“Every year regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses $1.75 Trillion. That would be enough to hire 43 Million workers.”

See this short youtube video at Episode Two: Economic Freedom in America Today.

Regulation is not only a Federal problem.  Regulation is pernicious, at every level of government.  Today Elbert County has a clear choice whether or not to greatly expand our county’s regulatory reach into energy development matters it knows next to nothing about.

At the county level the force of regulation is imposed through zoning law.  Our county’s Community and Development Services department works every day to write, refine, expand, detail and enforce their ubiquitous vision of a perfectable society.  They want to save this land and this county from its people because, essentially, they don’t trust the people.

They think they are wise stewards who, with a third-party steward’s interest, have a more valuable right to forecefully impose their vision about a sound local economy, than the stakeholders and property holders in the county have in doing so for themselves.

Zoning regulators think that by stopping people from the pursuit of economic activity, they serve a higher purpose of preservation of our local world.  This of course begs questions of preservation for what?  For who?  For when?  And for why?

Of course they have answers for all of these questions.  The answers are myths — myths consisting of more tenuous myths in a great pyramid of “smart,” sustainable, no-growth, enviro-jihad mythology.

The future beneficiaries of county zoning and regulation don’t exist.  They are a myth–not real–and unless you’re a believer, not even foreseeable.  The great probability is they will never come to exist because future unforseen circumstances will change everything long before these present day socio and eco myths can ever be tested, long after they are forgotten in favor of some future mythology as yet unkown.

Man took matters that used to be in God’s domain and invested them in Gaia, the environment and universe-trekking aliens. That’s what humans do at the margins of their knowledge where observation ends and speculation begins–we create mythologies–myths that we love.   And then we create the legalities to enforce those mythologies.

Regulatory zealots consider this sort of talk heresy.  They believe that the forced perfectibility of man and the environment is actually possible.  Just as the power that was - the Church - once defended Ptolemy’s geocentric universe against the heresy of Copernicus, so too the regulatory powers of today know, without a shadow of doubt, that they know best, and that they can sufficiently describe, legislate, and enforce a set of rules to govern our behavior, for our own best interest.

To even imagine they could succeed at such a task is a pinnacle of hubris.  When has an authoritarian process ever led to a best outcome for its subjects?  When have a small minority of minds ever created the economic output of a diverse population acting in their own interests?  The regulatory model cannot succeed.

Regulation makes inevitable change much more costly.  The regulatory parties in government who do this to us have no personal skin in the game–only myths and the iron fist–a deadly combination.  Ironically, the regulatory mission of governing progressives is about the most regressive thing they could do.

If we can’t stop creating mythologies, at least we should learn to stop legalizing them.

~

From the ACLU 50-State Survey for January of 2012:

• Access to abortion and birth control. [Must keep killing babies.]
• Equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered. [Must treat those who display sexual preference the same as those who do not.]
• Protection against racial profiling and discrimination by law enforcement. [Must not profile those most likely to commit terrorism.]
• Equal access for eligible residents to vote. [As opposed to citizens.]
• Non-preferential treatment of any one religion by the government. [Except Islam.]
• Preventing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design from interfering with the teaching of evolution in public school science classes. [When government sanctions a theory it must be protected.  See global warming.]

Let’s see: infant death and dismemberment, sexual obsession, terrorism, illegal aliens, Sharia, spurious government science.  That’s an impressive series of harmful policies to rack up by one organization in one fund-raising mailer.  How did I get on this nutjob mailing list?  Yeah I’m going to send them a check, where’s my pen?

Thank you American law schools.

Problems with the 07-2011 Draft Oil & Gas Regs proposed for Elbert County Zoning

Page 5:  “…unless approval has been granted pursuant to these regulations from the Director of Community & Development Services (C&DS) or the Board of County Commissioners (Board).”
Are we setting up an unelected czar of oil and gas zoning enforcement, unaccountable to the voters?

Page 6:  “the County Attorney or where the Board deems it appropriate, the District Attorney……may [act]”
Here again, should enforcement of zoning be allowed without the approval of an elected official?

Page 21:  “Safety practices in accordance with state and federal law, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970….”
Elbert County should not be in the business of enforcing federal OSHA law.

Page 23:  “The oil and gas facility shall not cause significant degradation of wildlife, including any federal, state or Colorado Natural Heritage Program-identified species of concern, or to their habitat.  At a minimum, the operation shall comply with the CDOW’s recommended…..”
The CDOW, Colorado and the federal government can enforce their own wildlife regulations.  Elbert County does not need to duplicate those efforts.

Page 23:  “When planning facilities, the Applicant shall consult and reference the current wildlife concurrence data, including the CDOW’s Natural Diversity Information Source database…”
Bio-diversity is buzzword science with no greater purpose than stopping development.  It has no place in industry zoning regulations.

Page 25:  “install wildlife crossovers and escape ramps where the trench crosses well-defined game trails”
Presumably this would be for the really smart or well trained wild game, who know how to use such devices.

Page 26:  “The applicant shall identify the proposed source of fresh or potable water required for the oil and gas facility and dust control, along with a letter from the Colorado Division of Water Resources or a copy of the Water Court decree indicating that the water supply source is acceptable for the use at the oil and gas facility.”
Here again, water regulation falls outside of Elbert County’s jurisdiction.  It’s a matter for the State Engineer.

Page 37:  “the right of the county to determine land uses”
Isn’t it the people’s right to determine land use within allowed limits?  I thought government in America was based on limitations, not rights.

Page 39:  “No oil and gas facilities shall cause a reduction in solar radiation…”
Isn’t it a reach to blame the existence or absence of solar radiation on an oil well?

Page 39:  “Greenhouse Gas Reduction”
Zoning regulations should not incorporate the spurious science of global warming language.

Page 40:  “The county finds that the standard industry practice of injecting highly toxic substances under high pressure into the earth for the purpose of fracturing geologic formations poses an unacceptable risk of polluting these invaluable ground water resources.”
This statement ascribes a harmful intent to the oil and gas industry as a “standard practice.”  The statement is prejudicial, unfounded, and not conducive to sound science or good industry relations.

If the Community and Development Services department needs a toxic blend to regulate, look to the toxic combination of subjects below under which this post is filed.

“DECEMBER 14, 2011

Congress mandated purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011. Actual production: 6.6 million.

‘We’ll fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.”
—George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union address (more…)

A clear lesson from our recent visit to Germany and studies spawned from our visit to the Documentation Center is that, while Hitler was the fearless leader who catalyzed their national socialism, it was the millions of citizens and bureaucrats all doing their parts to fulfill his vision that did the damage. You can blame the leadership for initializing the movement and the programs, but then it took broad efforts by everyone to bring those visions into existence

Today in America we watch the President, and presidential contenders for warning signs. Meanwhile, bureaucracies in the federal, state, county, local and various tax districts grind out on a daily basis volumes of legal pronouncements about what we must do to be in compliance with their authorities. This is a pernicious fascism that proceeds pell-mell every day in pursuit of a mythical perfect society, and it can never reach fruition.

We need to stop this madness, unwind these fatuous authorities.  This myth of the perfectable society has caused enough damage in America.

RE: Mike Phillips from Elbert-grab.com

Mr. Phillips, you owe Commissioner Shipper a big apology.  It takes a “yes” vote from a commissioner to move Nyquist’s gambit forward.  An absence is tantamount to a “no” vote.  Commissioner Shipper effectively told you and everyone else what his vote was going to be, and you pilloried him for voting for the very same outcome you seek in your populist leftist fervor.

That makes you stupid, and the fact that you hit him while he’s down makes you intolerable.

SCHOOLS FOR MISRULE pp. 219-220

“THE U.S. IN THE DOCK (CONT’D)
Another enforcement mechanism for international human rights likely to assume greater visibility in coming years is the U.N.-supervised process known as universal periodic review. (more…)

(more…)

“9 indicted on charges of accessing Obama records

(AP) – 14 hours ago

DES MOINES, Iowa — Nine people have been indicted in federal court on charges they accessed President Barack Obama’s student loan records while employed for a Department of Education contractor in Iowa.

The U.S. attorney’s office says a grand jury returned the indictments Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Davenport.

The nine individuals are charged with exceeding authorized computer access.

They are accused of gaining access to a computer at a Coralville, Iowa, office where they worked between July 2007 and March 2009, and accessing Obama’s student loan records while he was either a candidate for president, president-elect or president.

Arraignments are scheduled for May 24.

The charge is punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.”

Op-Ed: Papuans and Zulus by Saul Bellow

Despots do not accept the autonomy of the literary imagination. Freedom of the imagination, dangerous to them, is related to the independence of the soul. This independence is not peculiar to artists, it is common to all human beings.
….

In the U.S., we were protected in the past by a sense of humor. In the days of Mark Twain, of Mr. Dooley and H. L. Mencken, we were still able to kid ourselves. Mencken’s wicked jokes on Boobus Americanus — his term for the average man — had a salutary influence on the discussion of public questions and on public behavior. Sometimes crude, openly prejudiced but often very funny, he banged away at the professors, the politicians and the Jim Crow South. But fanatics and demagogues had far less influence in those pre-sensitive days. Child gangsters did not then kill the kids who “dissed” them.

Righteousness and rage threaten the independence of our souls.

Rage is now brilliantly prestigious. Rage, the reverse of bourgeois prudence, is a luxury. Rage is distinguished, it is a patrician passion. The rage of rappers and rioters takes as its premise the majority’s admission of guilt for past and present injustices, and counts on the admiration of the repressed for the emotional power of the uninhibited and “justly” angry. Rage can also be manipulative; it can be an instrument of censorship and despotism.

As a onetime anthropologist, I know a taboo when I see one. Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo.

We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists.

As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.

Saul Bellow, professor of literature at Boston University, won the Nobel Prize in 1976.

“To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so…. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. And to think that there are democrats among us who pretend that there is any good in government; Socialists who support this ignominy, in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; proletarians who proclaim their candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic! Hypocrisy!”

Epilogue

General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was first published in French as Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe siècle.

Amen.

Investors Business Daily House Editorial 09/21/2009 07:05 PM ET

Policymaking: If the stimulus isn’t working, perhaps it’s because it was largely written by a collection of leftist interest groups called the Apollo Alliance that counts among its directors a co-founder of the Weather Underground.

The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more. Michigan’s rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%.

Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It’s largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo’s Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member. “We’ve talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades,” Reid is quoted as saying. “The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.” Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar. As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has “described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes” that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society. Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.

According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the ’60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the ’70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969. Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: “To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do.”

Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance’s New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization. As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo’s political agenda.

Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist.

It’s All About The Money Boys