Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Law, Private Property, Regulation
The “EPA is using the Endangered Species Act to foist new regulations on private property owners, in effect turning over private property to the federal government’s control.”
Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Private Property, Pseudoscience, Regulation
The theory of global warming is unfalsifiable, in other words, the theory cannot be falsified or tested and is, therefore, irrefutable. Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it. Thus, “Snow In May In Chicago” will naturally be taken as evidence for the theory of catastrophic, man-made climate change.
As Karl Popper reminded us, “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,” of course, “non-scientific.”
This is not to say that man is not destructive to the environment, or that we should not cherish and take care of nature. We certainly should by understanding that government is not a panacea for the problem. (I don’t know about the wild fires in San Diego this year, but “the cause of a wildfire that burned nearly 150 buildings last summer in San Diego County” was a jeep ignited by the federal Bureau of Land Management):
The root of environmental despoliation is the tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights in the resource. One of my favorite running routes wends along miles of lakeside property, all privately owned, and ever so pristine. Where visitors dirty the trail that cleaves to the majestic homes; fastidious owners are quick to pick up after them.
In the absence of private ownership in the means of production, government-controlled resources go to seed. There is simply no one with strong enough a stake in the landmass or waterway to police it before disaster strikes.
Entrusted with the management and regulation of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, only pretend to care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your performance plummets?
… Private property rights in waterways, or riparian rights in water that abuts private property—these are the best protectors of the ocean and of other state-controlled expanses of water [and land].
Federalism, History, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Race, Regulation, The State
The confederation of knaves is the California legislature. The pressing issue it has decided to tackle relates not at all to the following signs of “degradation and decline” in “the lost commonwealth on the Pacific,” as described by historian Clyde Wilson:
Public spending and debt have reached catastrophic levels unmanageable by a society of self-centered individuals and interest groups. Gang warfare dominates the urban jungle. The state doubtless leads the Union in … perverts, dopesters, and aborted children. Hollywood, once a source of pleasant diversions, now pollutes not only the U.S. but the entire world with pornography, nihilistic violence, and, what is worse, bad taste. The Terminator and various other flakes have been elected governor. Productive citizens are fleeing east and north by the thousands. If illegal aliens are not counted California is losing population for the first time in a century and a half of American settlement.
Rather, the “looming threat to human progress” that was banished from gangland is the Confederate flag, “(Though apparently the Hammer & Sickle, the Swastika, and Che Guevara and Black Power fists are still welcome) …”
America, History, Justice, Law, Private Property, Regulation
Before Cliven Bundy there were the Dunns, whose ordeal with the “BLM Brownshirts” began decades back, and should break even a heart made of flint, such is the destruction to the lives, land and livestock of this family of Amerindians.
As wonderful William N. Grigg tells it, “the Dann family spent two decades fighting in federal courts to defend their property against the depredations of the federal government. As members of the Western Shoshone nation, the Dann family had inherited land that was protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution – parchment barricades against aggression that were quickly reduced to ashes by the flame of elite ambitions.”
Below is the culmination of one of the Bureau of Land Grabs’ roundups:
A previous roundup nearly resulted in tragedy when a member of the family doused himself in gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire. The 59-year-old man, who had no previous criminal record, was tackled, beaten by law enforcement officers, arrested, and prosecuted on terrorism-related charges.
After spending several years in prison, that supposed terrorist, Clifford Dann, was allowed to return to the tiny, ramshackle homestead he shares with his 82-year-old sister, Carrie, who is the same age their elder sister Mary was when she died in an accident while repairing a fence in 2005. …… In 1974, the US Government sued the Dann family, claiming that they had committed “trespassing” by grazing their horses and cattle on land that legally belonged to them. Successive rulings by federal judges upheld the Government’s claims.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the Dann family’s appeal, insisting that the matter was closed when the federal government paid itself $26 million to consummate the theft of the Shoshone lands. The Feds would eventually claim that the impoverished Indian family owed nearly $5 million in grazing fees and interest.
The BLM staged its first cattle rustling raid against the Danns in April 1992. At about 4:30 in the morning, the ranch lands were invaded by a column of vehicles that decanted a platoon of BLM Brownshirts. Not intimidated by the bullying display, Carrie plowed through the picket line and cast herself into a cattle chute to prevent hireling cowboys from loading her stolen cattle onto a truck.
“My land has never been for sale,” Carrie told Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones, who rather than defending his constituent’s rights was aligned with the invaders. “It’s not for sale now, it’s not for sale tomorrow, either. And that’s the way it is, Mr. Jones.” …
MORE.