Posts Tagged → law
When minutes count, justice is only days away
Harrisburg City candidate for mayor, Nevin Mindlin, has waited since yesterday morning for a judicial holding. He’s waiting to find out if the integrity of Pennsylvania’s electoral law is best represented by redundant, arcane, unnecessary, petty requirements, or if those artificial things matter more than letting otherwise qualified candidates run for office.
Every hour that Mindlin waits, his campaign weakens a little. Every hour he waits is filled with doubt, supporters increasingly worn down by anxiety. It’s all a calculated wait, if you ask me. Sadly, Dauphin County is occasionally home to a highly politicized judiciary.
Sitting in the court room yesterday, I heard nothing to convince me that our citizens are served by a slavish adherence to confusing election laws. Over the past several years other judges around Pennsylvania have struck down or bypassed certain election law requirements, like petition circulators living in the same political district as the candidate. Their holdings excoriate the law, questioning how and why these requirements were invented.
Hopefully, Judge Bernie Coates is above the political fray. Hopefully, he looks to other judges who have recently held that representative democracy is best served by transparency and simple processes. Hopefully, the judge recognizes that Mindlin acted in good faith, in keeping with advice from county election staff, and reasonably. And hopefully the judge will himself act reasonably, and toss out this silly waste of time, and let Mindlin run for office.
Do you believe in your private property rights?
Isn’t it intriguing that the establishment wings of both the Democrats and the Republicans believe that your private property rights are actually theirs?
Several weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party took a position on natural gas drilling in deep shales, saying that a moratorium on “fracking” is needed. That adds up to the government taking away from you the right and ability to develop a resource on your property, without compensating you and without demonstrating good cause.
When I inquired of a bewildered Democratic operative whether or not the proposed fracking moratorium would include nitrogen, or be limited to just water, he said “I don’t know, I don’t know. I cannot believe they did this. It makes no sense.” To be sure, it’s an indefensible and politically suicidal position. Unsurprisingly, I don’t believe any of the Democrat gubernatorial candidates have adopted this fatally flawed position.
This week, Republican Governor Tom Corbett signed into law a bill that, aside from two deadly sentences, was an otherwise fine solution to a lot of outstanding, unresolved problems associated with deep gas extraction.
Two deadly sentences are an issue, however, because they basically strip landowners\ oil, gas and mineral owners of their ability to negotiate new leases when the prior one has ended. The new law is a theft from you and a gift to a select industry. Gas is a good and necessary industry, for sure, but no more deserving of a free ride on someone else’s dime than you or I.
The arguments made in favor of what I would call ‘forced apportionment’ were ridiculous and laughable, except that so many private property rights have just been in effect taken and handed over to industry, so it is not funny. Apportionment is a term never used before in Pennsylvania OGM, and the 11th-hour two-sentence amendment to the bill lacks a definition of it. Surprise, surprise.
The worst argument is that by being forced into a “pool” of landowners, basically a fragmented production unit, this new law is guaranteeing that landowners will get paid (!). The state minimum payment, by the way. Never mind that you are due that payment already, and you’d prefer to renegotiate an expired lease on your own, thank you very much.
My sense is that these two sentences could cost Governor Tom Corbett his governorship and several lawmakers their seats. State representative Garth Everett and state senator Gene Yaw were the sponsors of the two sentences. Both are from Lycoming County, a place where private property rights are still held dearly and natural gas is plentiful.
How sad that the establishment wing of the Republican Party is so close to the Democrats that they adopt policies that are practically the same….
Next up, the courts will undoubtedly weigh in on this new law. Let’s hope they save the Republicans from themselves.
Your Property Rights: Born, and Maybe Dead, on the Fourth of July
Your Private Property Rights: Born, and Possibly Died, on the Fourth of July
July 4, 2013
By Josh First
One hundred and fifty years ago today, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, America’s most hallowed ground was established. Over fifty thousand casualties among both Union and Confederate forces resulted from fierce acts of bravery and heroism on both sides over just a few days, including Pickett’s famous last-ditch assault on the Union center, into the teeth of point-blank cannon fire, canister, and grape shot.
The ferocious hand-to-hand fighting along Pickett’s front established the “high water mark” of the Confederacy, and produced the most focused military effort to date by the Union, the success of which gave impetus to the North’s final push to end a malingering war. To make those sacrifices and take those personal risks, you’ve got to really believe in something, a truth summed up brilliantly in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The fact that the battle culminated on Independence Day was not lost on either side.
Ten years ago, I had the honor of purchasing the last outstanding parcel of land on which Pickett’s Charge occurred, at the far eastern end of the field, where the Ohio 8th Regiment was dug in. Over the prior 19 years, the National Park Service had unsuccessfully pursued the “Home Sweet Home” motel, a 1950s-era no-tell hotel on two acres there. It paved over a hasty trench and a temporary field hospital where men from both armies had been treated, before archaeology became vogue.
By 2004, the motel and its blacktop were themselves things of the past, the site archaeology was done, and the final resting place of so many distinguished soldiers was returned to serene grass. It was one of the high points of my career, and I worked so hard on it because, like other Americans who visit Gettysburg, read the Gettysburg Address, and understand Gettysburg’s role, its meaning inspired me. Preserving the Union meant continuing and expanding the American dream. Protecting the Home Sweet Home site meant preserving Gettysburg’s symbolism, protecting that hallowed ground, and enshrining the American Dream of opportunity for all.
One of the most inspiring aspects of America, and core to the American Dream, is the universal concept of private property rights. Because of America’s unique private property rights system, generations of immigrants have moved across mountains and oceans to become Americans, toil hard, and take risks and make sacrifices to improve their standard of living. For hundreds of years, anyone who was willing to work hard could use their private property rights to shelter and feed their family, purchase an education for their children, and build equity for the day when their hands and back might no longer be able to physically toil.
But here in Pennsylvania, just days ago and, oddly, just days before Independence Day, the state legislature passed a two-sentence bill gutting the private property rights of landowners who have leased their land for oil and gas exploration. It was a shameful thing to do, and it is an echo of the midnight legislative pay-raise that cost so many incumbents their seats a few years ago. It is the shady act of some self- anointed few to enrich their political friends, at the huge cost of Pennsylvania’s private landowners.
As I understand it, Governor Tom Corbett is weighing whether or not to sign it into law. I hope he does not sign it. To enact such a law flies in the face of everything that is American. It is against everything that Independence Day stands for. It is against everything that the men at Gettysburg fought and died for, and against everything that America’s Founding Fathers and brave patriots fought for in 1776.
I wish you a happy Independence Day today, and in its spirit I ask that you call your state legislators, and ask them if they voted for this un-American oil and gas bill. If they did, vote them out of office, and show them that the Spirit of 1776 still stands strong. You deserve better, I deserve better, America deserves better.
Join our conversation at www.joshfirst.com or on our Facebook page, Josh First for PA Senate
No Empty Words, Please
Talking with a gun-owning Democrat friend and then a gun-owning Republican friend on Friday, the subject in both phone calls centered on just how far this anti-Second Amendment effort is aimed.
My Democrat friend said that the Democrats don’t really want all of our guns and that they are already backing away from many of their toughest positions staked out two to three weeks ago. My Republican friend said not to count on the many non-voting gun owners for political support or actual resistance. Why, he asked, would a guy who has never voted in his life, freeloaded off the NRA and his local gun club to stand up for his interests, and rarely does anything for his community suddenly get politically active now? And just how far will that same guy go to resist unconstitutional gun bans and door-to-door confiscation?
Interesting stuff. A year ago this was the purview of the far right and conspiracy theorists. Now it is as real as the air that greets your lungs when you awaken in bed in the morning. And these two guys are both wrong.
First, I am convinced that most Democrats want every single gun taken away from private citizens. For example, a few years ago a local congressman, Joe Hoeffel (SP?), wrote legislation to aggressively control muzzleloading guns. You know, the kinds of guns your great-great-grandfather used in the Civil War and which pose their greatest threat to toes when these heavy art pieces are dropped from the unsuspecting hands that have foolishly removed them from their ancient mountings above the fireplace. Not exactly a public threat. But lots of people react against that greatest symbol of American freedom, and in fact, Congressman Hoeffel had plenty of support.
Second, I am convinced that my Republican friend is wrong, because I grew up in an extremely rural place, where everyone had guns, few people were politically active, and where a healthy suspicion of the government was endemic (and thus, not much time was invested in anything government). A lot of my neighbors, the closest being about half a mile away in any direction, were descended from those Scots-Irish tribesmen who had fled imperial Britain to find enough room to run a still and live unhampered in the 1700s New World. Their anti-government attitudes have always resulted in the toughest fighters, even if that isn’t evident at first or second glance.
Pushed hard enough, they too will be shooting out of their second story windows at government goon squads coming to confiscate their guns. Yes, yes, I know, I sound like a ‘fringe lunatic’ here.
Which brings me back to my Democrat friend. My response to him and to other Democrats who have perhaps foolishly engaged me in discussion about this topic in the past few weeks, including an avowedly liberal reporter from New York City, is this: You are not taking our guns. You’re just not. Anti gun laws have zero to do with crime control, and everything to do with government control.
Most people know me as a passionate conservationist, a birds-n-bunnies guy, a hunter who cares for the green woods, and that’s all true. I am a peaceful guy who just cannot shake certain aspects of my Quaker upbringing, no matter how hard I try. And if I am pushed hard enough, I will meet gun confiscation with armed resistance. Because to do anything else is an abdication of my Constitutional duties.
See, the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to belong to an armed militia. Necessary to a free state, those local, grass roots, citizen-led militias were intended from the founding of our nation to be an active counterbalance to a centralized, national, federal army. Because political rights are only as good as the citizens’ ability to force change or resist tyranny, the Second Amendment is the one right that guarantees all the other rights in the Bill of Rights.
So go ahead, call me a radical, a nut, a whacko, an alarmist. I wear such appellations with pride in times like these. Someone once said something cute, like, extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice; by backing up the Second Amendment, we are backing up the entire Constitution, and if that is a vice in the eyes of a particular political party, then so be it.
I am standing my ground, proud, unwavering, no matter what illegal law is passed in America. I will not abide by it. I will dissent and I will resist. This love of liberty is a so-called vice that many otherwise quiet Americans will join. Trust me. I am an American, and I know.
Sandy Hook
Today’s massacre of small children in their school at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, is an unimaginable horror. My heart and soul go out to the victims and their families. Gun control creates soft targets, and bad/ insane people pay no attention to legal restraints. Regulating guns more will have zero effect on the safety of places like Sandy Hook. It’s a debate for the period after grieving, and as a parent myself you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll argue for maximum protection. Again, the pain I feel about this event is indescribably bad and deep, and I wish I could console the families.