So you think the House is serious about the mess we’re in? There was a sign of that when it looked like it would stop any new species being added to the Endangered Species list for three years. This was a great move. The ESA list is a litigation magnet that encourages environmentalist groups to sue the government to add new “species” (many of them recently invented subspecies, as I explained in The Really Inconvenient Truths), costing tens of millions of dollars annually. Further, the ESA chills economic activity by preventing people from developing their land, and is well known to suffer from the “shoot, shovel and shut up” problem that means it is ineffective in protecting endangered species anyway. The proposal was a welcome move towards property rights and away from bureaucracy.

Yesterday, 37 Republicans joined with 187 Democrats to kill the proposal.

And we wonder why we can’t get anything done in this country. The stench reminds me of the UK c.1976. The only difference is that there is no Margaret Thatcher on the horizon.