The WaPo, of all places (and even though it sneaks in a Bush-blame bit), exposes the accrued nonsense that takes place inside our unelected, unchecked administrative branch, which is essentially a legislative branch of the Executive (constitutionally dubious on its face) — albeit one that, unless the Chief Executive happens to be targeting specific industries or groups (energy, farming, TEA Party, religious charities) acts largely on its own, outside of any oversight save for that of managers and managers of managers and deputy supervisors, deputy to the chief deputy supervisor, and the supervisors, who are then answerable to the committee to supervise supervisors.

It’s an enormous aggregation of regulatory on top of vaguely written regulations, and the results would be laughable, if they didn’t carry with them the force of law, legal punishment, fines, confiscation of property, and loss of livelihood — all in the hands of the very kind of petty tyrants who gravitate toward jobs like “inspector for animal compliance, Agriculture Department.”

Several years back — around 2005 or so — I wrote about the insanity within our bureaucratic police state. At the time, the remarkable charge was “failure to have a license” for the rabbit you were using in a kid’s magic show.

Unsurprisingly, after 8 years, things have gotten worse. And more surreal. From the WaPo [my emphases]:

This summer, Marty the Magician got a letter from the U.S. government. It began with six ominous words: “Dear Members of Our Regulated Community .?.?.”

Washington had questions about his rabbit. Again.

Marty Hahne, 54, does magic shows for kids in southern Missouri. For his big finale, he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Or out of a picnic basket. Or out of a tiny library, if he’s doing his routine about reading being magical.

To do that, Hahne has an official U.S. government license. Not for the magic. For the rabbit.

The Agriculture Department requires it, citing a decades-old law that was intended to regulate zoos and circuses. Today, the USDA also uses it to regulate much smaller “animal exhibitors,” even the humble one-bunny magician.

That was what the letter was about. The government had a new rule. To keep his rabbit license, Hahne needed to write a rabbit disaster plan.

“Fire. Flood. Tornado. Air conditioning going out. Ice storm. Power failures,” Hahne said, listing a few of the calamities for which he needed a plan to save the rabbit.

[…]  Late Tuesday, after a Washington Post article on Hahne was posted online, the Agriculture Department announced that the disaster-plan rule would be reexamined.

“Secretary [Tom] Vilsack asked that this be reviewed immediately and common sense be applied,” department spokeswoman Courtney Rowe said in an e-mail message.

Rowe said that Vilsack had ordered the review “earlier this week.” But it was not announced until 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Just hours before — at 5:50 p.m. — the department had been vigorously defending the rule, with another spokeswoman praising its “flexibility,” saying it was designed to accommodate even a small-time operation such as a magician and a rabbit. 

[…]

“Our country’s broke,” Hahne said. “And yet they have money and time to harass somebody about a rabbit.”

[…]

[Hahne, a 27-year veteran of magic] has experienced most of the troubles a magician can expect: overexcited kids who wet themselves after he brought them onstage. A shipboard drunk who threw up on his props. A rabbit so mean it growled.

But he did not expect the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“She said, ‘Show me your license.’ And I said, ‘License for .?.?.?’ ?” Hahne recounted. This was after a 2005 show at a library in Monett, Mo. Among the crowd of parents and kids, there was a woman with a badge. A USDA inspector. “She said, ‘For your rabbit.’?”

Hahne was busted. He had to get a license or lose the rabbit. He got the license. […]

The story behind it illustrates the reality of how American laws get made. First Congress passes a bill, laying out the broad strokes. Then bureaucrats write regulations to execute those intentions.

And then, often, they keep on writing them. And writing them.

In this case, the long road to regulated rabbits began in 1965 — when Capitol Hill was captivated with the story of a dognapped Dalmatian named Pepper.

The dog had been stolen from its family, used in medical research and killed. After an outcry, Congress passed a law that required licenses for laboratories that use dogs and cats in research.

In 1970, Congress passed an amendment that extended the law’s reach. It now covered a variety of other animals. And it covered animal “exhibitors,” in addition to labs. At the time, legislators seemed focused on large facilities with lots of animals: “circuses, zoos, carnivals, roadshows and wholesale pet dealers,” said then-Rep. Tom Foley (D-Wash.), a major backer and later speaker of the House.

But the letter of the law was broad. In theory, it could apply to someone who “exhibited” any animals as part of a show.

Apparently, it does.

Hahne has an official USDA license, No. 43-C-0269, for Casey — a three-pound Netherland dwarf rabbit with a look of near-fatal boredom. The rules require Hahne to pay $40 a year, take Casey to the vet and submit to surprise inspections of his home.

Also, if Hahne plans to take the rabbit out of town for an extended period, he must submit an itinerary to the USDA. The 1966 law that started all of this was four pages long. Now, the USDA has 14 pages of regulations just for rabbits.

But not all rabbits. Animals raised for meat are exempt from these rules.

“You’re telling me I can kill the rabbit right in front of you,” Hahne says he asked an inspector, “but I can’t take it across the street to the birthday party” without a license? Also, the law applies only to warmblooded animals. If Hahne were pulling an iguana out of his hat — no license required.

Now, he needs both a license and a disaster plan.

This new rule was first proposed by the USDA in 2006 under President George W. Bush.

— which of course doesn’t mean anything. The bureaucracies, as I indicated upfront, act largely on their own.  The mention of Bush here?  Completely superfluous, unless someone wants to trace back connections between those who wrote the rules, and orders from higher ups to do so, and to specifically target magicians and bunnies overs, say, PETA slaughter facilities for unwanted pets.

Its inspiration was Hurricane Katrina, in which animals from pet dogs to cattle to lab mice were abandoned in the chaos. Now, all licensed exhibitors would need to have a written plan to save their animals.

The government asked for public comments in 2008. It got 997. Just 50 commenters were in favor of the rule as written.

But that, apparently, was enough. After a years-long process, the rule took effect Jan. 30.

[…] late Tuesday, the USDA announced that it will reexamine this rule that it had spent so many years crafting.

“As soon as this issue was brought to Secretary Vilsack’s attention, he asked for it to be reviewed,” said Rowe, the other department spokeswoman.

The department said its review will focus on the way the disaster-plan rule is being applied to small operations such as Hahne’s. But officials could not provide details about what the review will involve. Or how long it will take.

For now, the law still says plans are supposed to be done by July 29.

[…]

[…] has obtained professional help. Kim Morgan, who has written disaster plans for entire federal agencies, heard about his case and volunteered to help write the rabbit’s plan for free.

So far, the plan she has written is 28 pages.

“That’s pretty short,” given what the USDA asked for, Morgan said. She covered many of the suggested calamities: chemical leaks, floods, tornadoes, heat waves. But she was able to skip over some concerns that might apply to larger animals.

If the rabbit escapes, “it’s not going to bite people,” Morgan said. There was probably no need to describe how to subdue Casey with tranquilizer darts or coax her off the highway. “It’s not going to stop traffic and cause car accidents.”

When Hahne’s plan is finally ready, it will go into the envelope where he keeps his rabbit license. On one recent day, that envelope was on the dashboard, as Hahne drove to a gig at Little Angels Learning Academy in Battlefield, Mo. Casey was in the back, inside a travel cage. On the side were ­USDA-mandated stickers, to show which direction was up.

“Do you want to see a magical place right now?” Hahne later asked the preschoolers, building up to his big finish. “It says, ‘Library.’ Everybody say, ‘Library!’?”

Hahne had already done his warm-up tricks: The wand that magically falls apart. The wristbands that link themselves together. The picture that turns from black-and-white to color. It was time for the finale. He had brought out a box labeled “Library,” one of the 14 tricks that he uses to make a rabbit appear.

The box appeared empty. Of course. Then Hahne opened a hidden compartment.

And there — magically — was Casey.

“Bunny!” The children squealed and pointed. The rabbit hopped, looking slightly less bored than usual.

After the show, Hahne put Casey back in her case and drove home. His wife, Brenda, asked how it went. He told her there’d been no disasters.

“The show went well,” he said. “Nobody peed onstage.”

This is harassment by government.  Unelected, faceless, bureaucratic governmental agencies and scolds who justify their public sector pay and benefits and pensions by “doing something” — which means create ever new regulations  for compliance, no matter how ridiculous or overbroad they seem when written, or how ridiculous and narrowly targeted they are when administered.

We are treated as children. And the nannystate bureaucracies — consisting of faceless, unelected petty tyrants with cushy gigs that transcend electoral politics — assume the role of our betters, nudging us, by fiat, penalty, threat, or possibly even the promise of jail time, to act as they demand. However silly, expensive, and outright stupid.

Now, this would seem to be a story, posted in a liberal paper, that nearly everyone could read and come away shaking their heads.  But not so, as this first comment illustrates:

Lots of sneering, here, at “faceless bureaucrats” who write senseless regulations that take legislation too far. The things is, if there is a problem — and there’s always a problem, because there’s always something unlikely that common sense dictates is a waste of effort to worry about — then Inspector Generals and Congress go looking for a faceless bureaucrat to scapegoat. If Congress wants limits on how far to pursue the logical consequences of legislation, then Congress needs to write those limits. It is the job of the “faceless bureaucrats” to enact the dictates of Congress, whether clever or stupid. If Congress doesn’t like the outcome, then Congress possesses the power to change the law.

Circling back, this assumes that Congress writes all bureaucratic regulations or passes them into law.  Which isn’t the case. What Congress has done is granted the Executive authority to create these federal departments, which essentially have been given congressional permission to take over a role that was delegated to the Congress.  And they do so with largely no oversight.  Congress could defund the agencies, but the fact is, compliance costs bring in a ton of revenue for the federal government, something professional politicians in both parties quite enjoy bathing in.

Again, this all seems unconstitutional on its face, but then, we’ve long ago figured out clever ways to get around such problems using the “Living Constitution” and textualist premises to write new law from existing intended law — calling those revisions “interpretation” when in fact they are nothing of the sort.

Which is why one of the things that we need to do, to take back our representative republican system, is neuter the federal bureaucratic agencies — and insist that Congress take back the responsibility the Constitution granted it.  Further, such responsibilities would have the happy effect of keeping the dealmakers busy from concentrating all their efforts on the political chess match of positioning and crafting rhetoric intended to push laws expanding their own power while lying to the American electorate about the content of those pieces of legislation.

So while Mike Lee’s plan to defund ObamaCare while funding the rest of the government is a strong one — which is why so many Establishment GOP relics have rushed out to denounce it — a further provision, if not for now but for later on, would be to significantly slash funding for these agencies.

Because for every speech Nancy Pelosi then gives about the GOP being against clean air or bunnies, conservatives can point to the fact that they aren’t against clean air or animals, but rather, they don’t think human exhalation is a carcinogen that can be manipulated by the federal government, nor that a magician’s rabbit requires licensing and an emergency plan in the case of a natural disaster.

If a flash flood forces you to choose between saving your rabbit or one of your children, you are legally required to save your rabbit. Or your mice.  Or your ferrets.

Which, come to think of it, may just be a backdoor way to introduce 30-50 trimester abortions….

(h/t nr)

 

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