The federal government is great at bothering the American people with a never ending barrage of laws, rules and regulations. Yet, they cannot seem to take responsibility for anything, no matter how much they mess up.

This year alone, due to a mishmash of very stupid environmental laws and regulations, the federal government is responsible for allowing over 6.2-million acres (9,688 square miles) of good timber to burn. That's about double the annual average and this is still just August.

The federal government took possession, unconstitutionally, of 196 million acres (over 306,000 square miles, total -- for comparison, the State of Texas is 267,277 square miles) of forest land. Little of it is cared for properly. Environmentalists, and their backroom socialist controllers, seem to like it that way.

The greenies say they want to protect the habitat of every little critter, but it is quite obvious that must not be their goal. These green radicals demonstrate a very warped view of mans' relationship with nature by saying they want to protect the wild critters, then allowing them to be roasted to death.

Clearly, if the federal government owns some property, they have a duty to maintain it -- at least to a level where the neighbors will not be bothered if there is a fire on the federal land. To not do so falls in the willful negligence column.

Westerners understandably resent the federal government's "hands off" policy toward managing forests. President Bush shares their frustration. "We haven't had a strategy to clear the forest floor of built-up brush and densely-packed trees that we have seen first-hand, here and in other places around the country," Bush said.

"It is absolutely critical that, on a bipartisan basis, we move aggressively with a fuels reduction program to end this devastation," agreed Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.

What helped to get things moving politically was a move by the Senate Majority leader, Tom Daschle (D-SD), to bypass federal regulations and allow a forest-thinning program in the fire-plagued Black Hills area of his state.

According to the Rapid City Journal: "Once one of the most productive timber states in the country, environmental appeals and the spotted owl controversy has reduced Oregon's federal timber harvests by almost 90 percent. According to Oregon Department of Forestry data, total state timber harvests in 1987 were 8 billion board feet, with 3.42 billion board feet from U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land. In 2001, timber harvests from federal lands were 400 million board feet, a drop of 88.3 percent."(1)

The Biscuit fire in southwestern Oregon passed the 500,000-acre mark last week as firefighters closed in on containment. About 17,000 people in the Illinois Valley were threatened. The fire has cost $108.8 million to fight so far. So far, about $300 million has been spent to fight wildfires in Oregon just this summer.

Because of stupid legal games by groups like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, it's against the law to cut that wood. So, it burns. That's negligence personified.

President Bush visited Oregon recently to personally view the destruction.

While in Oregon, Bush seized the opportunity to call for a more aggressive logging policy. "It's not a Republican idea. It's not a Democratic idea. It's an American idea to preserve our forests," Bush said.

As President Bush spoke, Oregon's Biscuit fire had reached 490,000 acres -- an area two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. How many spotted owls were cooked alive? How many deer? How many jobs would those trees have provided? How many homes?

Commenting on the law Daschle hid in a bill he knew would pass, Bush said: "My attitude is, if it's good enough for South Dakota, it's good enough for Oregon."

Of course, the crazy environmentalists protested and complained. They would rather see the trees burn than be cut and provide jobs. "What he wants to do is finance this program by doing clear-cuts in old growth, and that is not what America wants," said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).

"What the critics need to do is come and see first-hand the effect of bad forest policy," responded the President. "While visiting the west coast this week, I saw the destructive effects of one of the worst wildfire seasons in history," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "As we work to put out the fires and bring relief to their victims, we also have a responsibility to prevent the devastation that can be caused by future fires," he added.

According to the Oct. 24 Wall Street Journal: "The East Coast environmental crowd lost no time denouncing these ideas, trotting out the same, weary charge that they are a Trojan Horse for logging. That's easy to do when you live in Bethesda and Manhattan. Noticeably silent, however, were Western Democrats. With six million acres already burned, 2,000 buildings in ashes, 20 firefighters dead and an election coming, not even card-carrying liberals want to tout the green policies that created the dry tinder for this fire season."

There should be some clear-cutting. That is obvious. We used to call those areas between the woodlands meadows. That's where the roads were built and that's where the forest fires would stop. Quite a concept, that meadow thing. Useful, too. Proper forest management should include many wide, treeless meadows.

1. http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/August/24-1675-opin01.txt

Back in the depression era, FDR claimed that he could get the nation's economy moving again if only he had extended powers over farming, business and industry, like his buddy Stalin had. To that end, the Roosevelt administration designed a complete regulatory bureaucracy, with each agency to be controlled by little politburos and the politburos, in turn, overseen by a dictator in the White House.

The problem was, the whole scheme was totally and completely unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court told the administration exactly that. So, FDR attacked the U.S. Supreme Court, threatening court packing and other unheard of arrangements to mitigate the Court's checks and balances.

Ultimately, Roosevelt won. Our Constitution suffered and the federal government has never been a Constitutional government since.

Today, there are at least 113 federal regulatory agencies passing laws they call -- with a wink and a nod -- rules and regulations. These rules and regulations affect everything the American people do and their hidden costs (hidden tax) are more expensive to most taxpayers than all other federal taxes combined.

For instance, according to the Cato Institute in a report by Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr. titled, "Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State," federal regulations cost the American people about $854-billion annually.(1) That amounts to a hidden tax of 8.4% of the U.S. gross national product annually. Put another way, the cost amounts to an average hidden tax bill of, on average, $7,490 per American taxpayer annually.

Every new federal regulation costs us more money. Congress is being a little more careful about staying out of the tax and spend mode lately, so the task is performed stealthily. Instead of funding a program on the budget, Congress simply requires state and local governments, or industry, to do it. Nevertheless, we get the bill, just as if it were a direct tax.

Regulatory agencies, of course, are totally unaccountable to voters. It shows, too. In the fiscal 2001 year, congress passed 108 bills that were signed into law. The regulatory agencies, however, wrote 4,132 rules (laws) that were inflicted on the American people. This is, of course, taxation without representation. Worse yet, it is also government without representation.

Think about that last remark: "government without representation." Not one of us, or even our representatives in government, voted for even one of the many thousands of rule-making bureaucrats. Not even one.

The very first sentence of the body of our Constitution implies that Congress shall make all law. Yet, there is a lawmaking ratio between the regulatory agencies and Congress of nearly forty to one!

So, when we ask where the inflation is coming from, we should look directly to government. The federal regulatory bureaucracy has written many controlling regulations for every product sold. Which means, every product sold in the United States costs the consumer more money because of these busy-body regulation rangers in the unconstitutional regulatory agencies. Congress knows this. But, evidently, they just do not care.

As Cato reports: In 1998, the median two-earner family's after-tax income of $41,846 contained $7,410 in hidden regulatory costs -- thus eating up about 18 percent of the after-tax family budget.

That equates to a lot more every year than most people pay out in house payments and food combined.

Here in the United States, the regulatory costs alone are more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of Mexico or Canada. Just the annual budgets for these regulatory agencies cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

So, when we look for the reason for the cost of living increase (inflation) every year, look to Washington. Congress is the direct cause of most of it because Congress allows the regulatory agencies to exist and function autonomously. It is time that unconstitutional scam ended.

1. http://www.cato.org/tech/pubs/10kc_2002.pdf

It was a grand affair. The dinner was fitting of the potentates, perfumed princes, government leaders, and the other insecure third-world riffraff who attended. Participants dined on the finest fillet steaks, expertly prepared lobster and oysters, among other rich delicacies. No expense was spared for these captains of failed governments.

They were there, after all, to celebrate poverty and starvation around the world.

Oh, sure, this was the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa and they say they were meeting to fight famine. Yet, just down the road from that fancy dinner live many of the poorest people in the world. Next to all this opulence, the people live in shacks, drink dirty water and have to scrounge for food. Yet, not one delegate from this UN conference bothered to take even one small child a glass of clean water, let alone some food.

In an opening speech to the Earth Summit last Monday, South African President Thabo Mbeki described the Earth as a village divided by a river into districts of want and wealth, while its environment steadily sickened. He should know, too. All he need do to see the want is have his chauffeur drive his limousine down the road a little. Someone might want to ask him how he can run such a wealthy nation and not correct the rampant starvation.

"Poverty, underdevelopment, inequality within and among countries, together with the worsening global ecological crisis, sum up the dark shadow under which most of the world lives," he said. Then he added: "For the first time in human history, human society possesses the capacity, the knowledge and the resources to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment."

Note that Mbeki did not mention the root-mean cause of poverty: corrupt governments. But, nevermind.

In Rome, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the 13 million people facing starvation in southern Africa were threatened by donor fatigue. It reported that aid pledged by donor countries adds up to less than a quarter of the 507 million dollars needed to feed people in the region until the next major harvest in April.

So, with 60,000 delegates at the meeting, why were there no do-gooder caravans out to deliver food to the starving of the area? That's easy:

Like American Democrats, that stuff is not their real agenda. Fighting rampant poverty and starvation is but their excuse. Their real agenda is to acquire more personal wealth -- and yet more power over the people.

And, just where can these third world nation's leaders get the money necessary to pad their personal bank accounts and pacify more people so as to exert stronger control? From the wealthy nations, of course. They cannot, after all, be expected to set up programs at home to actually "earn" the coveted wealth. That would take effort.

Are they too ignorant, too stupid or just have no self determination? Probably just too corrupt.

Africa could and should be the breadbasket of the world. Yet, it is the poorest continent on Earth. They kicked out most of those who produced. Now, they are hungry.

Ah yes, there was great theater at the meeting. Delegates were even outwardly wearing their anger -- with campaign buttons that read, "What should we do with the United States?" Strong demands for more Western money were heard -- not requested, but demanded, like we owe them.

Thousands of activists are using the summit to further their causes, some even threatening extreme violence like they tried in Seattle, Washington.

The green activists thumped their chests to attract attention and angrily stated that the summit is turning into a spectacle of empty rhetoric. They say that rich countries are cooking up deals that would dilute pledges to open their markets to goods from poorer countries. "Key negotiations in Johannesburg are in danger of being stitched up by a controversial deal struck between US trade officials and trade mandarins in the EU Commission," a spokesman for the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund told reporters.

We see a great opportunity for both governments and activists here: Take all those environmental whackos out to the jungle they so want to preserve and drop them off.

Anyway . . . the Bush administration said it wants to stress public-private development partnerships. And, they are using our money to get that rolling. As a typical American response, Powell took along a $5-billion aid package that uses partnerships to set "results-oriented goals," rather than artificial time frames for achieving changes.

Which means, every American taxpayer will pony up an average of about $40 to feed people who already live in what should be the world's most productive breadbasket -- and is rich in minerals like diamonds, gold and silver, among other things.

From where we sit, giving them aid seems a lot like suborning corruption.

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