This is a column I wrote 17 years ago, (April 7, 1995), but it’s still true!
Imagine an America without the ability to own and control your own home, farm, factory, or business. America, without private property, would be abysmal. In no place on earth, is the ability to own, buy, sell, and control your own property, as widely used, accepted, and expected, than in America. Without private property, we wouldn’t be able to call ourselves free. Yet, private property rights are unconstitutionally being taken from us every day, and no one seems to be able to stop it.
While various zoning laws and ordinances have arisen over the years in municipalities, and even in counties, no state has ever dared to dictate what a person can do with the property they bought and own, as long as its use offends no one, or creates no hazard. If a state tried to make a law dictating what property owners may do with their land or buildings on a statewide basis, that legislature would probably be recalled immediately.
We now have federal zoning, and the citizenry seems to sit still for it, in spite of the total outrage it should arouse. In my dictionary, the word ’wetland’ does not exist. It is a word invented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). What that federal bureaucracy calls a ’wetland,’ we used to call a swamp, and it was certainly not desirable. Today, a ’wetland’ designation, can be anything from a mud puddle, a soil depression, an old fashioned swamp, or virtually anything a bureaucrat may decide. The EPA (one of America’s most detested bureaucracies, started by a Republican President), has decided, with no Congressional approval and mass citizen outrage, that swamps and mud puddles are of the utmost importance to America. The EPA’s federal policemen, can with impunity, stop construction, stop landfills, and destroy the value of any piece of property they choose, and without any recourse by the property owner. The hapless citizen can be fined tens of thousands of dollars, thrown into jail, and lose their property, if they disobey ’wetland’ regulations, even if they have never heard of the EPA. A truckload of gravel can land you in the slammer.
The EPA’s thousands of pages of regulations were not passed by a vote of the Congress, and the Constitution has no provision for ’regulations,’ as opposed to laws passed by a majority of the House of Representatives, Senate, and signed by the President. Article 4, Section 3, says that Congress may make rules and regulations respecting the “territory or other Property belonging to the United States;” but certainly not the right to make rules concerning the individual states. If the Congress cannot do this, how can a bureaucracy make thousands of rules and regulations for the states, and still obey the Constitution?
The EPA and its hoards of power mad bureaucrats, are out of bounds, as is any agency, if it makes rules and regulations which were not voted upon by both houses of Congress, and signed into law by the President. We are supposed to be a nation of LAWS, not rules and regulations, and most assuredly not at the federal level. The Constitution, which all Senators, Representatives, and the President take an oath to uphold, does not allow the federal government, and its highly paid lackeys, free reign over us citizens. Federal bureaucrats write regulations, enforce them, and act as jury and judge against us citizens, for violations of their millions of rules and regulations. The entire process has no basis in our Constitution, and is a total outrage.
Our right to control, own, buy, sell, and use property, with no interference from the federal government, has been violated millions of times, and at a cost of trillions. When will politicians stop this wholesale violation of rights and our sacred Constitution? ’Wetland’ regulations (swamps, mud puddles, land depressions, etc.), plus thousands of other EPA rules and regulations concerning every facet of our lives, is just a small smattering of an out of control federal government. The Tenth Amendment to our Constitution, gives the individual states the right to do what is not delegated to the federal government, and endless regulations controlling our life and property, is not in the domain of Washington D.C. If a state wishes to control mud puddles, land depressions, or anything else, that is the state’s prerogative, not D.C. drones on the federal payroll. There are hundreds of federal bureaucracies which should be immediately abolished. Why can’t Mitt wake up and show some spirit?
From the August 26, 1899 Gladstone Kibosh: “Jesse Stone, having heard of a wonderful card reader bought a new deck from Mason & Mason, and walked down to Silverton yesterday. The different things he wished to inform himself on, were: Love and marriage; lost love restored, and where in hell had he lost his reputation. He came back last night, and will start a 17,000 foot tunnel next week, at the base of Hurricane Peak, having been told that at that depth, he would encounter gold.”