SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Screwed, Blued, and Tattooed It's like using your butt cheeks to play pick-up sticks," Texas State Senator David Sibley of Waco said about tort reform. "No matter what...
...The balanced-budget amendment is bad law for reasons clear even to thirty-four U.S...
...Under the Republican Contract, it do...
...This kind of thing happens all the time at our Lege...
...For a party that supposedly opposes increasing bureaucracy, red tape, and endless legal delays, this is a doozy...
...The lawyers of America will be pleased with it...
...Are the Republicans perchance under the impression that there is some science to risk-assessment/cost-benefit analysis...
...to pass a bad law with herds of helpful citizens right there to point it out at the time...
...No matter what you do, you mess things up...
...It's one thing to have an unintended consequence jump out at you a year or so after a law has been passed: "We did what...
...Since no one bothered to repeal the Law of Unintended Consequences before starting to pass the Contract, we can count on many a legal Waterloo ahead...
...the rest of us will be screwed, blued, and tattooed...
...The Fifth mandates that the government cannot take your property without paying you just compensation...
...Even though I think the Republicans are doing the wrong thing, I'd feel a lot better about it if I thought they actually knew what they were doing.* Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, appears in this space every month...
...This is profound...
...But somehow one expects those elected to represent the common good to be a trifle beyond that...
...The law turns out to be too broad, or too narrow, or some pinheaded bureaucrat interprets it to mean another seventy-seven pages of paperwork for all dairy farmers or septic-tank installers or some other lucky group...
...Oh, boy, call the lawyers, declare an emergency, and name that deadline...
...What's really hilarious is the Republicans' set of "perfecting amendments" to this stinker, which tries to weasel out of the proposal's obviously noxious consequences by providing escape clauses: the amendments propose exceptions for "emergencies" and situations where various kinds of deadlines loom...
...A clearer case of playing pick-up sticks with your butt cheeks I never saw...
...The truth is, very few legislators do...
...Thou shalt not profit by poisoning thy neighbors...
...Most laws are actually written by professionals attached to each legislative body...
...Taking the Fifth" will have a whole new meaning if this becomes law...
...Senators...
...A Texan named Marshall Kuykendall, who leads one of these property-rights-first groups, claims that government regularly violates the "takings clause...
...But perhaps the nuttiest of all is the amplification of the "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment...
...When asked to cite an example, he replied, "Well, when they abolished slavery, they didn't pay anyone for the slave...
...Does the government have to pay you for the cost of doing that...
...Risk and benefit, like beauty, lie in the eye MARK NEWGARDEN of the beholder, or, more accurately, lie with he who provides the data...
...How do you measure what it costs...
...It seems to me what Republicans are finding, after forty years out of power, is that no one on their side knows how to legislate...
...And furthermore, applicable to a great deal of legislation in our time, most notably the Contract with America...
...You must admit, it's a point...
...Suppose you want to build a cyanide plant on your cow pasture, but the government says you can't because cyanide will leach into the creek and poison the drinking water for the cities downstream...
...Many a Texas rancher has failed to grasp this notion: "It's my land and I'll do what I damn well please with it," is a common war cry here...
...It's one thing to pass a law with a consequence no one noticed at the time...
...Is environmental degradation a risk...
...An even more curious notion is the risk-assessment/cost-benefit-analysis section of the Contract with America...
...If the gummint wants a corner of your cow pasture to run a highway over, they have to pay you fair market value for it...
...But the Rs, having staffed their bill-writing office with ideological sympathizers, seem to have lost everyone who knew how to do it...
...The unfunded-mandates law has an underside that ranges from the hideous to the ridiculous...
...What's missing here is the concept of the common good...
...But it takes Newt Gingrich & Co...
...Writing a law so that it will do precisely what it is intended to do, and not do anything else, and writing it so it will continue to have that effect over generations is a rare skill...
...Fair's fair...
...You mean Catholics can't play bingo anymore...
...Does the government have to pay you for the profits you would have made from the cyanide factory...
...But suppose you're a coal company in West Virginia and the government says that after you claw open the Earth and rip the coal out of its belly, you have to restore the land to some extent so it won't float away on a tide of erosion...
Vol. 59 • April 1995 • No. 4
