Politics
The Delta 101: Of Levees, Canals & Whiskey
Nearly four out of five Californians do not know what the Delta is, according to a January 2012 poll. That’s 78 percent of the population. And 86 percent of southern Californians have never heard of it. Yet, 25 million people and 3 million acres of farmland rely on the Delta for at least a portion …
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CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet Takes Over the Yale Law Journal
Along with Dan, I also have a response to the Ewing/Kysar paper at YLJ Online. (For those of your keeping score at home, two out of three commissioned responses were Legal Planet bloggers: we win!). It should surprise no one that while Dan’s is elegant and technical, mine is cranky and dyspeptic. Here’s the abstract: This …
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CONTINUE READINGProds and Pleas/Stopgaps and Failsafes
In a recent article in the Yale Law Journal, Benjamin Ewing and Douglas Kysar discuss how other part of government can step in when Congress defaults on its responsibility to make public policy. Their article, Prods and Pleas: Limited Government in an Era of Unlimited Harm, focuses on the tort litigation involving climate change. Using …
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CONTINUE READINGPlacing a Ceiling on Protection for Public Health
Governor Romney has endorsed an idea called regulatory budgeting, but it really means capping protection for public health. Romney’s position paper explains the concept as follows: To force agencies to limit the costs they are imposing on society, and to provide the certainty that businesses crave, a system of regulatory caps is required. As noted, …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Rick Santorum a Pagan?
All the press coverage over Rick Santorum’s idiotic suggestions that mainline Protestants aren’t Christians, or that President Obama isn’t a Christian, or that prenatal care increases abortion rates, or that people who favor prenatal care favor eugenics, have obscured his equally idiotic attacks on environmentalism: Santorum said that he was referring not to the president’s faith …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Attorney General Steps Up Environmental Enforcement Efforts
A recent development worth noting is California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ increased profile when it comes to environmental enforcement. Harris, the first woman and minority Attorney General in California history, had a busy first year in office. Her razor-thin election win in November 2010 took over a month to be confirmed, delaying her transition from …
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CONTINUE READINGSelf-Reliant Moocher Hypocrites
The Shrill One has an interesting post on “self-reliant moochers,” i.e. those states (and voters) who loudly proclaim their flinty self-reliance and then rely on government transfers. Turns out that conservative states rely much more heavily on government transfers than Blue staters supposedly addicted to the “cradle-to-grave assurance government will always be the solution.” …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy the Right Has Run Out of Ideas
Most policy tools are no longer considered acceptable by many on the Right. If you have no tools to solve a problem, all you can do politically is to insist that the problem does not exist, is really a blessing in disguise, or will be automatically solved by the market and technological progress.
CONTINUE READINGSenator Santorum and the Environmental Chalice of Evil
Here is what Santorum said yesterday (from Politico): “You hear all the time, the left: ‘Oh, the conservatives are the anti-science party.’ No we’re not. We’re the truth party,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at a campaign event in Oklahoma City. “Because the left is always looking for a way to control you. They’re always …
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CONTINUE READINGInsurance Salesmen Should Be Selling The Public On Climate Change
As Dan’s post described, the insurance industry has a major, profit-driven stake in stopping climate change. So given the high risks for these private companies as the Earth bakes, why aren’t they the public face of the need to stop climate change, instead of controversial figures like Al Gore, environmental leaders, and scientists? Wouldn’t the …
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