In an open letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), dated November 2, 2009, members of the Congressional Western Caucus expressed great concern to Attorney General Holder regarding the ongoing and apparent abuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) by certain organizations including environmental and special interest groups. The Caucus highlights the complete lack of oversight, accountability, and transparency in the overall process and allocation of funds under EAJA, which appears to have contributed to the egregious abuse. “Environmental groups have been working to deny grazing rights to America’s ranchers for decades. They do so by claiming violations of environmental policy, suing federal environmental agencies and ultimately, tying up ranchers’ time and resources in costly, and often baseless, court battles,” said Jeff Faulkner, Western Legacy Alliance (WLA) member. “What makes this situation worse is the fact that these environmental groups such as Western Watersheds Project and the Center for Biological Diversity are shaking down federal government programs so they can access taxpayer dollars to fund their radical agendas.” Two of the federal programs that are seemingly handing out millions, and possibly billions, to environmental groups are the EAJA and the Judgment Fund. The EAJA was established approximately 30 years ago by Congress to ensure that individuals, small businesses and/or public interest groups with limited financial capacity could seek judicial redress from unreasonable government actions that threatened their rights, privileges or interests. EAJA accomplishes this by allowing small businesses and individuals who would otherwise not be able to afford a court battle to obtain reimbursement of attorney’s fees if they are found to prevail in a case over a government agency such as the Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service...Press Release
I guess its time I fess up to being in on the ground floor of creating EAJA.
It all started with a coin broker in Portales, NM. He had ordered some gold coins for a customer. The coins had made it to El Paso when they were confiscated by treasury agents who had received info the coins were illegally imported. Then the treasury dept. dumped a bunch of gold bullion on the market which drove down the price of gold. On Monday or Tuesday of the next week, the treasury agents said oops, they were wrong and the coins were perfectly legal, and they released them to the coin dealer. However the customer, due to the hefty drop in the price of gold, declared bankruptcy and refused delivery. This then forced the coin dealer into bankruptcy.
The timing was such that the coins would have passed to the customer prior to the dumping if the federal agents hadn't confiscated them. So one NM businessman was down the drain as a result of the gov't confiscating private property based on faulty information. I was an aide to Senator Domenici at the time and approached him about the situation and convinced him the feds should compensate individuals in cases such as this. Domenici introduced legislation, which was amended and watered down and eventually became EAJA.
This whole thing reminds me of a recent essay by Dr. Robert Higgs, Can the Rampaging Leviathan Be Stopped or Slowed?, in which he claims all attempts to limit the size of government will fail and the beast will continue to grow until it implodes.
Anyway, all you cowboys can cuss me and all you enviros can thank me for having the original idea that has become so distorted in EAJA.
You see, it all started with a coin dealer in Portales, NM...
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