LOS PAYASOS - YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

Builder sent to jail for flood mitigation An Idaho man is being sent to prison for meeting his local government's demands during a subdivision development to fix a drainage problem that periodically had left the town of Driggs flooded, after federal officials then said their regulations banned such work. The dire situation for developer Lynn Moses is being publicized by Bryan Fischer, the chief of Idaho Values Alliance, who said the "crime" for which Moses has been sentenced to 18 months in prison was, "Protecting the city of Driggs from flooding." Moses' lawyer, Blake Atkin of Salt Lake City, confirmed the circumstances of the case, explaining that although the federal government repeatedly has denied having jurisdiction over the work involved, an opinion shared by the U.S. Supreme Court, Moses nevertheless was convicted on charges relating to his work on the streambed of Teton Creek, an intermittent runoff channel that has water in it for probably eight weeks out of the year. "Worse, Mr. Moses has been convicted of 'pollut(ing) a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout,' despite the fact that there have been no fish in this stream bed for more than 150 years," Fischer wrote. "[A resident] who has lived near the flood channel for 18 years, says he has never seen fish in this stream bed. And it's not even possible for the stream bed to serve as a spawning ground since it only has water two months out of every year in the first place."....
A 'Hidden Tax' Of Rules Hits Economy President Bush's fiscal 2009 U.S. budget is the first to top $3 trillion. Federal spending has risen from 18% of GDP in 2000 to 21% today. What is less well documented are regulatory compliance costs — such as environmental, labor and energy efficiency mandates. As a result, too many remain unaware of the size and scope of regulation. Regulations are a "hidden tax" now estimated to cost business and consumers hundreds of billions, above and beyond federal spending itself. While the Dow collapses, we have a bull market in government regulations. The 50-plus departments, agencies and commissions are now at work on 3,882 rules; 757 will affect small businesses. More than 51,000 final rules were issued from 1995 to 2007. Those regulations are not free. Enforcing and overseeing them costs $42 billion per year. A far bigger cost — one that is not counted in the budget — is compliance. Regulatory compliance costs of $1.16 trillion are now higher than Canada's entire 2004 GDP ($1.017 trillion). At a time of lackluster 1% economic growth, the regulatory state costs 8.5% of U.S. GDP. Combined with the 21% of GDP consumed by federal spending, we have a federal government that absorbs nearly 30% of economic output. None of this includes state and local government, which push the burden of government up to 53.9% of GDP. The Federal Register, which lists all new rules, ran to 72,090 pages in 2007. This was down 3.8% from 2006. The record year was 2004, which saw 75,676 pages....
The GDP Illusion Government spending is one third of GDP, and it rose by a whopping 3.4 percent in the second quarter, following a 1.9 percent rise in the first quarter. There was a rise of 1.6 percent in state and local government spending, and a steep 6.7 percent rise in federal spending. “National defense” or military spending rose by a walloping 7.3 percent, as it did also in the first quarter. Civilian federal government spending rose by 5.3 percent. So what we have is a huge increase in government spending plus government giving people money to spend, all borrowed. The government can keep GDP rising by borrowing ever more money from abroad and spending it directly or giving it to residents to spend, while keeping interest rates pushed down via money expansion....
Government may be the worst threat to privacy In a recent post on airport security over at the Civil Liberties Examiner site, I mentioned that the Transportation Security Administration recently announced the loss of an unencrypted laptop computer containing pre-enrollment records for approximately 33,000 people, intended for use in the Clear registered traveler program. I wish I could say that was an isolated incident, or the sort of bumbling confined to a single government program, but it's not. In fact, a report in the latest issue of Consumer Reports finds that "government is among the biggest sources of ID leaks and that penalties are rarely imposed on those who are negligent." The magazine reports that, just from 2005 to mid-June of this year, 44 million consumer records containing sensitive personal information were lost or exposed by government missteps. Government ineptitude with data security may become an increasing problem, now that Homeland Security, with the courts' blessing, has ruled that border agents may seize and search electronic devices without cause. Jeff Vining, writing for Gartner Group, warns that a seized storage device may pass through the hands of any number of agents, working for a variety of agencies. "The only legal limitations to this scenario are to avoid causing exceptional damage to the laptop's hard drive and to conduct the search and investigation in an inoffensive manner. This means that digital information can be downloaded by government agents, never returned or destroyed." We already know what the government does with its own data; anybody care to bet that it will take better care of information stored on privately owned laptops and flash drives?....