By Glenn Stehle, an engineer who began working in the oil industry in 1974. He has extensive experience in drilling operations. He retired in 2000 and now lives in Mexico.
“Equal protection” under the law is the best safeguard that the average person enjoys. Remove the law and you remove the protection, and it is every man for himself, and the individual is irrelevant.—Jesse,
The federal government has two very distinct faces it shows the world. There’s the face it shows the BPs, Goldman Sachs and Halliburtons of the world, and then there’s the face it shows those lacking political power—-small and medium businesses and everyday Americans. I recently got a peak at the face the federal government shows ordinary Americans, and it certainly isn’t pretty.
My adventure started last March when I purchased 16 small antique ivory carvings and some other antiques at a public auction house in Portugal. Before buying the ivory objects, and because ivory is covered under the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), I dutifully read and complied with all the laws, regulations and treaties that govern the export and import of antique ivory. I obtained the appropriate CITES permits from the Portuguese government to legally export the pieces (no import permit is required by the U.S.), and they left Portugal without a hitch.
When the carvings reached the port in Houston, Texas, however, my problems began. The CITES permit is required to be attached to the outside of the shipping container, and this seems to be like waving a red flag in front of a bull to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (The Fish and Wildlife Service, along with MMS, are divisions of the Department of the Interior). Before the customs broker could even prepare and submit the required customs declaration, Fish and Wildlife inspector De’Marion McKinney had already inspected the containers and was on the phone telling my customs broker that the shipment must be returned to Portugal. I called McKinney and her objections were that 1) she didn’t like the way the Portuguese government had done the CITES permit and 2) she had found a small antique wooden cross in the shipment that had mother of pearl encrustations. I felt her objections to the Portuguese CITES permit were either unjustified or trivial, and mother of pearl is not an endangered species.
I asked McKinney if I could just ship the ivory and the cross back, allowing the other articles in the shipment to pass, since they were wooden or glass objects and clearly not endangered species. She refused, and so I refused to ship the containers back. To ship the containers back to Portugal and then reship them again to the U.S. would set me back something like $1000 or $1200, and to what end? There is no guarantee that when they made their return trip to the U.S. that the CITES permits would be any more to McKinney’s liking.
Fish and Wildlife immediately seized the shipment, and not just the disputed ivory carvings, but the entire shipment.
I have prepared a list, which can be seen at www.fixgov.blogspot.com , which enumerates and discusses in some detail the laws, regulations, treaties and constitutional rights which I believe Fish and Wildlife violated in order to seize my property. Perhaps the most egregious violation is that antique ivory, which statutorily is defined as being 100 years old or older, falls outside the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife service. And then there’s the issue of due process. U.S. laws and regulations set out in great detail the procedures Fish & Wildlife and the Solicitor must follow in one of these seizure cases. They didn’t do any of that.
A recent article in the New York Times reports how Fish and Wildlife all but gave carte Blanche to deepwater drillers like BP to operate in the Gulf of Mexico. Here’s how the New York Times reporter put it:
The federal agency [Fish and Wildlife Service] charged with protecting endangered species like the brown pelican and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle signed off on the Minerals Management Service’s conclusion that deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no significant risk to wildlife, despite evidence that a spill of even moderate size could be disastrous, according to federal documents.
Now contrast that to how Fish and Wildlife treated me. And then consider what the bottom line is. For while the Interior Department is off on these bunny trails chasing 300 year-old ivory pieces, BP operates with impunity.
I have two options to fight the seizure, either through an administrative process with the Solicitor (of the Interior Department) or in federal court. I am moving to have the case heard in federal Court, because after what’s happened, why would I trust anyone who works for the U.S. Department of the Interior?
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As another bit of anecdata, I saw a comment at MetaFilter about the difference in the EPA’s response to an oil spill on an individual’s property (“remove all of the contaminated soil and pay to have it incinerated”) and the comparatively toothless treatment of BP.
http://www.metafilter.com/94400/BP-killed-the-well-Again#3218814
ndg,
Thanks for the link.
A similar theme emerged in this article from the NY Times.
While blithely rubber stamping anything that the multinational oil companies want, regardless of actual or potential damage, our regulators keep themselves busy with heavy-handed regulation of things that can only be classified as being, in comparison, trivial.
As the NY Times story points out, while BP is spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf, U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants long-haul truckers “to estimate the quantity and value of the chemical residue that clings to the sides and bottoms of reusable tank trailers coming back into the country after being unloaded in Canada or Mexico.” Since 1994, the practice has been to wash out the trailers prior to re-entry into the U.S.
Your state of federal government intervention to protect citizens is going to be as good as the local office and as bad as the connections the polluting parties have to their superiors or the superiors of their superiors. Consultants or other corporate hitment will then be paid to grossly underestimate the costs of cleanup and potential environmental damage. Then lawyers are going to take up 33% of cleanup fees at $500.00 an hour to settle the case between PRPs and the Government.
Well of course we treat BP differently from somebody importing ivory. BP, like it or not, is providing the fuel we need to run our economy. We routinely give companies breaks when they provide a “critical” product or service.
On the other hand, the writer’s love of ivory has no economic benefit to larger society that offsets the costs of his hobby. If fact, he helps maintain a market for products and behaviors we want to discourage.
This isn’t a defense of BP, just a realistic explanation of why we might treat them differently. We can, of course, argue that BP has no redeeming social value, but that case is not terribly convincing given our SUV culture. It’s pretty clear a market for ivory has no redeeming social value.
It isnt the government’s role to determine who or what is “cruicial” nor do they have the right to make such a judgement. Perhaps someone over there might decide you or I are not crucial. Equal protection should be as simple as it sounds.
Re: The government’s role and
Re: Equal protection should be as simple as it sounds.
Could you explain to me how a government would be organized (its role) such that the very smart amoral scumbag humans wouldn’t – over time – purchase enough politicians to ensure that the rules of government (it’s roles) were changed for the benefit of the very smart amoral scumbags?
I realize that in a fantasy world, there are no very smart amoral scumbags, but in real-life we’ve got to account for them. It appears that voters have no concept that their politicians (sociopaths) are owned by the very smart amoral scumbags (ie. lobbyists).
Realistic? Realistic is BP’s power to buy off everybody in sight, from senators to Coast Guard employees on site. Realistic is BP’s ability to command armies of lawyers, not to mention armies tout court.
Doctors provide a critical service and are heavily regulated. Utilities like AmerenUE provide a critical service and are heavily regulated.
Find another “explanation”.
You really don’t see the difference between allowing oil and mining companies like BP to pollute and setting a policy to discourage trade in the body parts of endangered species?
One has some limited economic value and the other is kind of creepy.
So running around in your Hummer has greater “economic value” than the appreciation and collecting of art?
The use of ivory to craft objects of art has a long and illustrious history. Egyptian artworks made from ivory exist from 4000 B.C. Since then almost all cultures, including our own, have used it in the manufacture of artwork. These include Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Grecian, Roman, Byzantine, Carolingian, Islamic, Gothic, Renaissance and counterreformation Christian, such as the didactic works created in the wake of the Council of Trent.
These objects have great historic and aesthetic value, which is evidenced by their frequent appearance in galleries and auction houses around the world and the healthy prices they command.
The U.S. Congress must have disagreed with you, clearly seeing the value of the trade in these objects, because it promulgated legislation that specifically singles out these objects, exempting them from endangered species laws.
Well I don’t drive a hummer but I do drive a car and use gasoline far more frequently than I visit a museum to view art. In fact, I would need gasoline to get to the museum.
So yes, frankly, there is greater economic benefit to me from oil extraction than there is from the trade in art.
I assumed from your post that you were having a disagreement with Fish and Wildlife over the how the law applied to your pieces.
I do not, however, think that your experience has anything to do with government’s “two faces”. I don’t happen to think this really illustrates your point that government treats big business gently and regular people poorly. Sorry. I just couldn’t make that leap of logic.
And do you also believe that regulators don’t have to follow the law?
Do you believe that regulators with ideas or opinions different from those of a Congressional majority (people like yourself), should be able to just make up and enforce whatever it is they see fit, just so long as it conforms to their own personal belief system?
And what about due process? Do you believe regulators should be able to seize people’s property without following due process?
I’m not asserting that regulation is good or bad. I just don’t think your experience has any illustrative value. It’s the “two faces” argument I don’t get.
Regulators should follow the law, the regulations, and provide due process for the resolution of disputes.
Glenn said: “…why would I trust anyone who works for the U.S. Department of the Interior?”
By the same token, why would you then trust the federal Court?
Through tatter’d clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furr’d gowns hide all.
http://www.economist.com/node/16636027?story_id=16636027
The United States puts more people in prision (percentage wise) than any other country on earth.
For those who think those ivory importers deserve what they got, as well as all those drug ‘dealers’ (the documented abuse by prosecutors using plea deals would make your hair stand on end) – Read the US code sometime – you have not only broken the law, but you have broken the law many times. You are not free because you have not broken any laws, you are free because you have not annoyed a government official.
fresno dan,
Thanks for the link.
I felt this passage from the article you linked was particularly apt: “Yet over the last 40 years, an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalisation the first line of attack—a way to demonstrate seriousness about the social problem of the month…” It’s as if the average person gets trapped in this no-man’s-land between two competing dictatorships of virtue.
While it is quite obvious that regulators in the U.S. have become entirely too self-serving, interested in little more than growing and extending the reach of their respective bureaucracies, they are still a little bit more sophisticated about it than regulators in Mexico are. In Mexico there exists a stifling regulatory bureaucracy, perhaps even worse than in the U.S., but the rent extraction is not covert. On the contrary, pretty much the only way to navigate the labyrinthine legal and regulatory maze is to grease the wheels of justice with a little money under the table. And more often than not regulators (and policemen) have to buy their positions. There is a long tradition of this in Latin America, as J.H. Elliot explains in Empires of the Atlantic World:
Private traffic in regimientos—-aldermanships—-in city councils had long been standard practice, and from 1591 they were put up for public sale. From 1559 notarial posts were placed on the market, and these were followed in 1606 by almost all local offices. Phillip II and Phillip III had held the line against the sale of treasury offices, but in 1633 Phillip IV began putting these, too, up for sale. Eventually, in the second half of the seventeenth century, even the highest post came onto the market, with posts in the Audiences being systematically sold from 1687.
In Mexico the Byzantine legal framework, where practically anything can be found to be illegal, along with the Napoleonic legal system where one is guilty until proven innocent, also become tools of terror and social control. A person who becomes too politically outspoken can very quickly find himself in jail, charged with something totally unrelated to his political advocacy.
And I think it can be argued that this sort of regime didn’t work out too well for Spain, or for Latin America.
As the 17th-century British parliamentarian Slingsby Bethel observed in The Interest of Princes: “Spain is a clear demonstration that Mis-government, in suffering all manner of Frauds, and neglecting the Interest of a Nation, will soon bring the mightiest Kingdoms low, and lay their honour in the dust.”
In the eyes of Bethel and other contemporary British observers, misgovernment included a failure to grasp the nature of the relationship between population, prosperity and liberty. As Bethel pointed out with reference to the recent successes of the Dutch and the English, “industry and ingenuity are not the effects of the barrenness of a country, oppression of the People, or want of Land…but the effects only of Justice, good laws and Liberty.”
I didn’t realize you had to be part of the in-crowd to post comments here. What a bummer, I’ve been reading this blog for years and this was the first time I had anything to add.
This is just the tip of iceburg on how BIG BUSINESS runs government, and writes the rules to suit themselves. WHat we see and read in the average newspaper is just a fasad regarding how we think government works, and how the rule of law works. It just ain;t so now is it.
I’ve been recently railroaded by health insurance companies, and have watched how they pawn of disability on to social security.
I have had a glipse into the corruption of a whole counties sheriffs department. Turns out law enforcement is robbing the POT growers, while framing them and putting them in jail to shut them up.
We all know how the banks ripped off the taxpayers for billions, if not trillions recently.
So yep, I feel for ya. However, it runs much deeper than having to re-ship a few collectors items.
Your article makes a good point Glenne, I’m just very bitter about my recent run-ins with how privalged business is. If you Know about ERISA law and how the insurance companies get away with lying and bullying sick folks(and their doctors) you would understand.
It comes down to if the businesses have written the laws to suit themselves in particular and if theri lobbyists are involved. In your case, it is likely you don;t have a lobbyist and your laws weren’t payed much attention to by business so therefore the strict treatment.
jumping said: “However, it runs much deeper than having to re-ship a few collectors items.”
Oh, I agree completely.
But I thought the very trivialness of this matter, in juxtaposition to the Draconian response of Fish and Wildlife, actually helped make my point.
Stehle said “Now contrast that to how Fish and Wildlife treated me. And then consider what the bottom line is. For while the Interior Department is off on these bunny trails chasing 300 year-old ivory pieces, BP operates with impunity.”
Stehle has a valid point. Isn’t this precisely how other government agencies, including the SEC, have conducted themselves over the past few years? The main problem isn’t that the particular F&W employee may have over-reached authority(actually I’m happy that the employee was paying attention). Rather, it’s that the 800 lb gorillas(like BP) always seem to act with no fear of repercussion from oversight agencies. Witness the actions of the many large financial players over the past few decades. Very few industry players have been held to account. None of the highly paid minions who participate in the frauds, and without whose help the big players would not be able to proceed, never get brought to justice. The obvious conclusion is that a regulator who has been delegated legal authority but chooses not to enforce things in an unbiased fashion, may currently have the formal authority but ultimately has no moral authority to oversee anyone. So Stehle is right.
In addition, my own personal experience lends anecdotal evidence that the above dynamics are not limited to government agencies. I have served in a volunteer capacity for an industry oversight body. My observations and small firm background gave me, what I thought was a biased view, that big players were routinely handled with kid gloves, whilst smaller players who in many instances were guilty of minor infractions, had the book thrown at them. Instead of just complaining and promoting “shooting from the hip” type criticism , I decided to get involved and possibly learn something. Unfortunately, my subsequent years of experiences serving in that volunteer capacity just confirmed my prior bias. What surprised me was just how pathetic the process indeed was .
Meetings were held only a few times a year. Case materials were distributed only a short time before the meetings(sometimes including thousands of pages). Meeting time and resources were allocated evenly between the cases. So a case involving tens of billions of dollars of losses was allocated roughly an equivalent amount of meeting time as cases involving losses in the tens of hundreds of dollars. While, technically, group members could speak up during meetings, time constraints (“we gotta get through all these cases today”) often makes any kind of deep meaningful discussions impossible. So while it was sometimes recommended that a small player be stuffed in the back of a truck, carted off to the nearest cliff and tossed over the edge, we were nothing more than a rubber-stamp absolving the big players of any significant consequences .
My observation- the people who control the checkbook for the group I belonged were the real parties in control of the meetings. Facility, staff and legal resources can be turned on and off like a faucet. So while oversight line staff might be very smart, ethical and determined, the parameters within which they are forced to work prevent them from accomplishing anything meaningful when a large player case comes along. in essence they’re forced to just roll over or they get crushed by the workload.
My own conclusions:
1. As an industry, we did not have the capacity, nor the moral authority, to police ourselves.
2. I can see how these dynamics are probably not unique to the situation that I experienced. Is it hard to see how the operation of government agencies evolve into a similar pattern.
3. I would try to change things from within, working within the system. Naive -and eventually you just use up all your political capital and become ineffective.
4. Any of the samll fry whom happened to be punished over the years would have a right to call into question the validity of findings against them.
anon48 said: “The main problem isn’t that the particular F&W employee may have over-reached authority(actually I’m happy that the employee was paying attention).”
Well actually the main problem is that the particular F&W employee, along with other F&W employees, overreached their authority. As I stated in my original post:
“Perhaps the most egregious violation is that antique ivory, which statutorily is defined as being 100 years old or older, falls outside the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife service. And then there’s the issue of due process. U.S. laws and regulations set out in great detail the procedures Fish & Wildlife and the Solicitor must follow in one of these seizure cases. They didn’t do any of that.”
For much more on this I created a blog where I cite (quote) and discuss in detail the specific laws and regulations that F&W is operating in violation of:
http://www.fixgov.blogspot.com
It boggles the mind how popular this notion has become that regulators and law enforcement are above the law and don’t have to obey the law.
Sorry this was intended to be a reply to Glenn
Glenn,
I must have misunderstood the intent of your article. To wit:
From your first paragraph- “…The federal government has two very distinct faces it shows the world. There’s the face it shows the BPs, Goldman Sachs and Halliburtons of the world, and then there’s the face it shows those lacking political power…”
From your next to last paragraph- “…And then consider what the bottom line is. For while the Interior Department is off on these bunny trails chasing 300 year-old ivory pieces, BP operates with impunity…”
I assumed, incorrectly, that your story was an anecdote that was attempting to reinforce the (common) belief among readers of this blog that regulators have been much too passive in the oversight of large powerful players (like BP) as opposed to everyone else (where they sometimes go over the edge).
Regarding your comment- “Well actually the main problem is that the particular F&W employee, along with other F&W employees, overreached their authority…”
Sorry, not when you make it a point to compare it to the submissive fashion in which BP was handled by its regulator.
Beneath 100 square miles of Burke County Ga lies a shallow aquifer with significant tritium contamination. The source is a heavy water plant across the Savannah River in South Carolina. The DOE plant was converted in the sixties from production to recycling highly radioactive heavy water with no environmental impact study. Some Phd’s that I talked to stated off the record that the tritium in groundwater was flowing under the river through earthquake faults. Cancer rates are high there and nothing will ever be done because the population is poor and they have no political clout. Google it
Good luck in court….
Glenn,
I must have misunderstood the intent of your article. To wit:
From your first paragraph- “…The federal government has two very distinct faces it shows the world. There’s the face it shows the BPs, Goldman Sachs and Halliburtons of the world, and then there’s the face it shows those lacking political power…”
From your next to last paragraph- “…And then consider what the bottom line is. For while the Interior Department is off on these bunny trails chasing 300 year-old ivory pieces, BP operates with impunity…”
I assumed, incorrectly, that your story was an anecdote that was attempting to reinforce the (common) belief among readers of this blog that regulators have been much too passive in the oversight of large powerful players (like BP) as opposed to everyone else (where they sometimes go over the edge).
Regarding your comment- “Well actually the main problem is that the particular F&W employee, along with other F&W employees, overreached their authority…”
Sorry, not when you make it a point to compare it to the submissive fashion in which BP was handled by its regulator.
You completely lost me there.
I don’t see how my taking the time to document in detail how regulators “go over the edge,” even to the point of breaking the law, undercuts my argument. Quite the contrary, it serves to accentuate the vast difference in the way regulators treat the BPs of the world and the way they treat the rest of us.
So what I am hearing is-that we should be beating up on regulators because they have been overly aggressive with the little guy?
I think you muddied your point by the comparison to BP.
In fact, what was the point of that comparison anyway? That they treated you differently? So- they should have given you a free pass because that’s what BP got?
The answer should be an obvious yes. I mean, isn’t it clear that whenever there is a substantial difference in treatment from the regulators between the little guy v. the powerful, you got a problem?
As a matter of fact, the problem can become so dire, that it could cost you your live, no less.
Don’t believe me? Read this:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/prosecuting-doctors-for-importing-iuds.html
and come back to us. I’ll bet my last zloty that your opinion will have changed.
“…that we should be beating up on regulators because they have been overly aggressive with the little guy?
The answer should be an obvious yes. I mean, isn’t it clear that whenever there is a substantial difference in treatment from the regulators between the little guy v. the powerful, you got a problem?”
I read skimmed the post you cited. my opinion is not changed.
The BIG problem is not that big guys and little guys are treated differently. The big problem is that the big guys are getting away with murder and there’s no repercussions. Your cite clearly reinforces that fact.
I think you owe me that last zlotny you’re holding.
Francois T,
Unbelievable!
It sounds like that in the first case the regulators are taking their cue from the vendors of IUDs in the United States, who, as the article points out, sell the very same device, made by the very same company in the very same factory, at twice the price as it sells for in Canada. Even though the devices imported from Canada have caused no harm to patients, the regulators are throwing the book at the doctors who imported them.
The thing that stands out is that it is not the health and welfare of the patients that concerns the regulatory agencies, but the profits of U.S. vendors.
In the second case cited, the profits of U.S. vendors also seem to trump all. Unlike with the IUDs from Finland, the adulterated drugs were imported from China and sold by the multinational corporation Baxter International. And also unlike in the case with the IUDs, the drugs caused many patients who received them to get seriously ill or die. But, as the article points out, “no individual has yet suffered any negative consequence for what amounted to poisoning of patients with a brand-name but adulterated pharmaceutical product.”
You gotta love the glaring double standard at work here, as the article concludes:
Yet everyone from state health departments to the federal authorities have jumped into the case of the unapproved IUDs imported, but from Canada, and apparently identical to the IUDs sold in the US. There is, at least so far, no evidence that the IUDs were defective or dangerous, and no evidence they have harmed patients. One doctor has been prosecuted for violating the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and for health care fraud and money-laundering. No one working for Baxter International (or for the identified organizations within its supply chain) has been prosecuted for anything.
anon48 says: “The BIG problem is not that big guys and little guys are treated differently.”
That is such an outrageous statement, and so diametrically opposed to anything even remotely resembling the American legal or moral ethos, that I really don’t know how to respond.
Perhaps you should read Martin Luther King’s essay entitled “Love, Law and Civil Disobedience.” In it he argues that “difference made legal” is the very essence of an unjust and immoral system.
“Equal justice under the law” is a phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C.
And Chief Justice Melville Fuller, in the case of Caldwell v. Texas in 1891, wrote about the Fourteenth Amendment as follows:
By the Fourteenth Amendment…no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law.
“anon48 says: “The BIG problem is not that big guys and little guys are treated differently.”
That is such an outrageous statement, and so diametrically opposed to anything even remotely resembling the American legal or moral ethos, that I really don’t know how to respond…”
You’re kidding right? My comments to you and to Francois were written in the context of what you wrote and what he cited.
Obviously, in general there is no doubt that “all men are created equal” and should be treated as such.
However, expecting that we should be just as concerned and sympathetic to your little problem with F&W as we should to the lack of oversight of the BP spill is ludicrous. The whole system is in a slow state of collapse all around us-due to the actions of companies like BP. You’re upset because of the way you were handled- and you would have us focus all our attention on your problem.
Next time I would suggest you make your point and exclude exaggerated comparisons (BP). It was like trying to compare the consequences of getting a pimple on the behind to that of a nuclear bomb being detonated next door.
anon48,
People comment on this blog all the time, trying to make their arguments sound moderate and reasonable, when in reality that’s not where they’re coming from at all. But almost always, if challenged, they mess up, and just like you did let their true colors show.
Francois T asked, “I mean, isn’t it clear that whenever there is a substantial difference in treatment from the regulators between the little guy v. the powerful, you got a problem?”
To which you responded “The BIG problem is not that big guys and little guys are treated differently.”
That’s pretty unambiguous, and sounds a lot like this:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
If you want to defend unequal justice under the law, or “difference made legal,” then why don’t you just come out and do it, instead of playing these cat and mouse games?
No, not at all.
I’m not asking for a free pass becasue BP got one. I’m asking that Fish and Wildlife obey the law.
Did you even read the blog I linked?
There I cite the laws, verbatim, exactly as they appear in the law books. Should Fish and Wildlife be able to invent, out of whole cloth and on a whim, any law it sees fit? Should Fish and Wildlife be exempt from following the statutes and the Constitution of the United States?
The Fish and Wildlife Service, on the other hand, is charged by law with protecting endangered species (as in those that are still alive and haven’t been dead for 300 years). And yet it signed off on the Minerals Management Service’s conclusion that deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no significant risk to wildlife.
I don’t see how the contrast between the way Fish and Wildlife treated me and how it treated the multinational oil companies could be made any plainer.
Glenn,
I empathize with your experience. In fact thousands do (well perhaps even hundreds of thousands or a few million). The abuses and cavalier treatment of ordinary people by government is alarming. Take taxes, a guy running a dry cleaning establishment has to pay his taxes (and on 30% of income) whereas most fortune 500 firms pay zero. BP gets a pass, I toss motor oil in the backyard and get fined 1000.00, little girl sets up a lemonade stand in oregon government wants 120 bucks for a license…
The other factor which is disturbing is that as well laid out and relevant your piece is there are large portions of persons who do not get it, and in fact may perversely be hostile to your plight, take pleasure and excuse/rationalize in some twisted way what you and many others experience at the hands of government. Frankly, when I read posters dismissing stories such as yours cantl help but think what monsters and idiots so many of our people have become, alas the ranks of F&W, IRS, Homeland Security and Goldman Sachs are not drawn from some island but rather our dear ol homeland. Read some of the comments in this and other blogs (where you would expect better) and become terrified of what we have become and what the future holds….
Good luck and hope you get your items….
Moe Green,
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement.
The wealth sensitivity index of the US government is reaching indecent levels; it means that absence of wealth guarantees absence of any sensitivity whatsoever.
It’s like money = free speech. The obvious corollary that nobody is willing to address is mathematically obvious:
no money = no free speech
Another diploma from the Don Blankenship School! Give your money to a lawyer who can solve your problem, not to a transportation co. who can’t. Your problem now is to find a lawyer who will get out of bed for $1000. And the mistake you make is to think BP is treated any differently than you – except for the fact the the lawyers will indeed get out of bed for BP.
In a worst case you might look into the possibility of having it picked up and sent to MX. Your supplier might help with new documentation.