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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Sledgehammer to a Bureaucracy

The media hysterically pushes the line that the new Trump administration is so much “in chaos” it even frightens seasoned (salt-​and-​pepper?) heads in the Republican Party. But perhaps folks at the Environmental Protection Agency have more reason to panic.

“It looks like the EPA will be the agency hardest hit by the Trump sledgehammer,” writes Julie Kelly over at National Review.

Ms. Kelly offers striking reasons to hit the agency hard, quoting from Steve Malloy, the author of Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA. “I can think of no agency that has done more pointless harm to the U.S. economy than the EPA — all based on junk science, if not out-​and-​out science fraud.” Malloy looks forward to the new president’s promised rethink and restructuring of the agency.

Just how bad is it?

Environmentalists often cry foul over any corporate funding of ecological research. But if one worries about money influencing results, the case against grants funded by regulatory agencies for regulatory purposes is even stronger.

Especially when the agency is run by ideologues.

Trump’s transition team seeks to make all the EPA’s relevant data public, for peer and public review, and would really like to curtail the agency’s research funding entirely.

Pipe dream? Better than the recent nightmare: “For eight years,” writes Kelly, “President Obama used the agency as his de facto enforcer of environmental policies he couldn’t pass in Congress even when it was controlled by his own party.”

The EPA needs to be checked. And balanced. And more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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too much government

Forest for the Tyrannies

Traveling abroad? Don’t take your mandolin or guitar. Or, if you do, expect to hire a lawyer to fill out the paperwork.

It’s all about protected wood. The ebony of Madagascar, for instance, is legally protected. Anyone transporting wooden items across borders is supposed to fill out forms proving the provenance of each piece of wood. Make a mistake, go to jail. And pay a hefty fine.

And travelers aren’t the only targets. Gibson Guitar, a world-​leading instrument maker, was raided by federal agents last week. The agents seized wood used in the manufacture of guitars — in a previous raid, they’d seized pallets of wood as well as guitars and electronic files. Apparently they are out to prove that Gibson has been knowingly purchasing illegal materials. 

I might as well confess: I’m skeptical of the whole shebang, the protecting of wood by criminalizing sale and possession. Prohibition of the materials seems the wrong way to protect renewable resources, just as prohibition of the ownership and sales of elephant ivory has worked to the detriment of elephant populations. It’s where elephants are owned and their populations managed that elephant populations have stabilized, rather than shrunk.

I bet that private property in ebony forests would similarly preserve resources as well — if that property were defended by a rule of law so that the capital value of the land the forests sit upon, as well as the trees themselves, would figure into the accounting of entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, our federal government continues to prove its anti-​Constitutional, pro-​tyranny bent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.