OPINION/COMMENTARY


USDA's snooping machine

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is looking more and more like the Big Brother government that has infected Washington in recent years. The "2006 Agricultural Identification Survey," recently mailed to thousands of private landowners, is a good example. The instructions for the questionnaire say "Response to this survey is legally required by Title 7, U.S. Code." Title 7 of the U.S. Code is an enormous document, containing 105 chapters, each of which is a lengthy book unto itself. To find the specific requirement, a person would have to read all the way to Chapter 55, Section 2204g, to discover that a person who falsifies an answer to the questions asked may be fined $500; a person who fails or refuses to answer may be fined $100. The questionnaire asks 22 multi-part questions. The USDA wants to know what is on the privately owned land, how it is used, if there are animals on the land, and the variety and quantity of each. The agency wants to know if the owner has any contracts that affect the land or produce revenue, and how much total revenue the land produces. Does the collection of this information – under penalty of law – by the U.S. government violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which clearly says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects ... shall not be violated ..." without a warrant? This USDA survey is an infringement on the Fourth Amendment right of private landowners to be secure in their "persons, houses, papers and effects." Why does the government need this information? Actually, this Agriculture Survey was authorized by a 1997 law that was enacted to relieve the U.S. Census Bureau from collecting farm data, which had been an expanding part of its mission for several years. The Census Bureau is authorized by the Constitution to simply count the citizens every 10 years in order to maintain balanced congressional representation. Like all bureaucracies, however, mission-creep has transformed the Census Bureau into a national snooping machine....


America Goes Insane Over the Weather

Even the Weather Channel that used to simply provide reasonably accurate, short-term information about the weather is now telling everyone we’re doomed because global warming is going to destroy the Earth. Why not just rename it the Al Gore Channel?
The weather used to be the concern primarily of farmers and ranchers. It determines how well or not crops would grow and herds will thrive. As America became more urbanized, the rest of the population wanted to know whether to bring an umbrella or what to wear. Now it is a source of daily anxiety over the fate of the Earth. To make matters worse, people are being told and actually believing that what they do or not can affect the weather in ways to keep the seas and temperatures from rising. It is no longer the domain of the sun, the oceans, volcanoes and clouds. These puny things are nothing compared to what kind of car you drive or what you use to heat your home....


Governors lose in power struggle over National Guard

A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. To the dismay of the nation’s governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor’s head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state. A conflict over who should control Guard units arose in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Bush sought to federalize control of Guardsmen in Louisiana in the chaos after the hurricane, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) refused to relinquish command. Over objections from all 50 governors, Congress in October tweaked the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to empower the hand of the president in future stateside emergencies. In a letter to Congress, the governors called the change "a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders." The change adds to tensions between governors and the White House after more than four years of heavy federal deployment of state-based Guard forces to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, four out of five guardsmen have been sent overseas in the largest deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Shortage of the Guard’s military equipment – such as helicopters to drop hay to snow-stranded cattle in Colorado – also is a nagging issue as much of units’ heavy equipment is left overseas and unavailable in case of a natural disaster at home. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids U.S. troops from being deployed on American soil for law enforcement. The one exception is provided by the Insurrection Act of 1807, which lets the president use the military only for the purpose of putting down rebellions or enforcing constitutional rights if state authorities fail to do so. Under that law, the president can declare an insurrection and call in the armed forces. The act has been invoked only a handful of times in the past 50 years, including in 1957 to desegregate schools and in 1992 during riots in south central Los Angeles after the acquittal of police accused of beating Rodney King. Congress changed the Insurrection Act to list "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident" as conditions under which the president can deploy U.S. armed forces and federalize state Guard troops if he determines that "authorities of the state or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."....


Common sense in the warming debate

Global warming is the subject of intense debate. But if ideology is getting in the way of science, maybe both sides of the debate are letting that happen. While the evidence of global climate change is overwhelming, there are skeptics who challenge the consensus view that warming is caused by human activity. These individuals are routinely accused of being in the pocket of big corporations that would be hurt by aggressive measures to curb carbon emissions. (And, in fact, many of them work for groups that receive funding from such sources as ExxonMobil). Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, has argued that treating the issue as a legitimate debate is misleading because it bestows legitimacy on pseudoscientific propaganda. But is everyone on the other side disinterested? On his blog, Mooney notes that sometimes "environmental groups and their ilk oversell the science." On the issue of whether global warming is to blame for hurricanes, he says, "it's clear the science has been abused on both sides." People can easily see economic motives to bend the facts and abuse the science. Ideological motives are less readily apparent, but no less real; and, for quite a few people, environmentalism has become a matter of not just ideology but quasi-religious zealotry. Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy studies at UCLA and a self-identified liberal, noted this recently on his blog. Writes Kleiman, "To those who dislike a social system based on high and growing consumption and the economic activity that supports high and growing consumption and maintains high and growing demand (a dislike with which I have considerable sympathy), to those who think that the market needs more regulation by the state, to those who think that international institutions ought to be strengthened . . . global warming is a Gaia-send" -- since it justifies drastic worldwide public action to curb production and consumption. (Gaia, the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, is a term used by many ecologists to refer to the earth as a living entity.) While Kleiman sympathizes with environmentalists, he notes that "their eagerness to believe the worst" -- for instance, in Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" -- "is just as evident as the right wing's denialism."....


WILL AL GORE MELT?

If we are to embark on the costliest political project ever -- Al Gore's suggestions to combat global warming -- maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground, say Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and Bjorn Lomborg, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

First, the costs associated with Gore's plan need to be explored, say the authors:

* The United Nations estimates that if we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world.
* However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path, by 2100 the average person will be 30 percent poorer.

Given the huge costs, it would be paramount to look at Gore's facts, which seem more convenient than accurate, says Rose and Lomborg:

* In his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore shows sequences of 20-feet flooding in Florida, San Francisco, New York, Beijing and others; yet the U.N. climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century.
* Gore also says global warming is bringing malaria to Nairobi; yet this is quite contrary to the World Health Organization's finding that Nairobi is considered free of malaria; but in the 1920s and 1930s, when temperatures were lower than today, malaria epidemics occurred regularly.
* In Antarctica, Gore presents pictures from the 2 percent of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98 percent that has largely cooled over the past 35 years; he also ignores U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century.
* He also says heat waves will cost lives, but says nothing about the fact that avoided cold deaths far outweigh the number of heat deaths.
* In the United Kingdom, for example, it is estimated that 2,000 more will die from global warming, but 20,000 fewer will die of cold.

Source: Flemming Rose And Bjorn Lomborg, "Will Al Gore Melt?" Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2007.

For text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116909379096479919.html


PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT THROUGH THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY — PART II

The National Park Service has maintained low or no entrance fees to encourage the maximum number of visitors, but this has led to overuse and insufficient funds to properly maintain roads and facilities, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The Park Service has been successful in attracting visitors (287 million people in 1999) and increasing the number of grazing animals -- but at a high price:

* In the most popular parks, visitors regularly complain of air pollution from automobiles, cars interfering with scenic views and traffic jams hampering the natural experience.
* The absence of predators to regulate populations and periodic fires to stimulate plant growth led to an overpopulation of grazing animals.
* In Yellowstone, elk have almost entirely driven out deer, bighorn and pronghorn sheep, and even beaver populations, or pushed them into poorer habitats, leaving them prey to disease and boom-and-bust population cycles.

In contrast, individuals and private organizations have a long history of protecting environmentally valuable lands. For instance:

* The Audubon Society maintains more than 100 sanctuaries and nature centers comprising more than 300,000 acres.
* The Nature Conservancy protects and maintains 15 million acres in the United States in nearly 1,400 private preserves -- an area greater than the states of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Rhode Island combined.

The concept of ownership can be extended to public lands. For example, some federal lands could be sold or auctioned off to private parties (individuals, companies or nonprofit organizations). Or management could be transferred to congressionally-approved boards or to states or counties that have demonstrated superior economic and environmental performance, says Burnett.

Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "Protecting the Environment Through the Ownership Society — Part II," National Center for Policy Analysis, Policy Report No. 295, January 2007.

For text:
www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st295