undertakes that could conceivably affect anything that is wet -- will be subject to the discretionary jurisdiction of Army Corps or EPA bureaucrats. They will then be able to make the lives of family farmers, ranchers, tree farmers, home builders -- almost anyone and everyone -- literally impossible. They will have the total power to force every farmer or rancher or ordinary business owner to run a gauntlet of permits, red tape, delays -- that will delay projects long enough and cost so much as to essentially shut down or bankrupt even the most necessary and innocuous projects.
There are copious examples of wetlands horror stories over the last 20 years in which people have been imprisoned and fined staggering amounts for simply building their own home, cleaning up dumps, or creating habitat for waterfowl. And that occurred under the CWA restrictions of "navigable waters" and prohibitions only on discharging pollutants and dredge and fill activities.
Once those constraints are removed by the CWRA, life will quickly become a bureaucratic nightmare with no exit -- particularly so throughout all of rural America. This bill would be much more honestly named "The Rural Cleansing Act of 2009."
This will be a tough battle given that the E&PW Committee make up is 12 Ds and 7 Rs (which includes Senators George Voinovich and Lamar Alexander).
It is important that people who are concerned about this enlist the help of the agricultural community, especially county and state farm bureaus. They should notify not only the members of the Senate E&PW but also the Senate Agriculture Committee.
It is also vital to contact Rep. Collin Peterson Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and request that he ask for oversight hearings on the impact of the CWRA on America's farmers and the nation's food production.
They should also request that the farmers and ranchers they know and their county and state farm bureaus and cattlemen's associations contact the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, asking them to strongly oppose the CWRA.
Addendum (6/14/09): For more information on the Clean Water restoration act, please visit our new CWRA information webpage at http://www.nationalcenter.org/CWRA.html.
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A Gateway Pundit post on this tonight leads with: "After Weeding Out GOP-Linked Dealers, Chrysler Looking To Open New Dealerships."
This article sticks out in my mind: "After Surviving Katrina, a Local Car Dealer Becomes a Casualty of the Economy." Nothing overtly political in that story, but it's worth a read for the angle of the guy who pulled up his bootstraps to get a dealership in the first place, only to be hit by Katrina and spend years recovering, now to suffer a killing blow from his government.
Paul Ibrahim notes, accurately, I believe: "Regardless of whether these specific allegations are true, one would be foolish to believe that government makes decisions based on business judgment as opposed to political considerations."
Money Manager Castigates President, and Good for Him
By way of the Zero Hedge blog, by way of New York magazine, The Lid blog reprints a nice tough letter from money management executive Clifford S. Asness about President Obama's recent attack on hedge fund managers.
An excerpt of the letter (the full version of which you can find on all three websites above):
The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration's bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them "speculators" who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else" and who wanted "to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout."
...Here's a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It's not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders' contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.
The above is how it works in America, or how it's supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler's creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse.
Let's be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients' money to share in the "sacrifice", they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not. The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients' money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That's how the system works. If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could "share in the sacrifice", you would not be happy...
...Let's also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing...
By the way, New York magazine reports that Mr. Asness supported Mr. Obama during the last election.
NY Times Story Gives Huge Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax Bill One-Sided Treatment
When the New York Times today told its readers about the massive Henry Waxman-Ed Markey 648-page draft global warming tax bill, it bent over backwards to report the pros and cons of the proposal.
Not.
The March 31 story, supplied by Darren Samuelsohn and Ben Geman of Greenwire:
* Included sponsor Rep Waxman's claim that "this legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution," without a balancing rebuttal or reference to the economic damage passage of the bill would almost assuredly cause.
* Followed that favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Waxman with a favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
* Followed those two favorable statements with seven sentences quoting Democrats Rep. Charles Gonzales (D-TX), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Rick Boucher (D-VA), who have quibbles on the margins about the proposal but who like the concept.
* Followed that with two sentences from the lone voice of rebuttal, the only Republican/conservative quoted, and the only person quoted who addressed the massive negative impact the bill, if adopted, would likely have on the economy, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).
* Followed the two sentences allocated to Rep. Barton with 32 paragraphs of discription of the bill, none of it a critical analysis.
* Concluded with seven paragraphs headlined "Reactions," which covered quotations and opinions from four organizations on an ideological spectrum ranging from very left-wing to far left-wing: The Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Oxfam America and Environment America. No economists, energy experts, free-market groups, businesses or business groups or any other individual or institution other than left-wing environmental organizations were quoted or cited.
No one with a straight face could call this a balanced story.
Watch Tom Borelli on the Fox Business Network's "Money for Breakfast" on Wednesday Morning
Note: Due to news coming from the G20 meeting, the Fox Business Network has postponed running the scheduled April 1 interview with Tom Borelli until April 2. We apologize for any inconvenience to our readers who tuned in April 1 expecting to see Tom.
From David Almasi:
Tom Borelli, director of The National Center's Free Enterprise Project, is scheduled to be a guest on the Wednesday morning edition of the Fox Business Network's "Money for Breakfast" program (April 1, 2009). Tom will be talking about the inherent problems with imposing a "cap-and-trade" policy relating to greenhouse gas emissions.
"Money for Breakfast" airs between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM eastern on the Fox Business Channel. Tom is tentatively scheduled to appear around 7:40 AM eastern. Check your local cable listings for local channel number or click here.
In a recent column on Townhall, Tom wrote about why some big businesses are lobbying for the inherently risky cap-and-trade policy:
...Clearly, these firms have placed a huge wager on cap-and-trade since the legislation will make carbon dioxide a commodity and drive demand for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels.
But carbon trading is very speculative at best. For example, JPMorgan is seeking to create carbon emission credits from distributing energy-efficient stoves in Africa. Since the stoves will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere because they burn less fuel than traditional cooking methods, the company wants to claim the savings as a carbon emission credit. The carbon credits would then be sold in the carbon exchange to a company that is over its government mandated limit...
...There must be something in the water on Wall Street that makes these firms dream up such ridiculous ideas. Creating a market built on a house of cards that man's activity is causing global warming is dangerous enough, but that risk gets magnified when markets are created by assigning an artificial value to a ubiquitous and invisible gas such as carbon dioxide.
Additionally, a National Center poll taken in 2008 found that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose a cap-and-trade policy. The poll results can be found here
To learn more about the "Money for Breakfast" program, click here.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
U.S. House Holds Kangaroo Hearing to Fool Public About Causes of California Drought
The National Center for Public Policy Research has sent a 'kangaroo' to a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee on climate change and the California drought.
The kangaroo's appearance will to protest the fact that the hearing is expected to ignore the contribution of environmental regulations in exacerbating the drought, and also the fact that only representatives of government agencies, mostly federal, have been invited to testify.
Our press release explains:
'Kangaroo-Court' Hearing a One-Sided View of California Drought
Washington, D.C.: The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources is holding a one-sided hearing this morning on the California drought that is expected to blame climate change for a critical water shortage while glossing over the role of activist-inspired environmental policies in exacerbating the shortage, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
The hearing, entitled "The California Drought: Actions by Federal and State Agencies to Address Impacts on Lands, Fisheries, and Water Users," will be held today, March 31, at 10:30 am in Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building.
Only representatives of government agencies will be permitted to testify at the hearing. Most of the witnesses will be from federal agencies.
To draw attention to the biased nature of the proceedings, The National Center for Public Policy Research will send a representative to the hearing best suited for a kangaroo court - a kangaroo.
"At the height of a California drought and during a serious recession with massive unemployment in California's Central Valley, one would hope that the committee cared enough about agricultural workers and minorities to invite as witnesses actual unemployed farm workers from the scores of communities closing down," remarked R.J. Smith, a Senior Fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. "Let's have an open Committee hearing and hear real people discussing the impacts on their lives from government regulations and their massive job losses - instead of more government bureaucrats who are only causing the problem."
California - the nation's largest producer of tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, apricots, strawberries and many other crops - risks agricultural losses of over $2 billion for the upcoming season and $3 billion in total economic losses in 2009. According to a University of California at Davis study, 80,000 jobs could be lost in the Central Valley.
Although global warming is expected to receive much of the blame for this economic disaster, government regulation is a more significant - and preventable cause - of it, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
For example, state and federal water officials have sharply cut agricultural water deliveries in California so that more water can go out to sea as part of an effort to protect the Delta Smelt - a three-inch long fish listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In February, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a "zero allocation" of water from the Central Valley Project, cutting off the massive federal irrigation system that serves numerous California farms. The supply of water from California's State Water Project is 20 percent of normal.
"By demanding that the water flow into the Pacific Ocean, government meddlers have forced farmers to abandon production, threatening both the nation's fresh food supplies and the jobs of farm workers, many of whom are among the nation's poorest minorities," said Mr. Smith. "Ironically, the cut-off of agricultural water has done nothing to help the Delta Smelt. Every year less water is diverted for agriculture, yet the fish population continues to decline."
The state of California also deserves blame for the water shortage because it has failed to build the water infrastructure necessary for the state's growing population.
Donn Zea, President of the Northern California Water Association, wrote in the March 5th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle that although California's population has doubled over the past 40 years, the state has not meaningfully updated its water storage capacity since 1967. "As a result, when drought hits, we have an amount of water suitable for California in 1960 - not 2009," wrote Mr. Zea.
The Resources Committee - which has a history of promoting global warming alarmism - is expected to explore the dubious link between a modest increase in global temperatures and localized weather patterns devastating California.
"If certain members of the House Natural Resources Committee want the world to believe that a regional drought in an arid area of California is further 'proof' of global warming, then let's hope that they apply the same reasoning to the floods that are ravaging eastern and central North Dakota," remarked Dr. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. "By the thousands, residents of Fargo and Bismarck are trying to protect their cities from the rising waters of the Red and Missouri Rivers. The blocks of ice on the Missouri River north of Bismarck were so huge that explosives were used to blow them up. Will Chairman Rahall invite Fargo's mayor and other North Dakota officials before his committee to testify on how ordinary citizens spent hours in sub-freezing, snowy weather protecting their homes and businesses from the effects of global cooling?"
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit 501(c)(3) communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems. For more information, visit the National Center's website at www.nationalcenter.org or call (202) 543-4110.
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Here's hoping our 'kangaroo' (actually, a man in a kangaroo costume) is able to draw some attention to government regulations that are needlessly hurting Californians.
Tom Borelli, director of The National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, is scheduled to be a guest on today's "Glenn Beck" program on the Fox News Channel. He has been asked to appear to talk about proposed legislation to create a government-run "green bank" meant to help finance so-called green technologies.
Tom notes: "The last time the government got involved in banking we ended up with Fannie Mae and the housing bubble. Following that disaster, the last thing we need is to fund a green bubble."
"Glenn Beck" airs at 5:00 pm eastern on the Fox News Channel. Tom is tentatively scheduled to appear around 5:20 pm eastern. Check your local cable listings for channel.
To learn more about the "Glenn Beck" program, click here.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
On the other hand, he's given the high-profile position of "climate change czar" to former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, whose record leads many to suspect she believes that anti-lobbying laws are there to be broken.
As David Ridenour (full disclosure: my husband) of the National Center for Public Policy Research writes in Monday's Washington Times:
...Throughout her years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for "telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress."
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James F. Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials "distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations ... directly lobbied the Congress." Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong Op-Ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Mr. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Mrs. Browner was forced to terminate the program.
The following year Mrs. Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called "midnight" - environmental regulations. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Mrs. Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Judge Lamberth subsequently held the EPA in contempt for "contumacious conduct."...
Did President Obama stern admonish Carol Browner that behavior of this sort would not be tolerated in an Obama Administration (and, if so, why take the risk of appointing her at all?)? Or are rules against "outside" lobbyists the only ones Barack Obama wants enforced?
* Note: In my view, the new directive to supposedly limit lobbyist influence on spending of the so-called stimulus won't mean much in the end. Businesses, unions, lobbying firms, lobbyist law firms, state and local governments and special interests wanting a piece of our tax dollars will simply lobby for it using personnel who are not required to register as a lobbyist under the terms of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (or, in some cases, people who are required to, but didn't). The only way to keep lobbyists from going after federal money is to shrink the pot of federal money available as government-distributed handouts (for instance, by leaving it in the hands of those who earned it in the first place).
Hat tip: I learned about the ACLU's position on the new lobbying directive from the Don Irvine Blog.
Outrage of the Day: The Terrible Health Care Canadians and Britons Receive
It's become fashionable in governing circles to deride the quality of the U.S. health care system to support an ideological agenda that says Americans would be better off with a government-run health system similar to Britain's or Canada's.
The National Center for Policy Analysis puts the lie to this, well, lie, and not for the first time.
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians.
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians.
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K.
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.
Go here for the backup details and keep the document bookmarked for the health care debate to come. And maybe e-mail it to any Canadians or Britons you may know. Those folks need health care reform, ASAP. ___________________
Diverse Coalition Appeals to Congress Regarding Unjust Provisions of Omnibus Land Management Act
Readers with an interest in property rights, civil rights or simply staying out of jail for doing something one has no idea is illegal will want to review the coalition letter sent to the Congressional leadership, the Attorney General and to President Barack Obama by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences and the National Center for Public Policy Research during the last 24 hours.
Our respective organizations have diverse viewpoints, but we share a deep and abiding belief in due process under the law. We believe that that Congress should perform careful diligence before adding violations to the criminal codes, that federal crimes should be narrowly defined and show clear criminal intent, and that the use of asset forfeiture must be narrowly tailored so that it does not unduly punish the accused before a trial has proven their guilt. As such we have grave concerns about sections of the pending Omnibus Land Management Act of 2009, which passed the Senate last week as H.R. 146, regarding "paleontological resources preservation."
These sections, now contained in the bill under Subtitle Dof Title VI, seek to empower the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior to"protect paleontological resources on Federal land using scientific principles and expertise." We understand that preventing theft of and harm to important fossils on federal land is a serious objective. However, we are concerned that the bill creates many new federal crimes using language that is so broad that the provisions could cover innocent human error. There is also, in defining the crimes, a troubling lack of words such as "knowingly" that clearly establish criminal intent as a prerequisite for prosecution. As Georgetown University legal ethicist John Hasnas has written, to serve the greater goal of justice, all criminal laws must require the government to establish that "one had to knowingly or at least recklessly act in a morally blameworthy way to be subject of criminal punishment."
H.R. 146 would make it illegal to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any paleontological resources located on Federal land" without special permission from the government. Penalties for violations include up to five years imprisonment. "Paleontological resources" are loosely defined as all "fossilized remains ... that are of paleontological interest and that provide information about the history of life on earth." We are troubled by this definition that paleontological organizations say could cover many common rocks that adults and children collect. The Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences has warned that with this wording, it is easy to visualize "a group of students unknowingly crossing over an invisible line."
We are also concerned about the bill's prohibition against "false labeling" of fossil specimens, an offense that also carries criminal penalties. The bill makes it a crime to "make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any paleontological resource excavated or removed from federal land." This broad language could criminalize innocent misidentifications, limit scientific inquiry, and infringe on the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. Fossil labeling is a complex process, and even the top museums of the world have been known to revise labeling in their exhibits upon scholarly review or new facts being discovered ..Thus, the fear of making an honest mistake in fossil labeling or even having fossil identifications proven "false" in light of new scientific discoveries could have a chilling effect on new research in paleontology.
We are pleased that the Senate recently improved provisions regarding forfeiture. Language in earlier versions of the legislation would have allowed government officials to engage in the pretrial seizure of "all vehicles and equipment of any person" accused of theft or harm to a "paleontological resource." Forfeiting a person's property without a conviction undermines the bedrock principle of our legal system: that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Past abuses of forfeiture led to bipartisan passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, and we had feared that these provisions would go against the spirit of these reforms. The Senate heeded our concerns with an amendment, and as passed on March 20, "vehicles and equipment" were removed from the forfeiture language, so that the forfeiture provisions apply only to the "paleontological resources" taken from federal land. This is a marked improvement, and we would oppose any attempts to reinsert forfeiture of personal property in a revised bill.
Above all, we are concerned that a bill containing new federal crimes, fines and imprisonment, and forfeiture provisions may come to the House floor without first being marked up in the House Judiciary Committee. That committee is tasked with providing centralized oversight of criminal legislation, thereby enhancing the fairness and consistency of those enactments. As such we strongly urge that the criminal provisions of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act be stripped from any final legislation until they are subject to Judiciary Committee review and amendment."
Representatives of the signatory organizations of this letter would be happy to meet with you or members of your staff to address these concerns.
Sincerely,
Caroline Fredrickson Director American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office
Tracie Bennitt President Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences
John Berlau Director, Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs Competitive Enterprise Institute
Kyle O'Dowd Assoc. Executive Director for Policy National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
David A. Ridenour Vice President The National Center for Public Policy Research
Cc: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer House Majority Whip James Clyburn House Minority Whip Eric Cantor House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith President Barack Obama Attorney General Eric Holder
For more information on this issue, see this blog's previous coverage of this here and here. ________________________________
Massive Omnibus Public Land Management Act to See Another Vote
By R.J. Smith:
Sometime today the Omnibus Public Land Management Act will come up for its final vote in Congress. A courageous band of defenders of energy production, natural resources use, public multiple-use of the public lands, and property rights and private land ownership have tenaciously fought this massive 160+ bill package since the fall of 2007.
On Thursday 19 March the Senate completed the complicated bill switch, replacing H.R. 146 (the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act) with S.22 and then voting on that. The Senate passed the bill 77-20 (2 NV). 20 GOP voted Nay. 21 RINOs voted Yea to further shut down the West, destroy domestic energy production, lock-up tens of millions of acres of public lands in categories that much of the public will never be able to use. Destroying energy production, mining, timber harvest, grazing, and recreation.
Bad enough in normal times. Unforgiveable in a recession and energy shortage.
In addition to the 1,000 miles of new Wild and Scenic River designations there were 2,800 miles of new National Trails that will have the authority to shut down anything that can be seen from the trails that the Feds disapprove of.
Senator Reid had allowed Senator Coburn to offer 6 amendments, 5 of which were defeated, and one of which the Democrats had agreed to pass on a voice vote.
Coburn's successful amendment was to the Paleontological Resources Protection Act section of the Omnibus which would criminalize any private collection of fossils on the public lands. His amendment removed the criminalization of "casual and unintentional" collection of rocks that may contain a fossil or portion of a fossil. However, any knowing collection of a fossil is now a felony, with the Feds having nationalized all fossils on public lands and essentially closing down amateur and independent paleontological discovery, research and collection on the public lands.
But the most important provision of Coburn's amendment was that it removed the bill's draconian provisions to apply civil asset forfeiture laws to all who collect any fossils -- giving the Feds the authority to seize the vehicles and equipment and even the homes, ranches, farms and lands of amateur and professional paleontologists.
Because the original H.R. 146 had already passed the House, the complicated Senate actions sent the Omnibus and the Battlefield bill back over to the House on Monday, with the House needing only to vote to concur with the amended Senate bill.
Yesterday the House Rules Committee voted to consider it under a closed rule -- eliminating the possibility of a motion to recommit and all amendments to the bill. The House Natural Resources Committee minority members had submitted about a dozen amendments for the Committee to consider, but they were rejected. There will now be a one hour debate on the rule and then a one hour debate on the Omnibus -- and then a simple majority vote, guaranteeing that this monstrous bill will pass.
The Democrat leadership even rejected an amendment to codify the right to carry concealed weapons on National Park and National Wildlife Refuge lands -- one of the last regulations from the Bush Department of Interior. A week ago a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction blocking the regulation. Reportedly the Democrat leadership promised the pro-gun, conservative and Blue Dog Democrats that they would bring up a stand-alone bill to restore Second Amendment rights. But it is highly unlikely that Rep. Pelosi and other extreme liberals will ever allow such a bill.
The genuine hero in the long convoluted efforts to kill this terrible bill was Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and everyone should make an effort to thank him. He kept the land-grab bottled up for almost a year and a half.
In the House, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rob Bishop (R-UT) certainly deserve your thanks for fighting this bill in the House and for attempting to have honest and open hearings and debates on the scores of bills in the Omnibus which the House had never considered or debated.
This is another massive "mystery meat" bill with well over a thousand pages of bills which no one has read or understands. Driven by the shameful lust of Congressional members to bring pork to their districts at the expense of American freedom, energy production and security, natural resources use and the locking-out of more and more of the public from the use of their lands.
It is a step closer to making America a Third World country and a feudalistic nation with the government owning an ever-increasing majority of the land and resources.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Addendum: Here's how the vote ended up. ________________
Outrage of the Day: Congress Receiving TARP Funds as Campaign Contributions
Who's getting bailout money?
Michael Isikoff and Dina Fine Maron, writing in Newsweek's March 30 edition, say it just might be your Congressman:
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A Newsweek review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program...
Businesses receiving bailout money, and/or businesses even partially owned by government, should not be making campaign or PAC contributions. Nor should Members of Congress or other candidates or officeholders accept these contributions if they are offered.
And while we're on the subject, government-subsidized or owned or partially-owned businesses should not lobby or employ lobbyists until they are privately-owned and completely off the dole.
George Will's 'Partial List of Recent Lawlessness, Situational Constitutionalism and Institutional Derangement'
I recommend George F. Will's column in the Washington Post and other papers Tuesday.
If it doesn't make you want to fight what's going on in Washington, nothing will.
The column begins:
With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.
TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."
Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is...
Watch Tom Borelli Live on Fox's "Strategy Room" Monday
From David Almasi:
Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, is scheduled to speak about current events and breaking news as part of the group discussion on the Fox News Channel's online "Strategy Room" program on Monday, March 23 between 9:00 and 10:00 am eastern.
To access the live Internet broadcast, click here and then click the "STREAM THIS NOW" headline in the center or the page under the photo.
To learn more about Fox's "Strategy Room" Internet talk show, click here to see an article about the program that appeared in this past Monday's New York Times.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
We begin with the notion that journalism is a public good, that it has broad social benefits far beyond that between buyer and seller. Like all public goods, we need the resources to get it produced. This is the role of the state and public policy. It will require a subsidy and should be regarded as similar to the education system or the military in that regard. Only a nihilist would consider it sufficient to rely on profit-seeking commercial interests or philanthropy to educate our youth or defend the nation from attack. With the collapse of the commercial news system, the same logic applies. Just as there came a moment when policy-makers recognized the necessity of investing tax dollars to create a public education system to teach our children, so a moment has arrived at which we must recognize the need to invest tax dollars to create and maintain news gathering, reporting and writing with the purpose of informing all our citizens.
Can you imagine The Nation fretting that declining church attendance harms society, and as a result calling for $60 billion in subsidies to America's churches? Ha!
But it's just as well.
What government subsidizes, government owns.
If you have any doubt, ask certain executives at financial institutions that received bailout money.
Publicly-funded media is a dangerous idea. We shouldn't even be funding NPR.
Legislation to specifically target AIG employees with a 90 percent tax on retention bonuses directly conflicts with the founding principles of the United States, Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli charged today on the Fox News program "Strategy Room."
Saying Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from passing laws "impairing the obligation of contracts," Borelli says the AIG bonus controversy is a creation of the lawmakers who rushed bailout legislation earlier this year without due consideration. These are the same lawmakers who now seek to hide their mistakes by pushing this new and selective tax.
"Politicians need to be reminded that we are a nation of laws. To impose a hastily-concocted tax as a means of rectifying a problem that the government itself created and mismanaged calls their ability to lead into question," says Borelli. "To suddenly enact a new tax to punish a few dozen people for something that was legal at the time is ludicrous, and it smacks of the British treatment of the colonists that provoked the revolt that created the United States. Have we come full circle already?"
Outrage of the Day - Congress Treats Death Threats Lightly
Today awarded to Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) for his callous response to death threats received by private citizens, including children, employed by or related to someone employed by AIG.
Sound public policy relating to AIG - whatever that might be and not that we can expect this Congress to enact it - does not require that Congress possess the actual names of AIG employees who received contractual bonuses. Even the farcical policy of handing out money only to tax it right back (really, how ridiculous can Congress get?) does not require that Congress have these names. (The IRS would take care of collections.)
Congress leaks. And leaks. And leaks. (Usually for very selfish reasons; once in a while due to stupidity or carelessness.) Anyone who cares a fig for the safety and peace of mind of these people should just err on the side if caution and leave people's names out of the debate.
Or maybe we've just reached a place in this country in which Congress doesn't care if children are the focus of death threats. ______________________________
Outrage of the Day: Waxman Drags Feet on Needed CPSIA Reform
Today's Outrage of the Day to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), for his refusal to hold hearings on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), legislation adopted last year (see this blog's prior coverage here and here) that has forced charities and thrift shops to toss out large volumes of used clothing and other goods, caused used bookstores to toss out children's books published before 1985, halted sales of dirt bikes, handmade toys and other children's goods, and more.
Congress adopted this law in apparent response to widespread reports of children ingesting dirt bike parts.
No, not really. Congress adopted adopted this law in part because it has no idea what it is doing (that's what happens when lawmakers vote on bills no one has read, coming from an ideological bias that the bigger government grows, the better we'll be), but that's no excuse for not revisiting the issue now that the truth is kicking many people in the teeth.
Every day this law remains unreformed, jobs get killed and books (some of which are irreplaceable) get tossed away.
You can tell that to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), though, chairman of the House Committee with jurisdiction, and he'll tell you he'll get to it later.
...Waxman, for his part, has announced his intent to hold no hearing on the law until the Obama Administration installs a new chair at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That serves the multiple functions of 1) stalling (while more small enterprises are driven out of business and thus are neutralized as political threats); 2) reinforcing the impression that the ball is in someone else’s court on addressing the law’s harms; 3) assisting in orchestrating whatever hearing is eventually held, since he expects an ally of his own to be installed as CPSC chair...
So now, as Overlawyered reports it, ordinary citizens are now planning their own "people's hearing" on the matter, hoping through direct action to get some relief.
It shouldn't be necessary. Congress made a huge mistake. It should admit it, and fix it.
Today's Outrage of the Day goes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his reported intention to try again to get the monster Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S. 22) into law without proper deliberation.
Following the bill's defeat last Wednesday (under suspension of rules) in the House, Reid reportedly plans to try again by attaching the huge bill as an amendment to a bill, H.R. 146, "The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act," that has already received House approval, and is to be voted on early this week in the Senate.
As National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith pointed out in this extensive commentary last week, it's likely that no one has read the bill-cum-amendment, as it's 1,294 pages long and nine inches thick. There have been no hearings, mark-ups or floor debate about most of it.
Omnibus Public Land Management Act Defeated - For Now
A followup to our blog post on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act (S. 22) posted during the wee hours this morning, from the New York Times, by Eric Bontrager:
The House rejected an amended omnibus package of more than 160 public lands, water and resources bills despite a last-minute change designed to ease concerns about the bill.
By a vote of 282-144, the House failed to pass S. 22 (pdf) under a suspension of the rules, which barred any amendments from being added to the bill but also required a two-thirds majority for passage...
Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 on House Floor Today - 170 Bills in One; Half Have Had No Hearings
By R.J. Smith:
S. 22, the giant Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, will go to the House floor today (Wednesday, March 11) under suspension of rules. This means debate will be limited to a mere 40 minutes and amendments will not be permitted. Congressmen will be asked to vote on the bill without knowing what is in the 1,294-page, 9-inch thick bill! Some 170 separate bills have all been rolled into this one omnibus. Nearly half of them have never had any hearings, review or mark-up in the House.
The major concern with the bill is the vast expansion of every sort of Federal land ownership, including new and expanded National Parks, National Trails, National Heritage Areas, National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, National Preserves, National Historical Parks, National Historic Sites, and more.
It creates 82 new Wild and Scenic Rivers including over a thousand miles of rivers.
It will also create millions of acres of new Wilderness Areas.
In addition, S. 22 will give legislative authority and statutory permanence to the National Landscape Conservation System. The NLCS was created by decree in June 2000 by then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. It effectively removed at least 26 million acres from BLM multiple-use management, giving these lands near-Wilderness status. Federal bureaucrats and environmentalists have longed to give this new land-management system official designation, placing it on a par with the National Park System and preventing future secretaries from opening the lands to even necessary and vital energy exploration.
This massive Omnibus bill would lock up millions of acres of land at the height of an economic recession and at a time the U.S. is struggling to improve energy security. Instead of creating jobs and increasing resources, energy supplies and wealth -- it would destroy them. It will shut down cattle grazing, mining, timber harvest, energy exploration and production and recreation.
And it will add another $10-12 billion of Federal spending.
Hundreds of millions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas will be locked up. It will kill a vital new Liquefied Natural Gas terminal/port in Massachusetts so that Congressman Barney Frank -- who frequently rails against oil companies for pushing energy prices higher -- won't have it spoil his view.
The Omnibus creates a new Coastal and Estuarine Conservation program as well.
It also includes provsions providing Global Warming and Climate Change programs on public lands.
Under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act it makes it a Federal crime to collect or pick up fossils or fossilized rocks on any Federal lands. It will become a Federal crime for school children to collect fossilized sharks' teeth. And in a scary twist it would extend civil asset forfeiture, permitting the government to seize ownership of all vehicles and equipment used in the gathering of any fossilized material.
The good news is that because the bill is coming up under suspension, it requires a 2/3 vote of the House of Representatives. This means only 146 votes against the bill will be sufficient to derail it.
Please spread the word about this bill and encourage people to contact their Congressman. Because it is coming up tomorrow, time is of the essence.
Thanks for your help.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Carol Browner: Dictating Climate Policy Like Caesar of Old
An op-ed by David Ridenour on President Obama's choice of Carol Browner to serve as a so-called "climate czar" has appeared in newspapers nationwide, including this version from Investor's Business Daily:
Climate Czar Will Reign Like Caesar Of Old
By David A. Ridenour
President Obama vowed to set a new direction of ethics and transparency in government and with his selection of Carol Browner as climate control czar. Unfortunately, her steadfast belief in the far-left policies of extreme environmentalism make that vow impossible to achieve.
An environmental zealot, Browner has so much baggage she could be an airline. But then, maybe not. For despite Browner's best efforts, some of her baggage simply won't stay lost.
Carol Browner is the right person to drive expansion of the state under Barack Obama.
The Washington Examiner recently discovered that she was one of 15 original members of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, a branch of the Socialist International, an organization linking socialist and labor parties throughout the world.
Among other things, its Declaration of Principles 'demands compensation for . . . social inequities.' That's another way of saying that if you've prospered because of ingenuity or hard work, be prepared to give a lot of it away to those who haven't.
The issue isn't that Browner is a socialist. We crossed the socialism bridge — a real bridge to nowhere — when we sent a man to the White House who promised to spread our wealth around.
The real issue is the attempt to hide this fact from the public. Browner's photograph, which once appeared alongside that of close Vladimir Putin ally Sergei Mironov, was quietly removed from the Socialist International's Web site after the Examiner's story broke. Much like the trillions of dollars in bailouts and economic stimulus, it's as though Browner never existed.
This isn't transparent government, but all-too-transparent politics. Browner has a lot more baggage, too.
Throughout her years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act — a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for 'telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress.' In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials 'distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations' and 'directly lobbied the Congress.' Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong op-ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Byrd — who has made a career of steering pork to his state — complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Browner was forced to terminate the program. The following year, Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute — so-called midnight — environmental regulations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Lamberth then held the EPA in contempt for 'contumacious conduct.' As little respect as she's shown for the law, Browner has shown even less for science. During her years at the EPA, agency scientists who didn't toe the party line were subjected to relentless harassment.
David Lewis, an EPA Science Achievement Award recipient, publicly criticized the quality of science used in crafting regulations. In response, the EPA charged Lewis with ethics violations and repeatedly denied him promotion. Although he won whistle-blower judgments against the EPA, he was eventually forced into retirement.
The term 'czar' comes from the Latin word caesar — as in Julius Caesar, the Roman leader who proclaimed himself dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity) and oversaw massive expansion of government bureaucracy.
If a czar is actually what President Obama was looking for, Carol Browner may have been the perfect choice, after all.
Ridenour is vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative, nonpartisan think tank.
A New York Times editorial published this week has been excoriated by Walter Olson, proprietor of the popular "Overlawyered" blog and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and justly so.
The subject is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), a law that went into effect earlier this month and which even now is causing libraries, thrift shops and used book stores to throw away large volumes of used children's clothes and toys and any children's books published before 1985.
Don't take it from me:
If you browse through the racks of children's clothing at area Goodwill stores, you'll notice half the supply is gone - all because of a new law being implemented by the federal government Tuesday morning. -KPTM FOX 42 News, Omaha, 2/9/09 (Hat tip for the link: Ace of Spades.)
...our realistic choices are: 1. Shut down our children's section, or 2. Ban kids 12 and younger from the library. -Librarian, Idaho (Hat tip for the link: Ace of Spades.)
Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books... 'This is a potential calamity like nothing I’ve ever seen. The implications are quite literally unimaginable,' he said, noting that children’s books could be removed from schools, libraries and stores; nonprofit groups like First Book would lose donations; and retailers, printers, and publishers could ultimately go out of business. 'Books are safe. This is like testing milk for lead. It has to be stopped.' -Talkback on Publishers Weekly, 1/12/09 (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.)
'The economy is tough enough right now, and now I'm not allowed to sell dirt bikes?' -Hitching Post Motorsports (MN) sales manager Andy Buddensiek, as quoted by KARE 11 News, Twin Cities. The Motorcycle Industry Council estimates that $100 million dollars worth of motorbike inventory may have been frozen nationwide. As sales of adult ATVs are unaffected, some worry that children will ride adult ATVs that are too difficult for them to properly handle. (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.)
...unless the law is modified... handmade children's products will no longer be legal in the U.S. -Handmade Toy Alliance (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.)
There are many, many more specific examples of damage this law is doing on Overlawyered.com, some of which are heart-rending.
Here's what the New York Times published:
Unfortunately, the commission has yet to implement important aspects of the new law. The delay has caused confusion and allowed opponents to foment needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and handmade toy businesses. (Emphasis added)
Needless???
Walter Olson at Overlawyered put it this way, in part:
...The Times editorialists warn against “needless fears” that the law “could injure” smaller enterprises. Got that? Not only will they not be driven out of business, they won’t even be “injured”. So small enterprises from coast to coast are just imagining things if they plead desperately for places like the Times to notice that they have already closed down, or will have to do so in the foreseeable future, or have lost thousands of dollars in unsalable inventories. Motorbike dealerships around the country are just imagining things if they think they’re staring at massive losses from the inability to sell their products, even though news-side talent at the New York Times has in fact covered their story well — coverage which the editorial studiously ignores.
For as long as anyone can remember, the New York Times has unthinkingly taken its line on supposed consumer-safety issues from organized groups like Public Citizen and Consumers Union. In this case, the result of such reliance has been to render the nation’s leading newspaper a laughingstock.
It appears the New York Times' belief that regulations have no harmful economic or social benefits is so calcified, it didn't even examine the question of whether anyone was being harmed by CPSIA before declaring news of such harm as being the product of mere "needless fears."
Meanwhile, a significant part of our nation's cultural heritage (children's books published before 1985) is literally been thrown in the dumpster, and many small businesses and charities and the people they serve are being hurt. Some are being hurt quite a lot.
Shame on the New York Times for putting its passion for regulation ahead of the truth.
Today we have shown that, working together, we can address the enormous economic crisis affecting our country. I am particularly pleased that we have produced an agreement that has a top line of $789 billion dollars. That is less than either the House- or Senate-passed bills. It is a fiscally-responsible number that reflects our efforts to truly focus this bill on programs and policies and tax relief that will help turn our economy around, create jobs and provide relief to the families of our country.
I am also very pleased that we were able to increase the amount of funding for infrastructure. That is the most powerful component in this bill to create jobs. Overall, there is about a hundred and fifty billion dollars in infrastructure this bill when you add together transportation, environmental, broadband, and other projects.
Note that, 40 seconds into the video, just an instant after Senator Collins says "working together," the three Democratic Senators standing directly behind Collins crack up.
I have to agree with the Democrat Senators that any pretense of bipartisanship on bill this one was a joke -- a $789 billion dollar sick joke on the American people that definitely is not, Senator Collins, in any way, "fiscally responsible."
And, say what you will about Senator Specter (really, please do!), in this video he at least has the presence of mind to look absolutely grim. _____
Project 21's Deneen Borelli Joins Discussion on Fox's "Strategy Room" Friday - Watch Live Online
By David Almasi:
Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli will discuss the so-called "stimulus" bill and other current events as part of the group discussion on the Fox News Channel's on-line "Strategy Room" program on Friday, February 13 between 9:00am and 10:00am eastern.
To access the live Internet broadcast, click here and then click the "STREAM THIS NOW" headline in the center or the page under the photo.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Both Tom Borelli, senior fellow of the National Center for Public Policy Research and co-director of our Free Enterprise Project, and and Mychal Massie, chairman of Project 21, have been doing a good bit of local and national radio on our behalf on the so-called "stimulus" plan.
I've got links to podcasts to two of the national radio interviews conducted of Tom this week. These links permit you listen to all or part of these interviews at your convenience:
* The G. Gordon Liddy broadcast, February 5. The show's podcast page is here; a link to the actual feed of Tom being interviewed by Gordon Liddy is here.
* Radio America's Dateline Washington, Greg Corombus, host, February 4. Podcast page here; direct link to MP3 podcast file here.
If I acquire podcast links to any of the other immediate past or future broadcast media interviews our folks do on the stimulus, I'll try to add them, schedule permitting. Unfortunately, most shows, even major ones, do not make interview podcasts available. ____
Ak'Bar Shabazz: States and Localities Should Be Wary of Federal Strings
Columnist and spokesman Ak'Bar Shabazz of Project 21 says states and localities should be very wary that huge federal infusions of cash don't bring with them a decline in local autonomy. ____
A British government environmental minister is warning that recycling "could be adding to global warming."
Furthermore, this Daily Telegraph article notes that some local governments in Britain have "admitted using anti-terrorism legislation to snoop on householders who fail to recycle properly."
And then there's the report that Britain's National Health Service (socialized medicine system) is going to cut back on serving meat to patients in order to help combat global warming. That's the rationale, anyway, but the NHS is always looking for ways to save money, and it often comes at the cost of patient welfare.
Another British National Health Service recommendation is that patients be encouraged to get diagnoses from their doctors by telephone consultation instead of by in-person examination. This too is being sold as an effort to combat global warming.
Finally, in other global warming-related news, James Hansen's former supervisor at NASA has told Marc Morano of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that James Hansen "violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting" because the agency "did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it." He also says Hansen "embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress." Read all about it here.
As a followup to this press release, Tom Borelli will be a guest on the G. Gordon Liddy national radio broadcast on Friday, January 16, at 10:30 AM Eastern. _____
At Energy and Commerce Hearing, House Conservatives Call CEOs to Account
Looks like conservatives on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling turncoat corporate CEOs to account on the Hill today:
From Stephen Power's account on the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog, as posted there by Keith Johnson:
The Waxman era begins: The first congressional hearing of 2009 on climate change got off to an acrimonious start Thursday, as House Republicans blasted a group of corporate CEOs and environmental groups for staging a press conference instead of appearing before the House Ènergy and Commerce Committee to answer lawmakers’ questions about their ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Republicans also vowed to hold members of the US Climate Action Partnership accountable for their own use of fossil fuels, by demanding they explain to the committee whether they traveled to Washington by corporate aircraft and how much fuel they used.
“Be prepared for a battle,” Illinois Republican John Shimkus said at the start of the hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mr. Shimkus vowed to “hold accountable” any Democrats from coal-abundant and petroleum-producing states who vote in favor of legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set up an emissions trading system in which companies would have to buy permits allowing them to pollute.
Mr. Shimkus and other Republicans called such legislation, which is favored by President-elect Barack Obama, “a shell game designed to hide” the true costs of regulation from consumers...
Good, good, good.
Using Congress for profiteering is reprehensible; doing it in the name of conservation while flying in on corporate jets to lobby for disproportionately-higher energy costs on lower-income and minority populations makes it doubly so.
I'm not at the hearing, but who wants to bet they have it heated nice and toasty on this bitterly cold global warmy January day?
The only creature comfort the conspirators will be missing is a collection of puppies for the CEOs and the liberal Congressmen to kick on their way out of the hearing room (or so I assume).
We issued a press release on this expensive nonsense earlier this morning:
Energy Bubble, Anyone?
Henry Waxman Gives Public a Look at the Corporate-Congressional Alliance that Threatens to Raise Energy Prices in Pursuit of Private Profit
Thursday's first hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee since Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) ousted Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chairman is drawing criticism from the National Center for Public Policy Research, which says the hearing illustrates how powerful corporate interests are working with influential special interests and with the liberal majority in Congress to use government to enhance private profits at great cost to economic growth and liberty.
The hearing will, according to the committee's announcement, "present the perspectives of members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership ('USCAP'), a coalition of over 30 businesses and nongovernmental organizations that has called for Congress to pass legislation to address the climate change threat."
"Today's hearing on the U.S. Climate Action Partnership exposes the dangers posed by the new political economy," said Tom Borelli PhD, director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research. "The alignment of corporations, special interest groups and liberal members of Congress aiming for this legislative goal is frightening. The housing bubble was born from an alliance of similar interest groups and now we are about to repeat the same mistake with energy policy."
Corporate members of USCAP are trying to profit from a government-mandated "cap and trade" anti-global warming policy by selling so called carbon credits from reductions in greenhouse gases. Under cap-and-trade, emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, would be limited by the federal government. Companies that are over their emission allotment will be forced to purchase credits from another company that is below its allowance.
Under a cap-and-trade policy, companies would be forced to raise energy prices to reduce their emissions. This would unleash a series of adverse economic consequences and hardships for Americans, as the National Center's Vice President David Ridenour noted in a recent article in Investor's Business Daily:
* A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps, similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63% cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.
* According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices by 29%, electricity prices by 55% and natural gas prices by 15% by 2015.
* A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office, examining the costs of cutting carbon emissions just 15%, noted that customers "would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would."
"The alignment of corporate and government agendas for the so called "social good" is eerily similar of the warnings in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which described the unraveling of capitalism" said Deneen Borelli, a full-time Fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research-sponsored African-American leadership network Project 21.
"Pursuing legislation that will raise energy prices in the middle of a recession is economic suicide. It exposes the inability of these CEOs to connect the dots between economic growth and their future earnings," added Tom Borelli. "Let's not forget USCAP corporate membership reads like a who's who list of corporate losers; AIG and Lehman Brothers were founding members and General Electric stock is trading at multiyear lows. Ford, Chrysler and GM are also members -- need I say more?" said Tom Borelli.
"Unfortunately for shareholders, the USCAP CEOs, like their banking industry colleagues, have executed poor risk management regarding the impact of cap-and-trade on their businesses. While banking CEOs thought real estate prices could only go up, USCAP CEOs somehow think there is no downside risk to high energy prices and handing over more power to government bureaucrats. They also think the environmental special interest groups are their friends. That's incredibly naïve," Tom Borelli said.
"We know for a fact that some USCAP CEOs have not analyzed the impact of cap-and-trade on their business. In response to my question about the company's participation in USCAP at the Caterpillar shareholder meeting in 2007, CEO James Owens admitted he did not conduct a cost benefit analysis of cap-and-trade on his business. Shareholders should be outraged over such incompetence," said Deneen Borelli.
"ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva has also not done his homework," said Tom Borelli. "ConocoPhillips has made a significant investment in Canadian oil sands, which release about three times the amount of carbon dioxide than traditional oil. Since cap-and-trade will increase the cost of carbon emissions, Mulva is lobbying to increase the cost of his investment. In addition, his USCAP partner Natural Resources Defense Council is taking legal action to block the processing of the oil sands at a ConocoPhillips refinery."
"Finally, if General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt is so concerned about the state of the planet," Tom Borelli Continued, "why was he selling electricity infrastructure equipment to Iran? Nuclear Iran poses a much greater threat than carbon emissions."
America doesn't need cap and trade and it doesn't need a carbon tax. Any look at the sorry state at the USCAP portion of America's business community, however, makes clear that of the two, cap and trade is worse, because it pits the profit interests of big business directly against the pocketbook interests of the little guy. ____
Carol Browner, the latest Clinton administration retread to be tapped by Barack Obama, will serve in the newly created and still undefined role of White House ‘energy czar.’ If her statements earlier this year are any indication, she also will serve as court jester...
Husband David has an op-ed in today's Washington Times as well as other papers on what a cap on greenhouse gas emissions would due to our economy.
An excerpt:
When our economic bus is teetering at the edge of a cliff, it's a bad time to throw on some extra weight.
Yet government-mandated restrictions on carbon emissions would do precisely that, adding enormous additional weight to an economy already reeling. This additional weight shouldn't just be thrown from the bus -- it should be thrown under it.
Most econometric studies agree that restricting greenhouse-gas emissions would slow our already sluggish economy.
A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63-percent cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.
The Heritage Foundation estimated such restrictions would result in cumulative GDP losses of up to $4.8 trillion and employment losses of more than 500,000 a year by 2030.
Other studies suggest smaller economic costs: Duke University's Nicholas Institute estimates a GDP loss of $245 billion by 2030 while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates a GDP drop of $238 billion to $983 billion.
Sharp emissions restrictions would also push the costs of energy and other consumer products higher. According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices 29 percent, electricity prices 55 percent and natural-gas prices 15 percent by 2015.
The people most vulnerable to such price increases are the poor. A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office examining the costs of cutting carbon emissions just 15 percent noted that customers "would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would." Indeed, the lowest quintile income group would pay nearly double what the highest quintile income group would, as a proportion of income, pay in increased energy costs.
And it appears that all this economic pain would be an utterly meaningless gesture. Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists, who is now with the Cato Institute, says reducing U.S. emissions 63 percent would prevent a mere 0.013 degrees Celsius in warming. With emissions from China, India and other developing nations growing at breakneck speed, even this modest benefit would be completely erased.
Some argue that we should undergo this pain anyway to set an example for others to follow. The European Union tried that and now, apparently, they're throwing in their collective recycled-material towel... Read it all here.
Project 21 members and staff have been published in the Washington Times' op-ed page several times recently. Fans of the group may wish to click on one or more of the following:
"Speed-Limit Myths" - Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie takes on Senator John Warner of Virginia's trial balloon favoring a federal mandate to lower speed limits. After explaining who/what really would benefit from such a policy (hint: not the environment, but it involves something green), Massie suggests that "it might be better if Mr. Warner just drove off into the sunset. If only he could go a little faster."
"History is the Final Judge" - Project 21 member Ak'Bar A. Shabazz asks, "if we disregard the calls for freedom and democracy in places such as Tibet, where are we placing ourselves as it relates to world history?," and quotes Martin Luther King, Jr., saying "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
"Property Rights" - Project 21 research associate Reece Epstein examines the government's use of eminent domain power in a predominately black city to take choice land from small businesses in order to sell it to large ones. He says, "Self-professed champions of the poor don't help when they oppose eminent domain reform. Doing so simply allows government to take from one and give to another - at the expense of communities - just to rake in tax dollars."
"Let Them Eat Cake" - Project 21 member Kevin L. Martin calls on Congress to allow more oil drilling, saying "There may be a day when we all have electric cars, but the one I have right now doesn't have a plug, solar panel or hydrogen converter. It takes gasoline. While I don't object to the possibility of alternative energy sources in the future, I know that most Americans own cars that need gas and live in homes that are powered at least in part by coal. When the elites stifle access to plentiful power, the financial burden is a lot smaller for them. They can afford to pay more for a hybrid car and rave about getting better gas mileage. They can also feel better about their indulgences when they buy imaginary 'carbon credits' that give them the moral authority to use more energy than they want to allow the masses. Like Marie Antoinette, they think the rest of America can 'eat cake' like they can. Sadly, we can't."
"The Civil Rights Shakedown: Myth or Reality?" - Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli takes a look at shakedown allegations against Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and describes her own effort to urge a corporate board not to be part of such a process. Deneen wrote, in part, "Frustrated by what appears to me to be a long history of Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton using semi-subtle campaigns to pressure corporations to donate, I spoke up at the JPMorgan shareholder meeting. After Mr. Jackson spoke, I took his place at the microphone and asked Mr. Dimon and his board: 'Will there ever be a day where you will stand up and say 'No' to Mr. Jackson and to his demands and messages of victimization and divisiveness? This is the United States of America, and this is not the 1960s. People should be hired based on their talents and they should be retained based on their results. There should not be color-coded hiring in the United States.' Shareholders clapped. But, unlike Mr. Jackson's, my question went unanswered."
"Gaining Access with Identification" - Project 21 research associate Reece Epstein turns the Voter ID debate into a civil rights issue -- but maybe not in the way you think: "The bottom line is that someone without proper identification is out of step. And those who want to keep them there are out of line."
"Black America is Still Not Free" - Project 21 research associate Reece Epstein reviews the new book "Sweet Release: The Last Step to Black Freedom" by psychologist Dr. James Davidson, Jr.: "...although he criticizes liberals, Davidson is quick to note he is no conservative. He writes: 'My behaviors and ideas [are] anything but conservative. Trying to improve one's social and economic lot by rejecting traditional societal and black community standards for achievement seemed antithetical to [being] conservative.' The apolitical goal of Sweet Release is to create advancers: 'What you seek is simply not in the 'hood. It never has been, and it never will be... We must now move beyond our own remaining chains, beyond the mental barriers that keep so many of us constrained in our thoughts and deeds.'"
"Governance drives this crisis" - Project 21 associate and Initiative for Public Policy Analysis executive director Thompson Ayodele asks, "Hunger is an everyday problem in Africa. What can be done about it?," and answers, in part: "For one thing, a better governmental infrastructure and incentives can stimulate production if done right. Anything that would dampen competition, and thus lower the incentive to produce, should be avoided. When these programs are instituted, they must be administered with professionalism and transparency."
"Too few Watts: 'Segregated News' is Not the Answer" - Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie isn't too thrilled about former GOP Congressman J.C. Watts' plans to create a black news television channel: "...the question begging an answer is what exactly constitutes 'black news.' There are things that happen to black people in black communities that don't really have an impact on the rest of America, but that doesn't mean they should be provincial to black America. News happening in America is American news, and it should be everyone's concern."
"Jesse Jackson Outrage Strategy: No Dough, No Go?" - Project 21 staff director David Almasi and research associate Justin Danhof wonder why Jesse Jackson never challenged XM Satellite Radio for alleged racial insensitivity for a gold tooth ad similar to one run by Toyota which Jackson did protest. They ask: "Remember when Jesse Jackson challenged XM Satellite Radio for its racist advertising? Probably not, since it never happened. Why he didn't is the question." Could it be because Toyota has more money? _____
Ron Bailey of Reason magazine takes a look at Congress' flawed Clean Water Restoration Act, quoting from this National Center paper by Peyton Knight. ____
Pardon me for venting a little, but this story about a Vermont librarian who prevented five state police detectives from temporarily taking a public library's computers as part of their effort to rescue the then-missing (since discovered to be murdered) 12-year-old Brooke Bennett infuriates me.
From the AP:
Children's librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on "Love That Dog" when police showed up.
They weren't kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library's public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals...
We all have a moral responsibility to help one another in life and death situations. There's no exception for government employees, whether librarians or dogcatchers. In fact, a heightened duty of care obligation may exist for public servants.
Privacy on any matter that is not literally life or death is less important than possibly saving a little girl's life.
How much of a narcissist does a library patron have to be to imagine that other people really care what he's gazing at? (For goodness sake, Mr. Narcissist, if we really care to know what websites you visit, we'd just stand behind you and watch you surf. It's a public library, after all!)
Anyhow, a public library's computer is owned by the government. Anybody who doesn't want the government to know which websites he visits ought not use a government computer to visit those websites.
P.S. The AP story above also is noteworthy for a profuse blast of whining excessive even by generous Vermont feminist standards:
"What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," said the library's director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint.
Gimme a break. While a little girl was in what proved to be mortal danger, the chief public librarian frets that policemen are tall.
Honey, Brooke Bennett had the scary role in this story, not Judith Flint.
Government Pirates: The Assault on Private Property Rights and How We Can Fight It
David Ridenour shared news of a new property rights information resource with the National Center for Public Policy Research's email list last night:
Dear Friend,
I'm writing to tell you about an excellent new book – and exceptional resource – that will be released tomorrow, "Government Pirates: The Assault on Private Property Rights and How We Can Fight It." It was written by my friend Don Corace and I had the privilege of getting an advance peak at the book.
The book details a series of property rights horror stories, some that you've no doubt heard about, such as the Kelo v. City of New London eminent domain case, and some that might be unfamiliar to you.
Corace tells the story, for example, of Jim and Tom Stephanis, who fought the City of Pompano Beach to build a hotel on a 1.3-acre site where their restaurant once stood. They fought the city for 31 years, during which time the Pompano government officials stonewalled the project through bureaucratic shenanigans and frivolous lawsuits. The city even deliberately violated a court order. The Stephanis brothers won nine consecutive lawsuits and numerous appeals before a chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court intervened, ordering an appeals venue change and hand-picking the judges who would hear the case – a highly-irregular and controversial move. This was the turning point in their battle and the Stephanises ultimately lost millions they'd invested in the project. Within a year of their final blow – the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear their case – Jim Stephanis suffered a major stroke. Today he works as a wine manager for a liquor store. His brother, Tom, is retired.
Government Pirates provides especially good insights on how government and outside special interests collaborate to take away Americans' property rights. As a successful real estate developer, Corace has seen this process up-close, first-hand.
If you'd like to take a look at sample pages of the book or see where you can tune in to hear Don Corace talking about the book (he'll be on Hannity and Colmes this week, for example), check out the Government Pirates website. Journalists and bloggers can download a press kit or email publisher HarperCollins here. To pre-order Government Pirates right now, go here.
This book is not only a must-read, but a vital reference book for your library. I encourage you not only to purchase it, but to tell others about this truly important contribution to the property rights movement.
Deneen Borelli on the Supreme Court's Ruling Against the D.C. Gun Ban - Listen Live (Three Opportunities)
From David Almasi:
Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli will discuss today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the Washington, D.C. ban on handgun ownership live this afternoon with Vicki McKenna on WIBA-Madison at 4:35 pm eastern [see note below], with Don Kroah on WAVA-Washington at 5:30 pm eastern and with Jeff Whitaker on WOND-Atlantic City at 6:15 eastern.
You can listen to them live over the Internet.
To listen to Deneen with Vicki McKenna, click here and look for the listen live tab to the right of the station logo at the top of the page.
To listen to Deneen with Don Kroah, click here and look for the listen live tab at the top of the page at the center [see note below].
To listen to Deneen with Jeff Whitaker, click here and look for the listen live option at the top left of the page.
Addendum: The interview with Vicki McKenna on WIBA-Madison has been changed to Friday, June 27 at 4:35 pm eastern.
Addendum II: The Don Kroah show has an audio archive that can be found here. Deneen's interview will be in the audio file for hour 1 of the June 26, 2008 broadcast. The Vicki McKenna Show's audio archives can be found here. _____
Black Group on Gun Decision: A Great Day for Law-Abiding Citizens
The Project 21 black conservative leadership group comments on the Supreme Court's gun rights decision:
District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court Second Amendment Decision Hailed by Black Activists
For Release: June 24, 2008 Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
Today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the Constitution's individual right to own firearms and overturning the ban on most gun ownership in the nation's capital in the first major Second Amendment case in almost 70 years is being hailed by black activists of the Project 21 leadership network.
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli says the decision supporting an individual right to use firearms is a loud and clear declaration that the government cannot pick and choose what constitutional protections are honored and enforced.
"This is a great day for law-abiding citizens of the nation's capital who have unjustly been denied their full right to protect themselves and families for over 30 years," said Borelli. "The Second Amendment guarantees the individual right of citizens to arm themselves for self-defense and not become easy prey. Perhaps the government should find a better way to keep illegal guns away from criminals and not law-abiding citizens."
The case of District of Columbia v. Heller is an appeal of the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in Parker v. District of Columbia. In Parker v. District of Columbia, the DC Circuit ruled the District of Columbia's Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, which bars handgun ownership by most D.C. residents, is unconstitutional.
The specific question being answered in District of Columbia v. Heller today was, as phrased by the Court: "Whether... provisions [in the District of Columbia code] violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes."
The District of Columbia, defending the constitutionality of the firearm ban before the Court in oral arguments March 18, argued the Second Amendment's right to "bear arms" refers not to an individual right to use firearms, but rather to a "right to participate in the common defense" and a restriction of "the authority of the federal government to interfere with the arming" of state militias. The District of Columbia argued to the Court that "the Second Amendment... is expressly about the security of the State; it's about well-regulated militias, not unregulated individual license."
Opponents of the ban, however, said the Founders considered self-defense a right and one they intended the Second Amendment to protect, telling the Court "the framers knew exactly how to condition a right on militia service... and they didn't do it with respect to the Second Amendment."
"There are countless instances in which individuals are on their own when it comes to protecting themselves and their property. A majority of the Justices recognized this and upheld the Second Amendment's specific protection of an individual right to self-defense. Now that D.C.'s citizens have had this constitutional right restored, criminals will have good reason to think twice before trying to plunder another's property," added Project 21's Borelli.
In 2007, in a newspaper column published in Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh and elsewhere, Borelli addressed some of the public policy aspects of the case:
Besides violating the Second Amendment, D.C.'s gun ban is a violation of the fundamental rationale of law. In The Law, noted political theorist Frederic Bastiat wrote: 'It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.' D.C. promotes the opposite, effectively protecting the plunderer and punishing the property owner.
Borelli also pointed out:
Research shows that law-abiding citizens using firearms for protection can save lives and deter crimes. In 'Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control,' co-authors Gary Kleck and Don Kates note that 'as many as 2.5 million victims use guns to defend against crime each year' and 'handguns are actually used by victims to repel crime far more often than they are by criminals in committing crimes - as much as three times more.'
Borelli believes that in addition to it being unconstitutional, it is immoral to deny law-abiding citizens the right to legally possess a firearm, especially within crime-infested neighborhoods.
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or Project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21's website at http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21Index.html.
Project 21's Kevin Martin and four members of the U.S. Supreme Court fear the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush (pdf) -- the Guantanamo Bay/enemy combatant decision -- will cost lives:
Supreme Court Gitmo Ruling Called "Chilling"; Will Cost American Lives
Washington, D.C. - Responding to today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush that allows suspected terrorists to challenge their incarceration, Project 21 member Kevin Martin is criticizing the Court, saying this decision puts national security at risk and sends a confusing signal to the military.
"As a Navy veteran who supported and defended our Constitution at home and abroad, today's Supreme Court ruling benefiting suspected terrorists is deeply disappointing," said Martin. "To grant suspected terrorists the same rights as those fighting to protect our nation is wrong. I consider this one of the most chilling legal rulings in my lifetime. Giving alleged foreign combatants the same rights as any American provides potential ammunition to those with political agendas running counter to the commander-in-chief. Our nation's enemies will now have the ability to gum up our federal courts with baseless legal challenges and further hinder the pursuit of justice."
In the razor-thin 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court decision allows suspected terrorists such as those currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba the right to challenge their incarceration in federal courts. It overturns a law passed in 2006 that limited judicial jurisdiction and affects 270 suspected terrorists currently being held by the U.S. military - including 14 suspects al Qaeda members.
Writing in dissent, and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the 2006 law struck down today was "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation... One cannot help but think... think, after surveying the modest practical results of the majority's ambitious opinion, that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants."
In another scathing dissent, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Alito, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the majority decision "warps the Constitution" and that "[our] nation will live to regret what the Court has done today." Scalia further warned the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed... that consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court's blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today." Scalia also wrote a practical affect of the decision will likely be harm to enemy combatants, as the decision is likely to result in enemy combatants being turned over to other nations by the United States following capture.
Martin added: "This sends a confounding message to our men and women in uniform, within our intelligence community and to our allies. Their hard-fought efforts to capture terrorist suspects maybe for naught because they could simply be released back on the battlefield on a legal technicality."
For more information, I recommend reading the decision. _____
Senator John Warner to Fox's Neil Cavuto: "Just why [gasoline] prices have skyrocketed, we know not."
Shouldn't the co-sponsor of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill, which several independent econometric studies have concluded would significantly raise consumer gasoline prices, have bothered to learn the mechanics of gasoline pricing before creating, co-sponsoring and promoting his bill?
Warner, in the same interview, called concerns that his bill would raise gas prices "purely a scare tactic." One wonders how he could possibly know.
Ben Lieberman at the Heritage Foundation doesn't think gas increase fears result from a scare tactic.
Says he:
A recent study by The Heritage Foundation estimates a cost increase of at least 29 percent by 2030, or $1.10 per gallon based on current gasoline prices. The Environmental Protection Agency is a bit less pessimistic, estimating a price boost of 53 cents per gallon by that year. But others predict an earlier impact - a National Association of Manufacturers' study projects as much as $1.07 more per gallon by 2014.
Anyone want to pay anywhere from .53 - $1.10 more per gallon of gas just to have an outside chance -- a very remote outside chance -- of reducing global warming by 0.013 degrees (C)?
Media Double-Standard on Global Warming "Censorship"
If you plug the search terms "James Hansen" and "censored" into Google, you get 37,900 results.
Do the same search substituting "Roy Spencer" for "James Hansen," and you get 610 results (the third of which is from Newsbusters [here and here]).
The media is highly selective about the censorship it covers. Consider the note climatologist Roy Spencer posted on his website today:
A NOTE ON NASA'S JAMES HANSEN BEING MUZZLED BY NASA
I see that we are once again having to hear how NASA's James Hansen was dissuaded from talking to the press on a few of the 1,400 media interviews he was involved in over the years.
Well, I had the same pressure as a NASA employee during the Clinton-Gore years, because NASA management and the Clinton/Gore administration knew that I was skeptical that mankind's CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming. I was even told not to give my views during congressional testimony, and so I purposely dodged a question, under oath, when it arose.
But I didn't complain about it like Hansen has. NASA is an executive branch agency and the President was, ultimately, my boss (and is, ultimately, Hansen's boss). So, because of the restrictions on what I could and couldn't do or say, I finally just resigned from NASA and went to work for the university here in Huntsville. There were no hard feelings, and I'm still active in a NASA satellite mission and fully supportive of its Earth observation programs.
In stark contrast, Jim Hansen said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to the press and congress during that time. He even campaigned for John Kerry, and received a $250,000 award from Theresa Heinz-Kerry's charitable foundation -- two events he maintains are unrelated. If I had done anything like this when I worked at NASA, I would have been crucified under the Hatch Act.
Does anyone besides me see a double standard here?
-Roy W. Spencer The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Answer: Yes.
Dr. Spencer is right about the double standard, and also right to note that government scientists have bosses who -- quite appropriately -- get to set the rules. Not NBC News, not the Washington Post, and not each individual government employee (even the ones who think they are smarter than everybody else). No, the bosses who report to, and sometimes are, directly elected by the public get to set the rules, and employees like Hansen are supposed to follow them.
If they don't want to, they can quit -- as Roy Spencer did -- or even run for office themselves. (I don't recall James Hansen ever submitting his name on the ballot for public approval.)
The entire so-called "censorship" controversy is a creation of the media, Hansen himself, and a few other pro-global warming theory activists who are trying to promulgate the absurd notion notion that federal government employees, unlike any other employees anywhere, get to say whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want, while on office time.
Hansen called it censorship when his employer decided to have its employees coordinate work-related media interviews through a designated office, leaving some of us to wonder how we can possibly be expected to accept the results of complicated global warming models promoted by a guy who doesn't even understand the definition of a commonplace word like "censor."
Hansen even had the chutzpah to refuse to testify before Congress in 2006 because a so-called "skeptic" scientist, the highly-credentialled and far more polite Dr. John Christy, was also invited to testify. Hansen's effort to get Christy booted from a Congressional panel's witness list doesn't quite fit the formal definition of censorship, but Hansen's intent -- to keep Christy from sharing his views -- was substantially closer to it than anything the Bush Administration has ever done to Hansen.
And speaking of ethical violations, government employee Hansen's refusal to testify to Congress was itself an ethical violation. There may not be a formal rule against it in the rulebook, but Congressmen are the people's representatives, and Hansen works for the people. When Congress wants information, Hansen should provide it.
Too bad Congress didn't subpoena him. Let him claim "censorship" while he's being chased around by U.S. marshalls for his refusal to speak.
Dr. Spencer does valuable work at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, but Alabama's gain was NASA's loss -- the loss of a true professional that few in our blind-eyed news media even realizes, much less acknowledges.
Hat tip: Marc Morano. Cross-posted on Newsbusters. _____
Joe Thomas of WCHV in Charlottesville, Virginia has posted a podcast online of his radio interview with National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow Dana Joel Gattuso.
Dana, as many of you know, is the author of the absolutely excellent new paper on conservation easements, "Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," published by the National Center for Public Policy Research on Tuesday.
If you are among the millions of Americans concerned about the steady growth of government, and you aren't already aware -- as most aren't -- of the explosive growth in conservation easements and how these easements are a door through which governments are exerting greater ownership of and control over private land (typically without the taxpayers knowing about, or any legislature ever voting for, the expansion), then I urge you to read Dana's study.
For a shorter summary of what the issue is all about, I recommend our press release, ably written by Judy Kent, and reproduced below.
Landowners Beware - The Government's Found a New Way to Control Your Land
Conservation Easements Not What They Used to Be, Says New Report
Washington, D.C.: Under the guise of making more land accessible for the public's use and providing tax relief for land-rich but cash-poor landowners, the government has found a convenient way to restrict the use of private land - often without the original landowner's knowledge. Enter The Nature Conservancy and other large land trust conglomerates that approach farmers or large landowners with what seems like a "win-win" for all involved. In return for donating their land for conservation purposes, the landowners are provided with federal and state tax breaks and agree never to convert, develop or use the land for any purpose other than farming or ranching.
A total of 37 million acres of land throughout the United States are currently under the control of land trusts.
However, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research titled, "Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," all-too-often that acquired land, placed under "conservation easements," goes from the land trust right into the governing hands of the largest landowner in the United States, the federal government. Dana Joel Gattuso, author of the report and senior fellow of the National Center, explains these "prearranged flips" provide a back door approach to acquiring land control that is good for the government and the original land trust, but bad for the unsuspecting landowner, who has been kept out of the loop.
How profitable is it for conglomerates like The Nature Conservancy to participate in flips? Gattuso cites their annual report, which states about a fifth of the land trust's annual support and revenues come from the sales of easements to the government. "In one example, The Nature Conservancy bought an easement for $1.26 million, then directly sold it to the federal Bureau of Land Management for $1.4 million," she says. The Nature Conservancy certainly isn't alone, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, one of that state's largest land trusts, has sold more than 700 of its 850 easements to the state and federal government.
Besides being able to take control over more and more land, "Government agencies like the arrangements because they are able to restrict activity on private property absent public approval, unlike land purchases, zoning laws and other land conservation regulations, which can draw heated opposition - and great angst," Gattuso says. According to a Department of Agriculture report on easements, "conservation easements provide opportunities for public agencies to influence resource use without incurring the political costs of regulation or the full financial costs of outright land acquisition." It is troubling that "easements, absent reforms, could evolve into the prevailing method for government to shift lands unobtrusively from private to public control under a pretense of private stewardship," she states.
This trend toward more government involvement in land trusts troubles Gattuso. While conservation easements "have become the rage in land conservation - rising in number from 740 in 1995 to 6,500 today - so has the role of government and government's influence over land trusts." Initially, the benefits of land trust involvement with easements created the possibility of an effective land stewardship program. "Yet land trusts, particularly the larger organizations, are changing their focus from independent and private approaches, to working in tandem with government agencies in an effort to assist government in controlling private lands," she cautions.
Gattuso says the biggest reason landowners enter into a conservation agreement is to obtain relief from burdensome taxes - especially death taxes, which break up well-managed lands. Tax benefits are extended to everyone, from wealthy landowners who own hundreds of thousands of acres to struggling farmers who have inherited a hundred-acre farm. These easements, however, extend into perpetuity and can become a big concern when future generations inherit the affected land, the report says. Environmentalists presently view this as beneficial, but what is ecologically-beneficial one day, may not be the next. Legal and policy experts agree these binding agreements that extend into perpetuity "ultimately become antiquated and, therefore, useless or even harmful. The rule fails to recognize that conservation needs - as well as definitions of scenic, aesthetic and cultural - change over time, and that the easement may eventually lose any ecological benefit or even become a detriment. Modern views in ecology hold that the environment is in a constant change rather than in search of a stable end-state," Gattuso reports.
Robert J. Smith, also a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research and a foremost authority on property rights, shares Gattuso's concerns. "Short-term conservation easements were once considered a method to protect lands short of fee simple acquisition. But over time they have morphed into perpetual lock up of lands in a single use. This is not only disastrous from an environmental viewpoint, because nature is forever changing - but it is also the antithesis of a free market because they preclude all future choice," he says.
Additional problems with tragic consequences arise when there are different interpretations of what a conservation easement allows. There is no shortage of landowners who offer their own disastrous story of their involvement with conservation easements. As an example, the Property Rights Foundation of America cites the case of a farmer who bought a 42-acre property in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Wanting to build a farmhouse to house three generations of his family, he didn't expect to run into any problem with a conservation easement that had been placed on the land. The easement noted the land could be used only for farming or nature conservation, and for small buildings related to those uses. However, the French and Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust sued to stop the construction, claiming the farmhouse did not fall within the parameters of what was allowed to be built on the land. A judge with the Chester County Court of Common Pleas ruled in favor of the farmer and noted the construction of the farmhouse "does not offend the easement definition of a 'small building' incidental to farming use." Construction on the farmhouse continued and so did the legal stranglehold the Trust held against the family. The Trust appealed the judge's decision all the way to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court. Ultimately, the tragedy of how these conservation easements can be misunderstood is evidenced by the bulldozing of the family's farmhouse, which destroyed the dreams of three generations of family farmers and 15 years of savings.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a free-market communications and research foundation established in 1982 and located on Capitol Hill.
Should Earmarks be Spent on Lobbying? Should Lobbyists Represent Congressmen?
Should earmarks paid for with public funds be spent promoting projects under consideration by Congress?
Is it OK for a lobbyist to represent a Congressman at a meeting about one of the Congressman's bills?
As far as I know, these things as legal, but are they proper?
Husband David has an op-ed on TownHall today that examines at a case in which both seem to have happened.
At issue is the creation of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area, which will run from Gettysburg, PA to Charlottesville, VA, unless President Bush vetoes the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (S. 2739), which is now on the President's desk.
Heritage areas are National Park Service preservation zones in which environmentalists, federal officials and local activists influence local land-use decisions, frequently in ways that restrict the rights of private property owners and make property ownership more difficult for those of low or moderate income.
The Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 is the same legislation that would allow taxpayer money to be spent studying places "that are significant to the life of Cesar E. Chavez." Chavez was, of course, the ultra-militant leader of the United Farm Workers and a man who, as Project 21's Joe Hicks has said in Congressional testimony, "did or said little to reign in the violence" against workers by union organizers. Members of Congress who find this form of domestic terrorism worthy of honor are trying to use tax funds in an effort to make Chavez seem like another Martin Luther King, Jr.
As Joe Hicks pointed out on May 5, "To say the jury is still out on the legacy of Cesar Chavez is an understatement. Unlike other individuals who have been honored in the manner suggested by this earmark, the politics behind and the consequences of Chavez's activism remain dubious."
Hicks, once a member of the Communist Party USA, trained UFW members in "revolutionary theory" and marched arm-in-arm with Jesse Jackson at Cesar Chavez's funeral in 1993.
If you have an opinion on using earmarks to promote legislative proposals, Congressmen being represented by lobbyists, national heritage areas or even the use of tax dollars to honor dubious labor union organizing techniques, drop by TownHall.com to learn more and leave your views.
Addendum, May 8: The White House has signaled its comfort with the above, signing the bill into law today. The full text of the White House statement:
On Thursday, May 8, 2008, the President signed into law:
S. 2457, which authorizes the Mashantucket Pequot (Western) Tribe to lease certain land to entities for up to 75 years, rather than 25 years as under current law,
S. 2739, the "Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008," which designates the 106,000-acre Wild Sky Wilderness in Washington State; designates three new National Heritage Areas; expands several national parks; authorizes funding for specified water projects; modifies two existing energy programs; applies U.S. immigration law to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands; and grants the Commonwealth a non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
I can't say I'm surprised President Bush signed this, if only because he's signed a lot of bills that appear to be contrary to a limited government philosophy, and it is his Administration's National Park Service that worked in favor of the legislation and failed to fully comply with a Freedom of Information Act request regarding its activities (not that I am under any illusion that National Park Service officials thought they were doing the bidding of the man the voters elected when they did these things). When it comes to expanding government's size, "just say no" has not been the hallmark of this Administration or its agencies.
On a more positive note, however, it's almost a miracle the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area was not adopted two years ago. When proponents of legislative proposals get a million bucks worth of help in tax money from Congress before they are even incorporated, its a pretty clear sign they've got Congressional support and a leg-up over those of us who rely on voluntary donations to pay our bills. Before we started this fight to remind Congress that federalism and the Fifth Amendment right to private property are worth defending, national heritage areas tended to sail right through Congress. Even genuinely conservative Members hadn't stopped to think about the contradiction between their beliefs and what national heritage areas do and are. Now opposition to them is the new, though for all that, fairly strong conservative position on Capitol Hill. We may not have been able to stop the wasteful (and far worse) behavior surrounding the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area, but we've most likely slowed the creation of more of these elitist boondoggles.
Those interested in more information about national heritage areas -- as this particular policy battle is far from over -- might find the following resources helpful:
"The Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area: An Example of How Pork-Barrel Politics Can Threaten Local Rule and Property Rights," by Peyton Knight for the National Center for Public Policy Research, available here
"Another Federal Assault on Property Rights: The Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act," by Ron Utt for the Heritage Foundation, available here (this is the paper in which Dr. Utt revealed that the private organizers of this heritage area have "acknowledged that they are contemplating additional wealth-enhancing opportunities through the creation of a privately owned, for-profit real estate investment trust (REIT) to acquire properties in the heritage area and presumably develop them for the benefit of the REIT's shareholders...")
To read a coalition letter signed by over 110 organizations, elected officials and concerned citizens about heritage areas sent to Congress in September 2007, go here (pdf)
For a short handout-style document on heritage areas, "What People Are Saying about National Heritage Areas," suitable for distribution at public meetings, go here (pdf)
Or, simply go to the National Center for Public Policy Research's search page and type in "national heritage areas" -- we've got 80 documents so far, and, no doubt, more to come.
Thanks to all who joined us in this effort. While supporters of limited government had a setback today, because of our work together on the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, our support for the next battle federalism and property rights battle is much deeper. I'm confident that victories lie ahead. _____
Flaws in Clean Water Restoration Act Exposed in Congressional Hearings
From Mike Hardiman comes this roundup of information about recent Congressional hearings on the Clear Water Restoration Act:
Both the United States Senate and House of Representatives recently held hearings on the Oberstar/Feingold Clean Water Restoration Act. These hearings are a clear sign that the environmental community intends to push this controversial legislation to a vote in both houses of Congress sooner rather than later.
The Senate hearing was held on April 9 under the direction of bill co-sponsor Senator Barbara Boxer of California, and the House followed on April 16 with a hearing chaired by the legislation's House sponsor, Representative James Oberstar from Minnesota.
Contrary to the sponsors’ wishes, the two hearings exposed numerous flaws and very strong opposition to HR2421/S1870, the proposal to dramatically expand the federal government's role in land use regulation.
Senate Hearing
The Senate hearing, held by the Environment and Public Works Committee, unveiled several issues to which bill sponsors had difficulty responding.
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma spoke at length regarding the bill's removal of the phrase "navigable" from the term "navigable waters." He claimed it would lead to a dramatic expansion of federal authority over wetlands from navigable waters to nearly anything that is wet.
Both witnesses and Senators supporting the bill denied that it would be an expansion of power, despite the removal of the key modifying word "navigable." Meanwhile, a witness opposing the bill, rancher Randall Smith, said of removing the word navigable, "it is a dream for litigators" and "it opens up a whole can of worms."
Supporters stated that the bill's purpose is only to clear up confusion generated by a recent Supreme Court decision, known as the Rapanos case, while opponents showed that it was actually a considerable expansion of authority.
Bill supporter Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a former federal prosecutor and state attorney general, lectured at length witness David Brand, a county engineer from Ohio opposed to the legislation. Whitehouse insisted repeatedly that "we are just picking up where we left off (before the Rapanos decision)."
Brand replied, "No, and repeating that doesn't make it true."
An exasperated Whitehouse responded, "Yes, it does make it true."
Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was opposed to the bill, and stated that he could not think of any kind of water that was not covered by the bill.
Attempting to contradict him, Clinton-era EPA Administrator Carol Browner said puddles were exempt. Vitter asked for a definition of a puddle, and Browner was unable to directly answer the question. Senator Whitehouse unconvincingly chipped in, insisting that "EPA has no interest in chasing puddles."
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming asked witnesses how the proposed bill benefits ranchers and farmers. Bill supporters did not address the question, while opponents said it would be harmful.
House Hearing
Representative James Oberstar is both the bill sponsor and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which held its own hearing April 15. This marathon session featured twenty-three witnesses and forty-four congressmen questioning them, resulting in an eleven hour hearing that stretched into late evening.
Oberstar accused the Supreme Court of "legislating from the bench" and said his bill only sought to repeal two court rulings on wetlands from recent years which protected private property, the SWANCC and Rapanos decisions.
This was challenged by congressman John Mica of Florida, who said the Oberstar bill would "fundamentally alter the course of water regulation" and produced a display featuring several hundred organizations opposed to the legislation and a pile of petitions several feet high opposing the bill.
Oberstar said his bill would clear up ambiguity that had been created by the Supreme Court. Mica agreed that there would be no ambiguity under the bill, because there would be no restriction on federal control of all water, since any non-federal or private rights would be overridden.
Congressman John Boozman from Arkansas pointed out that the bill proposes to regulate all "activities" near waters, instead of current law, which says only "discharges" into waters are regulated.
Some members were undecided. Congressman Nick Rahall from West Virginia did not take a position for or against the bill, but said "whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting." After several witnesses complained about both current law and the proposed legislation, Congressman John Salazar from Colorado told them there must be more than complaints, and asked how to make the bill better.
Witness Virginia Albrecht pointed out another major change proposed in the bill, that federal agencies be given the power to regulate "to the limit of constitutional authority." Congresswoman Thelma Drake from Virginia agreed that these are "absolute words" which could fundamentally change federal-state relationships.
Attorney Robert Trout testified that "if this bill passes, it will put my kids through college" because of all the new litigation that will be generated. Witness Linda Runbeck, a former Minnesota state legislator, said the bill negatively impacts private property rights and hurts families because most of their net worth is tied up in the land they own, which may be sharply devalued by the bill. She also brought up the poll commissioned by the National Center for Public Policy Research, which shows that when the bill is described to them, most Americans stating an opinion do not support it.
Overall, a very thorough airing of opinion was had in the two hearings, and the legislation's many weaknesses were displayed out in the open and for the record. However, the bill's supporters remain determined first to wipe out gains made by property owners in the Supreme Court, and, second, to expand federal authority beyond current law.
Comments to author Mike Hardiman can be sent to info@nationalcenter.org. Mike Hardiman, a Capitol Hill veteran, recently completed a special educational project on the Clean Water Restoration Act for the National Center for Public Policy Research.
The Washington Post's Al Kamen poked fun at the ACLU and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in his April 16 column:
The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are heading an effort to provide legal representation for alleged terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The groups say they've gotten involved in defending the detainees charged under the 2006 Military Commissions Act to ensure that constitutional rights are respected.
They've named their efforts the "John Adams Project," after the second president, who "defended the British soldiers charged with killing Americans in the Boston Massacre, and said that the case was 'one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.'"
Wait a minute. John Adams? Wasn't he also the guy who signed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, which were intended to suppress opposition to an undeclared naval war with France and provided for fines and imprisonment for publication of "any false, scandalous and malicious writings against the government"? The law that led to imprisonment of a couple of dozen newspaper editors and the closing of their publications?
The mistake is understandable. When the John Adams Project was introduced on April 3, the John Adams miniseries on HBO had only progressed through Adam's inauguration as vice president in 1789. He didn't sign the Alien and Sedition Acts until 1798. That episode didn't air until April 13 (full disclosure: I still need to watch that episode as well!).
To contact author David Almasi directly, write him at dalmasi@nationalcenter.org. David Almasi is executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
True Emancipation Would Be Something New to Celebrate
From David Almasi:
April 16 is a public holiday unique to the District of Columbia. It's "Emancipation Day" - the commemoration of President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Compensation Emancipation Act in 1862. The Act freed the approximately 3,100 slaves in the nation's capital months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed them in Confederate states.
Along with the closure of public offices and the government-run schools, parades and performances mix are sometimes mixed with political action. Most notably, the day is often used as a rallying point for efforts to make the federal district a full-fledged state with two senators and a representative.
But how about using Emancipation Day to call for an emancipation from burdensome government, rather than demanding more of it?
As pointed out in a Washington Times commentary by Project 21 member and new National Center Policy Analyst Casey Lartigue, Jr. on April 16:
The focus was - as it is usually is in D.C. - on political power rather than policies to make citizens freer. Not to take away from the oppression of slavery, but Emancipation Day is more than an opportunity to celebrate the end of the oppression of slavery. It also is a good time to note that lawmakers typically look backward at liberty's advances rather than forward to find ways citizens can enjoy more personal freedom.
For example:
It won't be until a week after Emancipation Day that Americans will observe "Tax Freedom Day," the date when people essentially stop working to pay off their tax obligations and begin working for themselves. According to the Tax Foundation, April 23 is the national average. D.C. residents celebrate their particular Tax Freedom Day last - after all 50 states - on May 3...
Wouldn't it be a pleasant surprise today, Emancipation Day, if Mr. Fenty and the D.C. Council announced cuts in government spending or extended the occasional "tax-free" shopping periods?
Another way city leaders could expand freedom is to extend school choice, at a minimum, to every low-income student living in the District. Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute recently pointed out that when all costs are divided by the number of students, the District of Columbia is spending close to $25,000 per child. The District essentially is providing mediocre public schooling at elite private school prices.
Casey did point out one bright spot on the horizon. Unfortunately, if this happens, this reform will not be by the hands of the District's leadership but rather through a legal mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court:
When D.C. leaders can't be relied on to extend freedom, others may help. The Supreme Court may soon step in to help D.C. residents by ending the city's ban on firearms.
Since 1976, ownership of virtually all firearms in the District has been illegal. The gun ban hasn't curtailed gun-related crimes against D.C. residents, but it robs them of the means of self-defense. The Supreme Court is expected to rule by June on a lower court's rejection of the ban.
To see the full version of Casey's commentary, click here.
Washington, D.C.: Revelations that the federal government conducted potentially dangerous sludge-related experiments on children in Baltimore is condemned by Project 21 black leadership network fellow Deneen Borelli, who is demanding more answers about the origins of the experiment and wants to know how much other reckless policymaking is permeating federal agencies.
The Associated Press reported April 13 that researchers using federal grant money selected nine families in poor, black Baltimore neighborhoods to test if sludge could reduce child health risks from lead. Sludge derived from human and industrial waste was tilled into the families' yards and grass was planted over it.
The AP story said families were told that lead found in the soil in their yards posed a health risk and that the sludge was safe. The study, the findings of were published in 2005, did find that sludge bonded with the harmful metals lead, cadmium and zinc in the soil. However, concerns about the health risk of the sludge appear to have been overlooked, and no follow-up medical examinations of the families were reported.
The AP says, "epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe."
A similar experiment was done in a poor, primarily black neighborhood in East St. Louis, IL.
"This is no less than a modern-day Tuskegee Experiment," said Borelli. "The government appears to have clearly failed - in the case of the EPA - in its mission 'to protect human health and safeguard the environment.' In fact, it is failure on both counts. For federal bureaucrats at EPA and HUD to knowingly allow this experiment to take place and jeopardize the health of children and adults is outrageous."
In 1993, the EPA began allowing Class B sludge containing human feces, medical waste and assorted chemicals to be used on farmland, in national forests and for mine reclamation efforts. EPA managers have been hostile to critics who questioned whether the sludge is safe. The hostility included angry calls and letters to public critics and unfounded ethics complaints imperiling the careers of critics within the agency. EPA scientists David Lewis and William Markus, who spoke out about the unknown potential dangers of Class B sludge, were retaliated against by their superiors, but later sued the EPA and won a $100,000 settlement.
In March a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to compensate Georgia farmer Andy McElmurray because sludge used in his fields to grow corn and cotton to feed livestock contained extremely high levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs. U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo wrote that government-endorsed data on the sludge was "unreliable, incomplete and, in some cases, fudged." Judge Alaimo further wrote, "senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent."
Borelli wants to know if there are other issues championed by the agency in which necessary assessment was bypassed to meet desired political goals.
"One can't help but compare the scandal in Baltimore to global warming policy promoted by environmental activists and many of their supporters in the government bureaucracy," added Project 21's Borelli. "In the case of the EPA, the agency's lack of sound analysis regarding climate change will undoubtedly lead to dire economic consequences. For instance, the American Council For Capital Formation predicts '...the United States would lose between 1.2 and 1.8 million jobs in 2020' and that the 'primary cause of job losses would be lower industrial output due to higher energy prices, the high cost of complying with required emissions cuts, and greater competition from overseas manufacturers with lower energy costs.' We can't be allowed to run headlong into a crisis without proper scientific evidence. In Baltimore and the nation as a whole, it looks as if the government is putting policy goals ahead of public welfare."
Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study on the effects of syphilis on black men. In the process, researchers intentionally denied full knowledge and treatment for the debilitating sexually transmitted disease to the 399 black men studied. Called the Tuskegee Experiment because government researchers used the renowned black institution's medical facilities, the race-based study led to the deaths of 128 of the study's subjects while 59 wives and children contracted or were born with syphilis.
The AP story was written by John Heilprin and Kevin S. Viney.
Another 53 Major Organizations Warn Congress, Public About Clean Water Restoration Act
Following up on a letter signed by over 100 organizations and individuals last fall, the National Center for Public Policy Research is today releasing another coalition letter warning the public and the policymakers about the Oberstar/Feingold Clean Water Restoration Act.
CWRA is to be the focus of hearings in the Senate and House on April 9 and 16, respectively. We can be sure that the very liberal Senator Barbara Boxer (D-MN), and the bill's main sponsor, Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), the chairmen of the committees holding the hearings, will examine the bill quite objectively. (Not.)
More about the letters, and links to the letters, including a list of signers:
Representatives of 53 Organizations Warn Congress, Public about Oberstar/Feingold Clean Water Restoration Act
Farm Bureaus, Manufacturers, Sportsmen, Taxpayer Advocates, Think-Tanks and Others Express Concern About Expansion of Federal Power
Washington, D.C. - A letter signed by representatives of over 53 organizations expressing grave concerns about the Oberstar/Feingold Clean Water Restoration Act, or CWRA, is being delivered to Congress this week.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Barbara Boxer (D-CA), has scheduled a hearing on CWRA for April 9. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by CWRA sponsor James Oberstar (D-MN), has a hearing scheduled April 16.
The letter says CWRA sponsors are wrong in claiming CWRA would restore the original intent of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Instead, the letter says, CWRA would greatly expand its scope.
The letter is signed by representatives of nineteen state farm bureaus. Other organizations with representatives signing include the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Public Lands Council, the National Association of Wheat Growers, the Family Farm Alliance, the Family Water Alliance, the National Water Resources Association, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, the Alabama Farmers Federation, the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, the California Land Institute, and very many public policy advocacy groups and think-tanks.
"The Clean Water Restoration Act would not restore the original intent of the Clean Water Act, but significantly expand it. It would expand federal clean water regulations to often dry land by re-defining dry lake beds, intermittent streams and, possibly, even tiny backyard fish ponds as 'waters of the United States,'" said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, which organized the letter. "This expansive federal power goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the original Clean Water Act in 1972."
The letter also says CWRA would increase confusion within the already highly-litigated question of what waters are subject to regulation. Although the bill itself greatly expands federal power, as Congress' authority to regulate waters rests on the Commerce Clause, those waters that have no impact on interstate commerce would be immune from the authority of the Act. Knowing which waters meet the Commerce Clause test could be nearly impossible for the average landowner, however. Many cases would be settled only after expensive and protracted litigation.
"Rather than eliminate the ambiguity of the original law, CWRA would codify it. Instead of providing clear, predictable standards of regulation, CWRA would punt these decisions to the courts," said Ridenour.
This letter follows another letter, signed by 100 conservationists, family advocacy groups, civil rights leaders, sportsmen organizations, seniors advocates, think-tanks and taxpayer action groups in October 2007, expressing nearly identical concerns about CWRA. As hearings in the House and Senate about CWRA neared, this second letter was organized in response to demand from organizations concerned that the public, and many legislators, remain unaware of serious problems within this legislation.
The letter and list of signers is available online here (pdf). The October letter can be found here (pdf).
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation based in Washington, D.C, now in its 26th year.
On Eve of D.C. Gun Ban Supreme Court Case, Black Activist Says No Rights are Secure Unless All of Them Are
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today on the constitutionality of the nearly 32-year-old District of Columbia handgun ban. Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli, a gun owner, says the court must respect all the protections in the U.S. Constitution, or none of them are truly safe:
Black Activist Asks: If Courts Can Gut Second Amendment, How Can We Assume 13th Amendment Ban on Slavery is Safe?
As the U.S. Supreme Court considers its first major case involving the definition of the 2nd Amendment's protection of gun rights in almost 70 years, black activists with the Project 21 leadership network assert that government should not be allowed to pick and choose what constitutional protections are honored and enforced.
"As a black American, I would be horrified to hear a state or local government enacted legislation or regulation that gutted the 13th Amendment's prohibit on slavery or the 15th Amendment's guarantee that all races could vote. Why aren't more people outraged when the 2nd Amendment's guarantee that individuals can protect themselves is infringed?" asks Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. "Besides violating the 2nd Amendment, this case involving the District of Columbia's gun ban is a violation of the fundamental rationale of law as well as immorally denying citizens the right to protect themselves."
In the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, to be heard at 10:00 am Eastern on March 18, the justices will consider arguments about a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last spring that struck down the 1976 law that banned most gun ownership in the nation's capital. This particular case is important from other recent gun rights cases heard by the Court because the nature of the case touches the core 2nd Amendment protection of an individual's right to own a firearm.
"In Washington, criminals know that an unarmed citizen is easy prey. Right now, the criminals are winning because the city's gun ban is effectively protecting the plunderer and punishing the property owner," added Project 21's Borelli. "The lower court verdict to restore power to the people to legally possess a suitable firearm will make criminals think twice about their actions, and it is something the Supreme Court should affirm."
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21's website at http://www.project21.org/P21Index.html.
Global Warming Alarmists Question the Value of Liberal Democracy
Ms Borelli
I thought your article "Global Warming Statists Threaten Our Liberty" was a satire, at first. I chuckled at the insistent defense of your unalienable right to CHOOSE an SUV rather than think of the welfare of the world. Risable, really, as was the rest of the article. Alas, it is an earnest, albeit astonishingly misguided, attempt to justify continued selfishness. I've come across much contentious material online, but never felt compelled to respond to any author's opinions. It's crushingly disappointing to know that since you are part of a bigger "project", there are others who think similarly and come to the same absurd conclusions. Enjoy your Expedition whilst you can.
An Appalled Scientist, E Casner
Critics of Deneen Borelli's New Visions Commentary (which said "critics of the global warming agenda are motivated... by a love of freedom and civil liberties") like the writer above remind me of a Prometheus blog post I saw last week about a new environmentalist call for a replacement of our liberal democratic form of government with a more authoritarian one.
Writes Roger Pielke, Jr. on Prometheus, in part:
Have you ever heard anyone make the argument that we must take a certain course of action because the experts tell us we must? The issue might be the threat of another country or an environmental risk, but increasingly we see appeals to authority used as the basis for arguing for this or that action.
In a new book, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith take the appeal to experts somewhat further and argue that in order to deal with climate change we need to replace liberal democracy with an authoritarianism of scientific expertise. They write in a recent op-ed:
Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens...
There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties...
We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.
On their book page they write:
[T]he authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.
(Read the rest of Roger Pielke's post and comments to it here.)
Do global warming statists threaten our liberty, as Deneen believes?
Apparently they not only do, some of them are saying so in plain English. ____
Government Health Care Threatens Burgers and Fries?
Three Mississippi state lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban Mississippi restaurants from serving food to obese people.
We've written before how government bans on tobacco use in bars and resturants have reduced customer traffic in those establishments (here and here, for example). One can only imagine how few customers restaurants would have if they had to do height and weight checks on all patrons at the door.
As reported in the Junkfood Science blog, the bill's lead author, Republican W. T. Mayhall, Jr., says one of the reasons he wrote the bill is to "call attention to the serious problem of obesity and what it is costing the Medicare system."
I'm well aware of the way government health care systems deny people access to health care through waiting lines, cancelled operations, rationing of expensive drugs, etc. (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here for some examples), but this is perhaps the first case of it threatening access to burgers and fries.
Doggone government health care fanatics not only want to end our lives early, they want to cut out half the fun of what life we'll have left!
But perhaps I fret needlessly. The bill bans serving food to obese people, but says nothing about serving alcohol.
Hurricane Season Ends with Egg on NOAA's Proverbial - and Politicized - Face
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been inflating the number of named storms. This aids political efforts for the imposition of costly caps on energy use by helping to fuel the unproven belief that human activities are causing more frequent, and more intense, hurricanes and named storms:
NOAA Inflating Storm Numbers and Aiding Political Campaign for Carbon Restrictions, Group Says; End of 2007 Hurricane Season Shows NOAA Forecasts Wrong for Second Year in a Row
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is inflating the count of tropical storms and aiding a political campaign to regulate energy use in the process, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
Today marks the official end of the 2007 hurricane season, and for the second year in a row the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's forecast for the season was wrong. NOAA had predicted there would be seven to nine hurricanes, three to five major hurricanes and 13-17 "named storms." The season ended with just five hurricanes, two of which were major (category three or above) and 14 named storms.
"NOAA correctly predicted the number of named storms, but it's not clear this statistic has any meaning, as the agency is inflating today's storm numbers relative to storms in the past," said David A. Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research and author of a forthcoming new report on this year's hurricane season. "NOAA is doing so both by changing the criteria for naming storms and by failing to account for changes in technology that make detection of storms much easier."
In its annual hurricane season forecast and subsequent tropical cyclone reports, for example, NOAA makes no mention that it started naming subtropical storms for the first time in 2002. This year, one storm - equal to 7% of named storms - was a subtropical storm.
State-of-the art equipment is also enabling observers to detect cyclones they would have missed in the past. The QuikScat, an orbiting satellite that measures the ocean's surface winds, produces more than 200 times the amount of ocean wind information that had been available from ships.
"Unfortunately, NOAA's forecasts and cyclone reports suggesting increased activity are being seized upon by activists to support their campaign government take-over of energy," said Ridenour. "There's no truth to the claim that global warming is putting cyclones on steroids, unless we're talking about one of the side-effects of long-term steroid use - impotency."
The National Center's observations mirror the findings of Neil Frank, former director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, who says that as many as six of this year's named storms wouldn't have been named in past decades.
Bill Read, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, disputed this in published reports saying, "For at least the last two decades, I am certain most, if not all, the storms named this year would have also been named."
"The National Hurricane Center started naming subtropical storms for the first time just five years ago," said Ridenour. "To suggest that the criteria for naming storms hasn't changed is simply dishonest."
Safety of Police More Important than Favors for Donors, Group Says
Project 21 says the safety of police officers is more important an a favor for trial lawyers:
Protecting Police Officers More Important Than Helping Political Donors, Group Says
Congress should not put the lives of law enforcement officials at risk to benefit its trial lawyer contributors, says Deneen Borelli of the national black group Project 21.
Congress is now considering overturning the Tiahrt Amendment, a measure that restricts certain gun data from being shared outside of the law enforcement community. Project 21 members are opposing any action that allows trial lawyers, politicians, criminals and others from accessing federal gun trace information.
"The only possible purpose served by overturning the Tiahrt Amendment is to aid the anti-gun lobby and make it easier for trial lawyers to sue gun manufacturers," said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. "Killing the Tiahrt Amendment would also be a great thing for criminals. Not only could they learn they are the subject of an investigation, but also the identity of special agents and informants."
The Tiahrt Amendment - named after its chief sponsor, Representative Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) - was first enacted in 2003. It amends the appropriations legislation that funds the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to restrict the sharing of the contents of the Firearms Trace System that is administered by the BATFE's National Trace Center. Under the terms of the amendment, data regarding guns involved in crimes is restricted to domestic and foreign law enforcement and prosecutors as it relates to the investigation and prosecution of specific crimes and for national security, intelligence and counterterrorism purposes. Trace data is also inadmissible in evidence and cannot be subpoenaed.
Project 21's Borelli added: "I am a gun owner. I was appalled when a local newspaper decided to publish my name and the names of other registered gun owners in my area. It was an outrageous violation of my privacy rights. Overturning the Tiahrt Amendment could allow this violation of privacy and safety to occur on a larger and more dangerous scale."
The origin of the Tiahrt Amendment comes from a 2002 court decision that allowed trial lawyers to access the BATFE's trace data to gather information for potential lawsuits against gun manufacturers. Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute has also written about how trace data has been used by special interest groups to overstate gun violence figures.
Amendment supporters also want to protect the confidentiality of the federal database because the release of some information contained in it may compromise investigations and reveal the identities of undercover officers. The Fraternal Order of Police supports the Tiahrt Amendment "because of our concern for the safety of law enforcement officers and the integrity of law enforcement investigations." In 2006, then-BATFE director Carl J. Truscott said the Amendment "protects... sensitive data from indiscriminate disclosure."
City Destroys One Auto Business to Make Landscaping for Another
Claiming it was trying to save 4,900 area jobs, the City of Toledo, Ohio evicted 83 homeowners and 16 businesses so that carmaker DaimlerChrysler could use their condemned land to expand its manufacturing plant.
City Destroys One Auto Business to Make Landscaping for Another
In Toledo, Ohio, city officials waged a five-year campaign to oust Kim's Auto and Truck Service to accommodate the expansion of an existing DaimlerChrysler Jeep manufacturing plant.
Kim and Herman Blankenship, the owners of Kim's Auto and Truck Service, are the last remaining holdouts in the city's campaign. They are also the targets of one of the most egregious examples of eminent domain abuse because their property, if turned over to DaimlerChrysler, is expected to simply become open space.
The Blankenships steadfastly refuse to allow city officials to condemn their land, which is located on a corner lot approximately 300 yards from the manufacturing plant. Terry Lodge, the Blankenships' attorney, doesn't understand why city officials are fighting so hard to take his clients' property. Lodge said: "From the very start of planning for the manufacturing plant, the area currently occupied by Kim's Auto was designated as a landscaped green-space." Kim adds: "They just want landscape. Why uproot somebody's business for that?"
In 1999, the Blankenships and other area residents and business owners were informed by the city that 83 homes and 16 businesses were slated to be condemned under the city's power of eminent domain - the government's ability to take private property, with just compensation, for the public good. This taking was to facilitate the expansion of an existing DaimlerChrysler Jeep Plant. City officials agreed to transfer the land - approximately 160 acres - to the company to begin construction. In order to keep the manufacturing plant in Toledo, city and state officials offered Chrysler over $280 million in tax breaks and other incentives. The city also took out a $28 million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to cover the costs of relocating property owners.
Lodge asks, "How can you condemn property and have it handed over to another business entity?" Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, who approved the manufacturing plan, said it was necessary to maintain 4,900 jobs. Opponents of the plan, however, insist the plant's assembly line draws heavily on automated lasers and robots and will not create the spinoff jobs promised.
The dispute over the Blankenship property went to trial in September of 2002, after the manufacturing plant's addition was completed and fully operational. A Lucas County Common Pleas Court jury ruled in favor of the Blankenships, valuing their business at $104,000. Toledo's law director, Barbara Herring, applauded the jury's decision, claiming, "They've been offered a very fair value for their property." The Blankenships disagree, saying that rebuilding their business would cost nearly $500,000. In addition, Kim's clientele includes a large number of small trucks. Their current location, approximately 150 feet from Interstate 75, is an ideal location that would be extremely difficult to duplicate elsewhere. Public interest attorney Dana Berliner, who, in her study, "Public Power, Private Gain," called this ouster of property owners "one of the top ten abuses of eminent domain," has pointed out, "many, if not most, condemned businesses never reopen."
The Blankenships appealed the ruling, claiming the market value cited for their property is too low. They also continue to assert that the city is attempting to condemn their property without an appropriate public cause. The Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals upheld the jury award in October of 2003, arguing that the city did not abuse its discretion in condemning the land. In their quest to keep their property, the Blankenships have enlisted the support of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, a non-profit organization of Ralph Nader. Commenting on the Blankenship case, Nader said, "The purpose of eminent domain should be for a public purpose. It should be for a bridge, a dam, a highway."
However, in October of 2004, the Supreme Court of Ohio declined to issue a stay to protect the property and refused to hear the case. The Blankenships' shop was destroyed in 2004. A subsequent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court did not provide the Blankenships any relief. An application referred to Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court for injunction pending appeal was denied in October of 2004, and the Supreme Court eventually declined to hear the Blankenships' case in August of 2005.
Sources: The Pacific Legal Foundation, The Institute for Justice, Toledoblade.com (March 7, 2002; June 4, 2004; July 15, 2005), Terry Lodge, Herman Blankenship, Associated Press (June 17, 2004; August 17, 2005)
**Read this story and 99 other all-new outrageous stories of government regulatory abuse in the new fifth edition of the National Center for Public Policy Research's book, Shattered Dreams: One Hundred Stories of Government Abuse.
Download your free PDF copy today here or purchase a print copy online here.** _____
Casket Salesmen Required to Have Embalming Expertise
The Tennessee Board of Funeral Directors ordered closed a casket business offering 30 to 50 percent discounts off competitors' prices because its owner - a Baptist pastor - was not a licensed funeral director, as is mandated under Tennessee law.
Casket Salesmen Required to Have Embalming Expertise
After his mother-in-law's funeral, Nathaniel Craigmiles saw the exact casket that had cost him $3,200 in Tennessee selling for only $800 in a New York City store.
Craigmiles, pastor of Marble Top Missionary Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, saw a good business opportunity. He opened his own casket store and set his prices 30 to 50 percent below what other Tennessee casket dealers were charging.
After the business was open one week, however, the Tennessee Board of Funeral Directors ordered Craigmiles to stop selling caskets. If he refused to stop, Craigmiles risked having his business shut down, the imposition of fines and, possibly, a jail sentence. That's because Tennessee law states that anyone who sells a casket must also be a licensed funeral director. To accomplish this, one must go through two years of training (which costs thousands of dollars), embalm 25 bodies and pass a license exam.
Craigmiles filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, arguing that Tennessee's regulation violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Judge R. Allan Edgar agreed, saying consumers should have a choice when purchasing caskets and ruling that the requirement of a license to sell a casket was illegal. Edgar also said caskets sold by funeral directors are marked up between 250 and 400 percent, with some examples as high as a 600 percent markup.
The state of Tennessee appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio. That court found the only difference between caskets sold by individual retailers and the Tennessee Board of Funeral Directors was the cost. The court ruled unanimously in favor of Craigmiles, and he was allowed to re-open his business.
"The government's good old boy network drove me into bankruptcy, but now I'll finally be able to help my parishioners and others cut their funeral costs," said Craigmiles.
Source: Institute for Justice
**Read this story and 99 other all-new outrageous stories of government regulatory abuse in the new fifth edition of the National Center for Public Policy Research's book, Shattered Dreams: One Hundred Stories of Government Abuse.
Download your free PDF copy today here or purchase a print copy online here.**
