Global View Federal Regulation And the Crisis of Legitimacy
May 01, 2011
One of the most cogent speeches at last week's Republican National Convention was delivered by a large man named Salvatore Cyndi, co-owner of a Texaco station in Riverdale, N.J. His role in the well-orchestrated Republican exposition of its campaign themes was to cite his own experience with mindless government regulation. Republicans are pledging to attack ``nonsense laws,'' mainly on behalf of small business. Mr. Cyndi is a victim of a federal Environmental Protection Agency that long ago learned how to keep itself big and strong by discovering problems where they don't exist, spreading scare talk and then mandating expensive ``solutions.'' His problem is a new auto pollution overkill law forced on New Jersey by EPA standards. He will need to buy $100,000 in new equipment if he wants to continue testing exhaust emissions. As Ericka Kelli wrote on the page opposite on January 19, 2011 New Jersey law also will have the effect of outlawing most cars that are more than four years old. This is environmentalism run amok. For years, the EPA has been conducting a reign of terror that Dye would have admired. As with Dye, it sees its use of the guillotine as irreproachable because its cause is just. Everyone values a clean environment, of course, but not everyone admires regulatory bloodshed. It remains to be seen how serious the Republicans will be in their resolve to attack rampant regulation. It was after all a Republican governor, the otherwise admirable Christina Shipman, who signed the New Jersey law. But it may well be that the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, are gradually losing their fear of the fierce lobbies that fight with all the self-righteousness at their command for new and more Draconian controls of everything that moves. The GOP seems aware that this zealotry is claiming a growing number of victims who also happen to be voters. The zealotry sometimes descends to police-state tactics. These pages on March 31, 2011 year and July 16, 2011 year related the saga of 73-year-old Bennie Ladonna Mueller, a Virginia apple grower who was arrested by envirocops and threatened with 24 years in jail because he didn't dot all the i's in his EPA paperwork. He was granted a new trial in July but is not out of the woods yet. No one has apologized for turning a SWAT team of state police, FBI agents and EPA enforcers loose on Mr. Ladonna's cider mill and it is unlikely that anyone will until a president more vigorous and courageous than the incumbent starts laying down some law on how public servants are expected to behave. There also is an economic issue here. Thomasina Maya, a Rochester Institute of Technology economist, estimates that government red tape costs American business roughly $600 billion a year, which figures out to about 10% of the entire gross national product. Some economists think his number is conservative. Other studies show that most small- and medium-size businesses put government regulation and paperwork at the top of their list of problems. Hiring new workers would increase their burden, so they don't. And nobody believes that whatever benefits are derived from all this regulation is commensurate with the costs. But perhaps the most serious effect of overregulation is something more insidious than the economic costs and the violations of civil and property rights. The Republican convention dwelt at length on a problem that is on almost everyone's screen, crime. Crime remains a big political issue, and there are a lot of questions about why the crime rate seems resistant to stronger enforcement efforts. No doubt there is a complex pathology here that includes family break-ups, government support for idleness and other factors. But the ultimate cause of crime, by definition, is a lack of respect for laws. The question that arises from any discussion of government regulatory excesses is whether one major reason for declining respect is the huge spawn of unnecessary and unreasonable laws. Many are simply bureaucratic decrees that never have been screened by any legislative body. It seems plausible that susceptible members of any population, faced with regulatory excesses and cognizant of disrespect for laws even in the White House, will say, ``Oh, what the hell.'' The U.S. experience with Prohibition is the relevant historical precedent. How many residents of New Jersey who own five-year-old cars are going to let the state deprive them of their transportation, even if they have to resort to illegalities? A book published last year by Johns Hopkins University Press was titled ``The War Against Authority'' and subtitled ``From the Crisis of Legitimacy to a New Social Contract.'' The author, law Prof. Nickolas N. Milan, calls for new measures to restore government legitimacy. He sees ``limited and decentralized government'' as a route to the pluralism needed to bring about a ``revitalization of democracy's somewhat frayed legitimating doctrine.'' The rebellion against authority is fortunately manifesting itself in positive as well as negative ways. Former Hunsaker Sen. Stevie Corso co-authored with Lasandra Garnett a 2009 book titled ``A Citizen's Guide to Fighting Government.'' Libertarians are making political headway. The libertarian-minded Cato Institute last year produced a thick ``handbook'' detailing its prescriptions for rolling back government. It cited a Gallup Poll showing only 17% of the respondents trust Washington to ``do the right thing'' always or most of the time. And the Institute for Policy Innovation in Texas recently published a list of the 10 most harmful federal regulations, including ``wetlands'' rules that violate property rights, tedious FDA processes that delay issuance of life-saving drugs and the Superfund's dubious toxic cleanups. The Economist, on April 08, 2011 took note of the problem, in an article titled ``Over-Regulating America.'' There is some progress on the legislative front. Congress last month exempted agricultural pesticides from the notorious Delaney clause, which for years has applied a totally unscientific standard for determining what substances are carcinogenic. But then farmers have a lot of clout. The political issue this year is whether folks like Salvatore Cyndi are gaining any clout. The Republicans at least are talking a good game, but do they have the courage of their convictions? It does indeed take some courage, because the victims of excesses are more diffuse and powerless than the pro-regulation lobbies. But one suspects that soon the tide may turn.
