Grokster Susan has the list with the title of “All your water are belong to them….“; it is still GraniteGrok’s belief that the finger has been removed from the dike with respect to the right to private property concerning the water underneath one’s land and that this may well give the Taxaholics yet another revenue stream of taxing (you watch – 4% of income is a magic number) private wells and septic systems (either directly or via metering). Grokster Steve points out that the idea of New Hampshire-ites being taxed for the rainwater falling on their land has already been breached.
My concern, however, was with the evolving process of Legislators creating more and more “enabling legislation” that creates more opportunities for “UnDemocracy” – as Rich Lowry points out (reformatted, emphasis mine):
It is appropriate that the worst scandal of the Obama administration— the IRS targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight from elected officials.
They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government. Its growth has been one of President Obama’s chief goals, and the one he has had the most success in achieving. He has greatly enhanced the reach and power of regulatory agencies that are an inherent offense against self-government, even when they aren’t enforcing the law in a biased way.
The administration’s corruption isn’t bags of cash or lies about interns; it is the distortion of our form of government by sidestepping democratic procedures and accountability and vesting authority in bureaucrats. The Administrative State…
Though Lowry speaks of the Federal Government, we see the same glide path to disaster at every level of Government; the essence of self-government is we all making decisions that govern ourselves. Or, governance by our elected representatives – but never should it include bureaucrats. Just like the purpose of the Executive Branch is to carry out the laws, it should not be bureaucrats crafting “legislation via regulation” – after all, nowadays, don’t regulations end up being the Force of Law? And not a whit created by somebody that won an election?
…the regulatory state has three hallmarks, at least since the 1970s when its independent power began to grow.
One, Congress delegates lawmaking to the agencies by giving them massive discretion in implementing the vaguest of mandates.
This is translated as “Legislators punting the hard work, the hard decisions……so as to have the easiest speaking points during elections.” After all “I didn’t vote for that regulation” goes over easy on the stump: “But I’ll look into it for you!”
Two, there are no constraints on their effective spending power since the costs of their rules “are borne almost entirely by the private sector.”
Yeah, making other people spend their money results in not a dang cent out of their’s. Too, it often end up with the parting shot “hey, it saves you money in the long run”. Gee, thanks for that, you all knowing my financial status. Hey – with Frank-Dodd tracking my every financial transaction, the IRS tracking all my income, and the IRS setting my healthcare costs, well, they will know how much it will save me in the long run”. Nice of the bureaucracy in that way. Not intrusive at all!
Third, they enjoy “relative insulation from public debate and criticism.”
Well, not entirely – but rarely does it affect their careers (unless of course, it embarrasses the next levels up of bureaucratic bosses – but pretty much, that’s it). Which all adds up to the big reason why passing SB11, especially by Limited Government Loving Republicans” ™, is just moving the ball to the Dems (who absolutely loves the above points as features, not bugs):
Needless to say, this is not how American government is supposed to work. It reflects the mindset of the Progressives rather than the Founders.
Yo, dopey ones! Are you listening? Are you paying attention to which side you helped in setting up yet another level of unaccountable board governance here in NH? And you thought you were just helping out a couple of towns…..
“The Constitution was designed,” DeMuth writes, “to make lawmaking cumbersome, representative, and consensual; the regulatory agency was a workaround, designed to make lawmaking efficient, specialized, and purposeful. It was a way to accommodate growing demands for government intervention in the face of the constitutional bias for limited government.
But Skip! Isn’t the role of government to be efficient? Er, no – if you actually READ the Declaration and Constitution, it was to protect individual Liberty and Freedom. The Founders deliberately made it hard and slow to get things done – the Administrative State cares only about efficiency and not a whit, in its SOP, to care about Liberty.
…Its architects want to do for immigration what Obamacare does for health care and Dodd-Frank does for the financial sector — invest an administrator (in this case the secretary of the department of Homeland Security) with extraordinary discretion, and entrust a bureaucracy with an enormous task beyond its capacities (the orderly, rapid processing of 11 million illegal aliens).
Slough off enough of your responsibility, Legislators, and you’ll just make yourselves as relevant as the Roman Senate – and we all know what happened to them.
In Washington, the power of the administrative state always grows. It needs one, two, many Lois Lerners. The IRS official has already taken a fall, and may be headed for an even steeper one. But there are many more like her. They are indispensable to government by and for the regulators.
And we will call you out every time you advance away from the Founders vision – an absolute truth that no amount of Progressivism can change.
