printUnder what authority does this president make it illegal for business to do business? Under the same grant of power that allows him to force individuals to buy a product, presumably. The result of BHO’s six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is that companies are beginning to depart. After all, it costs millions to sit idle. Wait a sec, perhpas the next step the encroaching state can take is to forbid the companies to leave. Ludwig von Mises warned that the road to socializing the means of production was paved with interventionism.
“Already, three rigs have left or are in the process of leaving the Gulf of Mexico,” Chett Chiasson, executive director of the port commission for the town of Port Fourchon, which services 90 percent of deepwater activity in the Gulf, told AFP. “If this moratorium goes for six months, these rig operators and these oil companies will have no choice but to go somewhere else,” with a devastating impact on jobs and the economy of Louisiana and the rest of the United States…”
WND reports that the scary James Carville “told CNN’s John King, ‘This president needs to tell BP, ‘I’m your daddy, I’m in charge. You’re going to do what we say.'”
Carville has tapped into a dominant sentiment among Americans—unless the networks are interviewing an unrepresentative minority.
To explain why he wanted money and lots of if from BP, one such mundane mind told one of the networks, “We are the parent; PB the child. We want to punish the child but not to make him leave the house.”
The other reason he gave: we live day-to-day here. I guess this will be a valid basis upon which to join the claims process. Right there you see what the problem is with a Chicago-style shake down, as opposed the legal claims process, where at least some evidence must be presented.
The “goose in folklore laid a golden egg a day until its greedy owner killed it in an attempt to get all the gold at once.”
UPDATE (June 22): TOO-BIN THE TIT (tit as in a “despicable or unpleasant person). Last night, the Alpha Female of CNN, Anderson Cooper, called on his legal analyst, Jeffrey Too-bin, to confirm what is known to every left-liberal with an opinion on how the law should work, but no knowledge of how it works (that’s tit Too-bin).
Too-bin was to predict whether New Orleans District Court Judge Martin Feldman would leave or lift “the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.”
Tit was ponderous. He shook his curly pelt and indicated that BHO’s decree was so reasonable he could not envisage its overturn. And, in any case, the Powers That Be had wide discretion such as was seldom challenged by the Courts. It was all good, promised Too-bin. I made a mental note to revisit the tit when Feldman rendered the right ruling.
Contra the Too-bin, my instinct (located in my head) was that Judge Martin Feldman would indeed do what he did:
Issue “a temporary injunction Tuesday, lifting the moratorium and accusing [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar of ‘arbitrary and capricious’ behavior that will cause ‘irreparable harm’ to 33 other deepwater oil rigs that the government unfairly assumes are unsound, despite the fact that all of them have been reinspected since the BP blowout on May 28.” [Washington Examiner]
Here is the Cooper/Too-bin tet`-a-tete´. Coming from an analyst, the Us vs. Them language is unbelievable:
Sorting it out tonight: CNN’s senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, who joins us from New York.
Jeff, what the companies bringing this suit — what do they have to prove to get the moratorium overturned?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: They have to prove that the action by the Obama administration was arbitrary and capricious, it was simply an irrational act to do this. That’s a very tough standard to meet but that’s what they have — that’s what they’re trying to show.
COOPER: And Bobby Jindal, the governor here, he filed a brief along with the plaintiffs, saying the moratorium basically will turn an environmental disaster into an economic catastrophe. Those were his words. That’s really an economic argument he’s making.
TOOBIN: That’s right. It’s important to remember that the judge has a very narrow function in this case. He doesn’t have to decide whether it’s a good idea to have this moratorium or not. Judge Feldman’s (ph) job only is to decide whether the Obama administration was legally within its rights in establishing this moratorium. And it is legally within its rights as long as it acts in a rational way. That’s a very broad standard.
The economic arguments that Bobby Jindal made, you know, 4,000 jobs lost directly, 10,000 jobs lost indirectly. Those are arguments to be made to the Obama administration saying, don’t do this, it’s a bad idea. I don’t see how a court is going to take those arguments and say, well, that makes this beyond the pale legally.
COOPER: Yes. Essentially you’re saying the judge isn’t ruling on whether these rigs are safe or not, or whether that even matters. All he’s ruling on is the state of mind that the president had when he made this decision?
TOOBIN: Well, it’s not so much the state of mind — about whether there is a reasonable justification, whether the act of establishing this moratorium is a reasonable response. And when you have an economic — an environmental catastrophe like we’ve seen, shutting down these rigs for six months does not seem to me — and I suspect will not seem to the judge — as an irrational response.
Now, the companies — and Bobby Jindal points out, that a lot of these rigs that are being shut down, have passed their safety inspections. So why shut them down? That means it’s an irrational act to shut them down.
The government responds to that by saying, look, the Deepwater Horizon, it passed its inspections. That shows that the safety inspections aren’t good enough. We need the six months to fix the system. That’s an argument I think that’s going to be very tough to respond to.
COOPER: So, you think the judge is going to leave the moratorium in place?
TOOBIN: I think it’s very likely. When it comes to these sorts decisions where an administrative agency has a lot of discretion, judges are very reluctant to step in at the last minute and stop it, because they figure the agency has the expertise. The law gives the agency a certain amount of discretion. It would take an extreme irrational act to get a judge to stop it, and a six-month moratorium — and remember, it’s only six months, it’s not forever — I think is not something that the judge — that most judges would view as irrational.
COOPER: All right. Jeff Toobin, I appreciate it.
[SNIP]
We’ve gone from Too-bin to too-good. Yes!
It’s truly deteriorating: i mean the public discourse in the usa!
This white house is making the US look ridiculous.
And: they are oblivious to reason or common sense! nevermind the plight of American citizens and any future survival or growth.
It’s rather frightening. Like a horror movie
Reality is going to demand a price from Americans (and the rest of us for sure)
The White House isn’t alone in making the US look ridiculous. The American people are doing a pretty good job of it too. In a crisis we actually have people looking to Obama for leadership when he has exhibited no leadership, ever. The idiocy of a drilling moratorium makes sense to the democrat faithful but not to anyone who actually thinks. This country is a classic case of the blind being led by the blind.
What are we really seeing here? Is it a global specialization of production & services country by country similar to Michigan growing apples vs Florida growing oranges? Where there used to be small numbers of men building handmade cars, we have large numbers of men who perform a single function, e.g. operating a nut-runner, to produce vehicles. In the FOUNDATION stories, the galaxy was governed by a central government and other planets & peoples provided for the needs of the central government. Currently, we read articles calling for a common currency or, at least, a small basket of select controlling currencies. “Under what authority does this…”, well, it appears to be the same as an assumptive close used by salesmen. I am to the point that my mind says we have lost our “home”, the U.S., to power grabbers, vagrants, and misdirected do-gooders. Thus it has been throughout history: thus it is now. All Hail the new Caesar! (ps: Does New Caledonia look like a safe haven?)
I’m afraid this white house simply represents the majority (even if a slight majority) of the people of this country. We have truly become a nation of idiots.
Dan
It seems the governor and private industry got a reprieve, when a Federal Judge set the ban aside; however, the White House (Interior Dept.) said they will appeal. “http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill”
Loathe as I am to say anything in defense of Barry the Bolshevik or his commissars, oil exploration companies do lease tracts of the continental shelf from the federal government. We don’t live in an anarchist’s nirvana. The fedgov owns the continental shelf, and a big chunk of our land mass, too. It has since the Revolution.
Not having examined the lease agreements, I can’t say whether the administration is within its rights to suspend drilling. Judging from the press reports, I can’t tell whether the judge in this case has examined the plaintiff’s lease agreement either. The government might rightfully tell businesses to stop doing business when the government owns the tracts on which the businesses are doing their business, depending upon the terms of the lease.
[Good point; hence the never-to-be-realized need to privatize waterways.]
The President of the United States is supposed to enforce LAWS passed by Congress (such as immigration laws). The President is not authorized to rule by fiat. The Supreme Court rebuked Harry Truman when he tried to confiscate the steel industry during the Korean War so perhaps it will do so again.
P.S. To those Republicans out there – this is the same Harry Truman they now idolize for PERSONALLY declaring a UN “police action” (e.g. war) in Korean in defiance of Article 1 Section 8.
Pardon me, ma’am, but I think your article underestimates the strong proprietary interest of the BP and Transocean employees on the Deepwater Horizon. They had bet not only their jobs but their very lives that they could safely contain the oil in their well. Some of them lost. People screw up, often at great cost; it’s the nature of the beast. Privatization is no more likely to change that than communization.
We don’t privatize waterways for the same reason that we don’t privatize Interstate 45. As things are, it’s a four hour straight shot from Houston to Dallas at a cost of $20 to $50 in gas, depending on what you’re driving. If a different “private owner” demanded a toll at gunpoint every fifty feet or so, the trip would take months and exhaust most people’s life savings. Sometimes government management of a resource is perferable.
BHO undoubtedly claimed authority for the moratorium under some act of Congress. At least, I hope so, but I’m having difficulty finding the original order or any statement on legal justification from the administration. Has anyone else done better?
“We don’t privatize waterways for the same reason that we don’t privatize Interstate 45.” Sorry Gringo, but we in Oklahoma (and other states, likewise) have State Toll Roads. To go from Tulsa to Oklahoma on I-44, it will cost you $3.50. Bypass OKC another two dollars. Etc. The highways were funded in the idea that when they were paid for, the state would convert them back to public roads. They paid for themselves and the state decided to keep the roads as toll roads to ‘pay for the upkeep’ and raised the rates. Booker T. Washington and others in the past built toll roads and the Erie Canal. But Ilana is right, the day of the “Private right of way” in anything is gone.
Robert, have you converted the toll amounts to gold to see whether they’ve risen in real terms? Even if they have, you’re probably still paying less in tolls than you would if the existing roads were sold off in small chunks to families (or biker gangs), or in large chunks to corporations. If some private owner bore a grudge against you for some reason, you might not be able to get out of Tulsa for any amount of money. By the way, the Erie Canal seems to have been funded by the State of New York, after private entrepreneurs failed in similar projects.
Gringo: I had no intention of doing a cost analysis on the subject of private property rights vs public property, only commenting that it is still being done. One might note that I mixed the private and government up fairly well in my comment. Ilana mentioned the subject of privatizing waterways and you mentioned not privatizing roads. I stated that when the state builds a toll road, it is in effect a privatized roadway. The state is making a profit, same as a private cooperation. There is no reason why states don’t privatize roads and many do, now how we can privatize (government acting as a for-profit entity) the ocean floor. My guess it would be through permits. The most important thing though is your comment in regard to the cost to BP. Their people paid a high price already. Eleven men died; men with homes, families and friends. Maybe I missed something but, I have yet to see an article that considers their loss. I live in the Oklahoma Oil Patch and every now and then we still have a funeral for someone who died in an oilfield accident. The grief is widespread