So opines the Washington Examiner’s editorial board:
Previously in this space, The Washington Examiner described an important new report compiled by an 11-person research team from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce entitled “Sue and Settle: Regulating Behind Closed Doors.” The chamber’s report identified at least 71 federal court cases since 2009 in which federal agencies — most often, the Environmental Protection Agency — made back-room deals with Big Green environmental activist groups like the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians. The activist groups then sued the agency asking the court to order the agency to do what it already agreed to do in the backroom. The group and the agency then told the court that they had settled their “issues” and the court issued a consent decree ratifying the whole rotten procedure.
Sue and settle is anti-democratic because it cuts out of the regulatory process everybody not present in the back-room dickering. Sue and settle is also unconstitutional — at least in spirit if not fact — since it supplants elected representatives making law in public with unelected bureaucrats making law behind closed doors. By denying an opportunity for public comment, the process also violates the Administrative Procedures Act that Congress approved in 1946 to insure transparency and accountability in the federal regulatory process. Finally, sue and settle is extraordinarily expensive because agencies typically use it to impose costly regulatory regimens without consideration of less expensive options typically proposed during the preliminary phase of rule-making under the APA.
Last year, the House approved the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2012 that took vital first steps toward making sue and settle conform to the APA. The Senate, however, did nothing. […]
[…] additional reforms are also essential to scour sue and settle of its intrinsically anti-democratic, anti-transparency characteristics. First, to ensure accountability, Congress should mandate that agencies and private parties to any proposed sue-and-settle deal must make public a comprehensive timeline of all participants and all contacts between them, with strong penalties attached for violations. Second, the agencies and private parties to any proposed sue-and-settle deal must, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, make public a full accounting of all tax dollars paid for any attorney fees or related costs, as well as the identities of the recipients of such payments.
Finally, there are at least 71 sue-and-settle deals now in the books as federal regulatory policy. For all the reasons made clear here and in the chamber’s report, these deals are of doubtful legitimacy and should be suspended pending further congressional action on the issues raised by sue and settle. To do anything less would validate a process that is alien to the Constitution.
I first learned from Mark Levin about this kind of pretend government fan dance –that is, ostensibly non-political agencies using established procedures to appear to be working in an objective way in their dealings with political interests groups, when it fact because the two parties involved in the dispute are not disputing, but are rather colluding — and it occurred to me at the time that this is precisely what has to happen when one political party becomes the party of government, inviting all those who share the party’s views on things like “climate change” or “sprawl” to use the instrumentalities of government to achieve their political ends while maintaining the appearance of an adversarial system.
In short, the government agencies — having become politicized and infiltrated by leftwing ideologues — are essentially working in concert with their NGO adversaries to throw fights: the NGOs sue, the government agencies agree to settle, and deals that include regulation favorable to the NGOs become set in bureaucratic stone with no input from the public.
The process amounts to a series of coups. And no, that’s not being hyperbolic.
I agree with the Examiner’s conclusion that the at least 71 deals of doubtful legitimacy be suspended pending further congressional action. But then, I look at how the President has refused to remove NLRB appointees that two federal courts have called unconstitutionally appointed, instead taking the case further up the legal food chain (where he knows he’ll lose), and in the interim, allowing these unconstitutional appointees to implement and institutionalize new rules, methods, and precedents that will have the desired leftwing affects long after these usurpers have been finally and forcibly removed.
So rather than wait for congressional action — which involves Boehner weighing any potential action against how the NYT might spin it — I say we take it upon ourselves simply to refuse to abide any of these unconstitutional strictures.
Deem them illegitimate and refuse to be governed by them. And if arrested or harassed as a result, file suit against the harassing agency claiming that they lack the constitutional authority to compel you, because they received that authority extra-constitutionally and through collusion with administrative agencies.
We need to begin battling these attempts to create the new normal with a renewed and adventurous vigor. We can’t simply stand by and whine about how unfair it all is, because the media, like the NGOs, are appendages of the government, which right now IS the Democrat party.
Resist we much. And we must. Etc.
This is our country. And until John Roberts tells us that any collusion is legal if we squint and see it as a tax, I say we engage in civil disobedience and shake things up a bit.
Several things are clear: we need to weaken or abolish the IRS; and we need to do the same with the myriad federal agencies, which issue regulation with the force of law at such an alarming rate that they have been able to create entire new classes of criminals — all while effectively hamstringing business, industry, economic growth, and prosperity, and intentionally working to shrink and defang the private sector economy.
This is how socialism works. And what we’re witnessing is part of the playbook for turning a thriving free market republic into the bureaucratically-controlled world of Brazil.
— Which, I’d like to point out to my leftist readers, was supposed to warn of a destructive, soul-crushing Dystopia, not be used as a fucking instruction manual.
I say ALL Federal agencies should be scrutinized in much the same way the IRS, at the bidding of various well-funded left-wing tax-exempt non-profits, scrutinized the applications of supposed “right-wing” non-profits.
Every last one of them.
My having the indecency to demand that prosecutions for official malfeasance occur — IRS, et al — my liberal Senator this morning corrected me: Apparently laws exist to make sure that when they’re broken breaking them again doesn’t occur.
Gosh darnit.
Which presumably means laws have not been sufficient. Plus: when they again prove insufficient in the near future, they’ll then prove insufficient again right after that.
And this from a Senator.
I propose that when the next constitutionally and ethically minded group forms it call itself Pissing in the Wind.
It is even worse as the government often is funding of the NGO which is run by former government officials of the agency that both funds them and is being sued by them.
Judges who oversee these scams need to go as well.
Yes, I agree that is a tactic we are almost going to have to use. The problem is, there are so many laws and regulations on the books, most there through *cough*legitimate*cough* means, how is the average guy with a family to take care of know when to use it that won’t just screw himself to no effect on anything else?
For example; I just moved into an area where the fire dept. (this is county, not city), has taken it upon itself to levy a $150/yr “fee” for the extra risk of living in the country (despite there being fire hydrants, one directly across the road from me, and this area isn’t prone to fires like southern California). I was told there is legal action being taken on the grounds it amounts to double taxation since our property taxes are supposed to be for that.
So, say the tactics you describe are being used, the fix is in, it goes through the courts, and it’s decided it’s a legitimate fee (Roberts or his state equivalent, in his wisdom discerning finely this isn’t a tax). If I decide on my own it’s unconstitutional and refuse to pay up, they’ll just take my property and ruin my life, the net effect being no one else will dare object and they’ll feel fine raising the fee.
Seems to me the strategy will only work if I can organize everyone in the county to do the ting with me, and that’s extremely unlikely, being as most are LIV’s that trust in
GodState.Plus, they don’t want to be audited…
which involves Boehner weighing any potential action against how the NYT might spin it
Boehner may seem cowed by bad spin, but I’m coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t launch investigations because he’s just as dirty as the Dems. He’s a fox in charge of the hen house.
Witness McCain’s trip to the Syrian rebels: a publicly performed gesture to gin up support for U.S. arming the rebels — most of whom are allied with al Qaeda or worse — thus to whitewash the gun-running that was being mediated in Benghazi, which, when it went south, did not seem to inspire Boehner to jump down the Administration’s throat.
Because. He’s. In. On. It.
We can speculate that the guy’s a mealy mouthed milquetoast, or we can recognize that he keeps getting reelected to the Speakership because he’s holding something over the heads of a lot of the House members — and he’s more closely allied with the O-ministration than with the Heartland.
Doy. If he were merely a noodle-spined coward, he wouldn’t have lasted this long in Washington.
He plays the game. Including the dark side.
“Boehner may seem cowed by bad spin, but I’m coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t launch investigations because he’s just as dirty as the Dems.”
Is there any doubt?
WRT McCain, I think he got turned when he was in the POW camp.
he got turned when
Looks to me more a matter of the moment he was born the privileged son of a striving future Admiral who was himself the privileged son of an Admiral, and merit became confused with a sense of honor and vice versa.
Speaking of the IRS
I think he got turned when he was in the POW camp.
I think so as well. More so, so does Hubs and he was in country at the time and in the loop.
McCoot is an example of the Peter Principle writ large. A shitty student, a shitty pilot, a shitty husband, and has parlayed all that into Distinguished Senator™ who never misses a trick to play the POW card and thus have absolute moral authority on all things military.
leigh says May 28, 2013 at 12:23 pm
McCoot is an example of the Peter Principle writ large.
But… he’s one of the last badasses!
If I decide on my own it’s unconstitutional and refuse to pay up, they’ll just take my property and ruin my life, the net effect being no one else will dare object and they’ll feel fine raising the fee.
Then find backup. Find state and local elected officials who can be reasoned with, and un-elect the ones who can’t. Look for sympathetic sheriffs. Talk to Tea Party rabble-rousers. Run a few columns in the local newspapers.
You might be surprised at what 20 committed individuals can accomplish. At the very least, you’ll be able to pool resources for your legal battles.
He’s only a badass if he gets taken prisoner in Syria and successfully negotiates Terms of Surrender for Assad with the US and gets carried out on the shoulders of the Freedom Fighters.
Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
I think he got turned when he was in the POW camp.
Dunno about that, but he’s definitely been seduced by Washington, and I doubt he resisted its advances for even a split-second.
McVain indeed.
How to be a bad-ass, and establish a political career.
*** Caesar paid no further attention to him. He went to Pergamon, took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking. ***
Is there a government rule resulting from the RNC’s consent decree to refrain from seeking to enforce laws re the integrity of elections?
The North Vietnamese could learn some brainwashing techniques from the Beltway elite.
And that’s in the legal arena.