The Government Gives, The Government Takes Away

A website called fight the bias attributes the following quote to Thomas Jefferson:

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

There are similar quotes attributed to Gerald Ford and others, but Thomas Jefferson seems to have understood the concept originally. We are seeing this statement in action in a current court battle between EXXON and the American government. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that EXXON filed a suit against the Department of the Interior last week in Lake Charles, Louisiana. EXXON is fighting to maintain control of what is called the Julia field after a routine extension of leases was not approved.

The article reports:

The possibility that Exxon could lose this oil will likely send shock waves through the industry. “This is unprecedented,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the Energy Program at Rice University in Houston. “The question is: Do our offshore rules allow for flexibility? You don’t want to let companies sit on a discovery…We definitely don’t want to send the industry a message that you need to be in a rush or we’ll take the oil away from you.”

Exxon’s lawsuit said the government has granted “thousands” of extensions over time. It said the government’s denial of its extension relied on legal interpretations that it “had never before applied and had never before articulated.” Statoil asserted in its lawsuit that no request for an extension for a deep-water development “had ever previously been denied.” The Interior Department couldn’t comment on this.

This is another example of how government policy impacts unemployment. The Department of Interior has changed their policies abruptly. How do businesses deal with future planning when the rules change in the middle of the game?


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