🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <D0sIqt.L36@truffula.sj.ca.us>,
Cameron L. Spitzer <cls@truffula.sj.ca.us> wrote:
>
>It's important that we enviros not tacitly accept the assumptions
>behind the Wise Use arguments.  One assumption is that environmental
>regulations "cost" property owners.  We should question this
>assumption whenever the bad guys rely on it.  Let's point out,
>to counter, that the WU "takings" argument is in reality a demand 
>for vast government handouts:  The WU folks want the government
>to guarantee *speculative investments*.  Investors in extractive
>industry *gamble* that they will be able to avoid major costs
>associated with their profitable production.  They *speculate* that
>these costs will go undiscovered until they move on.
>Taxpayers shouldn't bear the risk that these high rollers might guess
>wrong and get caught destroying a species or a watershed; sometimes
>gamblers should lose.

Interesting theory, but not what people are complaining about with
these takings.  Land has a certain value based on conditions pre-
vailing at the time.  If that value changes because of the luck of
the market, that's fate, and there's nothing can be done about it.
When that value changes because the _gov't_ invented a new law, that's
a taking, a real, and personal, destruction of wealth, not a potential,
not a "future" - it registers now as a capital loss, and the IRS knows
it.  Ahh - but you don't get any tax write off from that.  Go ahead,
sell your house below what you bought it for and try to get a tax
refund.  But sell it for _more_ than it cost you and the IRS is right
there, hand out.

This is _not_ monopoly money, it is a _real_ monetary loss, and not
just confined to rich people or speculators.  That is _why_ the
_electorate_ kicked the Democrats out.  There weren't enough rich
people to account for that, but everyone has heard and seen the
documented horror stories of poor and middle-class individuals
and the EPA.  This isn't covering Donald Trump's ass.  It's a
hidden tax, like unfunded mandates, it lets the gov't play God
and hides the cost some place where it won't show on the Federal
Budget.
-- 
Larry Smith --- My opinions only.           larrys@zk3.dec.com/larrys@io.com.
pentagon.io.com is Illuminati OnLine, SJ Games, _not_ "the" Pentagon, please.
   Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
   argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.   -- William Pitt, 1763