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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Once more into the FairTax fray
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I doubt much will come of it, but this afternoon Neal Boortz and I will join a handful of others, including perhaps John Linder, in a roundtable discussion of the FairTax, moderated by Rick Sanchez of CNN.
As I understand it, CNN plans to tape and edit the discussion as part of a segment on the FairTax to be broadcast either this weekend or next. As I’ve written in the past, debating the FairTax is like debating the merits of tabletop nuclear fusion — it’s all theoretical, because in real life neither idea is going anywhere. In other words, it’s a waste of time.
However, the chance to sit across from Boortz to talk about it has drawn me back into the fray one last time. I’ll let you know if I get any more information on when the results will be broadcast. I doubt the final show will feature more than selected soundbites from this discussion, but who knows?
UPDATE: Just got back into the office. The discussion seemed to go well, but who knows. It’s hard to gauge while you’re in the midst of battle, so to speak.
The debate was civil, informed, and maybe entertaining. The CNN folks confirmed that edited segments will be broadcast this weekend or next, and that the whole thing will be posted to their website, which is great. When that happens, I’ll post a thread with a link to allow discussion here.
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Bush White House ignores another law
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even though the Bush administration dislikes the 1973 Endangered Species Act, it has made no serious effort to rewrite the popular law in Congress. Instead, it has tried to achieve its goal by simply refusing to enforce the legislation.
So when government scientists decided that proposed projects had to be altered or stopped to protect an endangered species, administration officials would simply rewrite the scientific findings, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office found.
Federal courts have reached a similar conclusion. By one recent count, 78 cases have been filed, heard and settled in federal court since January 2001, claiming that the Bush administration had failed to abide by the Endangered Species Act. The administration has lost 77 of those cases, many heard by judges appointed by Republican presidents.
Now the administration is trying another means of gutting the law. It has proposed a rule change — “a narrow regulatory change,” Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne calls it — that would strip government scientists of their role in reviewing federal projects for their impact on protected animals, birds, fish and reptiles.
If the change is implemented, federal agencies that propose projects would also determine whether those projects might endanger species protected by law. The concept of independent review by biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service — a core concept of the Endangered Species Act since its passage — would disappear.
Kempthorne claims the change is being made in the name of efficiency. He has a point. If no government scientists review proposed federal projects, political appointees won’t have to spend time and effort twisting the results of those reviews, and federal courts won’t have to spend weeks of court time overturning decisions. But that’s not how the law was designed to work.
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