In which I describe the Madison Fund, a privately funded foundation to map terrain and probe defenses while helping ordinary Americans who are trying to cope with the regulatory state.Read more at location 2618
The beginning of the answer is that the federal government cannot enforce its mountain of laws and regulations without voluntary public compliance.Read more at location 2624
But Goliath cannot afford to make good on that threat against thousands of Davids.Read more at location 2626
The government can throw huge resources into a case against a Microsoft or Morgan Stanley, where the stakes are also huge.Read more at location 2627
Consider OSHA. By its own estimate, OSHA is responsible for overseeing 8 million worksites around the nation, and it has issued regulations that all of them are supposed to observe. But OSHA’s staff for enforcing all those regulations amounts to about 200 inspectors who actually work for OSHA and another 2,000 who work for state agencies.Read more at location 2645
What are the odds that an OSHA inspector is going to show up at a given workplace that is not inherently hazardous? Close to zero.Read more at location 2654
Or consider the EPA. In fiscal year 2013, the EPA’s civil enforcement included 18,000 inspections, 1,440 Final Administrative Penalty Orders, and 873 Administrative Compliance Orders.4 In a sense, the number of actual penalty and compliance orders is just the tip of the iceberg. In uncounted other instances, the EPA threatened action for regulatory violations and got compliance just by making the threat.Read more at location 2655
We can begin with a private legal-aid foundation to provide similar legal assistance to ordinary Americans who are being victimized by the regulatory state. I will call it the Madison Fund.Read more at location 2664
Specifically, the Madison Fund would have three goals: 1. To defend people who are innocent of the regulatory charges against them. 2. To defend people who are technically guilty of violating regulations that should not exist, drawing out that litigation as long as possible, making enforcement of the regulations more expensive to the regulatory agency than they’re worth, and reimbursing fines that are levied. 3. To generate as much publicity as possible, both to raise the public’s awareness of the government’s harassment of people like them, and to bring the pressure of public opinion to bear on elected politicians and staffs of regulatory agencies.Read more at location 2686
The emergence of many billion-dollar-plus private fortunes over the last three decades has enabled the private sector to take on ambitious national or even international tasksRead more at location 2694
Many billionaires and centimillionaires are principled advocates of limited government. So are tens of thousands of mere multimillionaires.Read more at location 2698
It could get started the way the Tea Party got started, as a popular movement. Money isn’t going to be a problem if the strategy can be shown to be workable.Read more at location 2702
Its organizational model can borrow from the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal assistance to thousands of low-income clients around the nation. It can draw upon the expertise of other institutes that have conducted litigation on behalf of Madisonian causes for decades. The oldest, the Pacific Legal Foundation, was established in 1973 by former members of Governor Ronald Reagan’s senior staff.Read more at location 2704
Getting off the GroundRead more at location 2720
In which I propose that professional associations shift some of their money from lobbying to insuring their members against mischief from the regulatory state, and then reflect upon the possible consequences when government is seen as just another insurable hazard, like fires or floods.Read more at location 2735
CHAPTER 10 FROM SYSTEMATIC CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TO A “NO HARM, NO FOUL” REGULATORY REGIMERead more at location 2876
In which I describe a scenario whereby a small change in the courts’ interpretation of existing administrative law could lead to a “no harm, no foul” approach to regulation, and argue that we have reason to think such a shift is possible.Read more at location 2879
In which I discuss the possibility that the courts can be brought to realize that they founded the regulatory state on false premises, that they must meet their obligation to undo some of the damage they have caused, and that doing so will require a broader reform of civil litigation.Read more at location 3154
