Monday, August 06, 2007

JOHN MCCAIN

McCain on Property Rights, and an Anti-Transportation Pork Idea With Teeth

In a little less than an hour, Sen. John McCain will be addressing the Cedar Rapids Rotary Club on an issue that I'm surprised hasn't gotten more attention on the campaign trail - government assaults on property rights and legislative efforts to mitigate the atrocious Kelo vs. New London Supreme Court decision. A preview:

The Kelo decision gives any government entity the ability to take a person's property and give it to a developer. It represents one of the most alarming reductions of freedom in our lifetimes. An editorial from the Telegraph Herald in Dubuque put it best: "If creating new tax revenue is considered an applicable public use, homeowners' rights become vastly unstable. Almost any development could create greater tax revenue than a single home or two." Your home, as the saying goes, is your castle; it is not supposed to be the site of a new shopping mall unless you say so. And Susette Kelo did not say so. And by ignoring her right to do so, by reducing her freedom, the Court also revealed an astonishing lack of respect for the efficiency and fairness of free markets.

On a somewhat related note, Ace of Spades has proposed an idea that you have to think would be right up McCain's alley. We're all unnerved by a bridge that looked safe to layman's eyes collapsing without warning, and many of us have had it up to our keister with members of Congress playing civil engineer and deciding which roads and bridges get federal dollars first. So during Congress' recess, why not push a bill to ignore all transportation pork in favor of highway and bridge repairs?

Ace suggests there might some good publicity/shame value in this, as during the recess there are a bunch of Congressional correspondents looking for a story.

I realize it's not really transportation pork, but I wonder if Nancy Pelosi's earmark for a new biowarfare agent would be a good place to start. No, I'm not making that up.

Some companies stand to gain from Pelosi's earmarks. The California Democrat has won funding for six companies in a 2008 defense funding measure. One is a $4 million request to develop a ``novel viral biowarfare agent'' for Prosetta Corp., based in her San Francisco district. Tom Higgins, the company's chief executive officer, says he talked to the Speaker's staff directly rather than hiring a lobbyist and hasn't given money to her campaign. ``We're just a little company,'' he says.

Dear lefties, if I'm a bit weirded out by U.S. research into new viral biowarfare agents, how do you guys feel about the House Speaker giving it a little handout?

08/06 11:42 AMShare