Judge to Food and Water Watch: put that in your whistle

We’ve occasionally taken note that relators stepping forward under whistleblower laws are not always the public benefactors implied by the term whistleblower. Now here’s this from a suit that a former contractor filed, teaming up with well-connected environmental group Food and Water Watch [Bloomberg]:

“BP never misrepresented — much less knowingly distorted what it was doing,” U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes in Houston said today in a 10-page summary ruling, finding that the case was ultimately about “paperwork wrinkles” instead of engineering shortcuts.

Abbott and the environmentalists “have not blown a whistle,” he said. “They have blown their own horn.”

Filed under: BP Transocean oil spill, environment, whistleblowers

Environmental roundup

“Fine for killing birds” is susceptible of two meanings, you know [Coyote on energy production]
Lacey Act criminal provisions, of Gibson Guitar raid fame, owe much to influence of domestic forest products companies, and that’s just one of the links between crony capitalism and overcriminalization [Paul Larkin, Heritage]
Why California shut down its local redevelopment agencies, all 400+ of them [Shirley Svorny, Regulation]
“EPA’s ‘Waters of the U.S.’ Proposal: Coming Soon to a Back Yard Near You?” [Scott McFadin, WLF]
Taxpayers shell out handsomely to be sued under Endangered Species Act [Higgins]
“How Land Prices Obviate the Need for Euclidean Zoning” [Emily Washington]
Casting a skeptical eye on Vandana Shiva’s anti-GMO crusade [The New Yorker]

Filed under: California, endangered species, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, land use and zoning

Green lawns, brown lawns in California

“On the same day the state approved mandatory outdoor watering restrictions with the threat of $500 fines, the Southern California couple received a letter from their city threatening a $500 penalty for not watering their brown lawn.” [AP]

Filed under: California, environment, sued if you do

Environmental roundup

California resists idea of charging market-clearing rate for water — too much like economics — and instead encourages tattling on neighbors [New York Times, Coyote]
Academia smitten by notion of “climate reparations” [Peter Wood, Minding the Campus]
Costly market intervention: “Minnesota doubles down on nation’s top biodiesel law” [Watchdog]
Reusable grocery bags have their problems for sanitation and otherwise, but California contemplates banning the alternatives [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Steven Greenhut, Reason]
Coming: film about Kelo v. City of New London eminent domain case [Nick Gillespie, Ilya Somin]
45 years later: the famous 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga became a fable for its age [Jonathan Adler on the Cuyahoga]
Should beachfront owners have to open their land to all comers? [NY Times “Room for Debate”]
Plus: “EPA has no business garnishing wages without due process” [Examiner editorial, earlier]

Filed under: California, climate change, eminent domain, environment, recycling, reparations

“Jindal signs bill to scuttle levee board oil suit”

After intense political controversy in Louisiana, a controversial environmental suit is apparently on its way out. [KATC] Earlier here and here.

Filed under: environment, Louisiana, oil industry

US customs seizes 7 violin bows from Budapest orchestra

The feds’ insane war on antiques and musical instruments continues. “Orchestra spokesman Adèl Tossenberger said in an e-mail that the seized bows did not contain any ivory and the orchestra received a certificate from a Hungarian expert verifying this.” It is unclear why they had to pay a $525 fine anyway. A few days earlier, according to a German publication, “the Munich Philharmonic nearly cancelled three performances at Carnegie Hall in April after that orchestra’s string players could not produce CITES certificates for their bows.” [WQXR, The Violin Channel] Earlier on the old-ivory ban here, here, and here; on musical instruments here, here, and here.

Filed under: environment, free trade, music and musicians

Behind the Gibson Guitar raid, cont’d

They wouldn’t show him the warrant because it was sealed [Bill Frezza, Forbes]:

While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day [Gibson Guitar CEO Henry] Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.

Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong….

Juszkiewicz alleges [federal prosecutors] were operating at the behest of lumber unions and environmental pressure groups seeking to kill the market for lumber imports. “This case was not about conservation,” he says. “It was basically protectionism.”

Earlier on the extraordinary Gibson case here.

Filed under: environment, labor unions, prosecution

What the New Yorker finds to be “unlikely”

From a September New Yorker profile by writer Ryan Lizza of Tom Steyer, the billionaire political donor promoting environmental causes:

Steyer is, at first glance, an unlikely leader of the environmental movement. He is rangy and square-jawed, and he has exquisite establishmentarian credentials, to say nothing of a vast pile of money. He honed his raffish sense of humor at Phillips Exeter Academy, and went on to get degrees from Yale and Stanford business school. Before starting his own fund, he worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley….

This must represent the New Yorker editors’ special idiomatic use of the word “unlikely” to signify “clichéd, stereotypical, and exactly as you would expect.” William Tucker has written at more length about the subject.

Filed under: environment, politics

Environmental roundup

Julie Gunlock, from her new book, on killer garden hoses [Free-Range Kids]
“EPA and the Army Corps’ ‘Waters of the U.S.’ Proposal: Will it Initiate Regulatory Overflow?” [Samuel Boxerman with Lisa Jones, WLF]
Federal rules governing land ownership on Indian reservations ensure waste and neglect [Chris Edwards, Cato]
“Zoning’s Racist Roots Still Bear Fruit” [A. Barton Hinkle]
Victor Fleischer: Pigouvian taxes on externalities beloved of economists, not so great as actionable policy [TaxProf]
So economically and so environmentally destructive, it’s got to be federal ethanol policy [Hinkle]
“Regulation Through Sham Litigation: The Sue and Settle Phenomenon” [Andrew Grossman for Heritage on a consent-decree pattern found in environmental regulation and far beyond; Josiah Neeley, The Federalist]

Filed under: consent decrees, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, ethanol, Indian tribes, land use and zoning

Environmental roundup

“A Poster Child for Overcriminalization: The History of the Lacey Act” [Jarrett Dieterle/Point of Law; earlier] “Strict Obama administration ivory ban infuriates musicians” [Bluegrass Nation/Daily Caller]
California business didn’t think nutty Prop 65 warning regime could get worse, Brown administration might prove them wrong [Michael Feeley et al., JD Supra]
“We’re definitely asking a judge to make a leap of faith here”: profile of Steven Wise, who files suits on behalf of chimps and other non-human “plaintiffs” [New York Times Magazine, earlier on Wise]
Quin Hillyer gives thumbs down to Louisiana coastal wetlands suit [Baton Rouge Advocate, earlier]
James Huffman on the public trust doctrine [Hoover]
John Steele Gordon on California drought [Commentary]
“It’s easier to engage and organize people around ‘fracking’ than a complicated list of practices.” [L.A. Business Journal]

Filed under: animal rights, California, environment, Louisiana, oil industry, Prop 65