The New "Crisis"

     One of the fundamental characteristics of Liberals is the manufacturing of crisis and the use of that crisis to advance their anti-liberty agenda. This crisis creation by the Left goes back to the 1960s with the banning of the wonder chemical DDT, and the resulting pain and suffering this action caused in this country and around the world. In the 1970s, it was Global cooling and the coming of a new ice age that was going to wipe humans off the face of the earth if we kept driving automobiles and allowing industrialization (sound familiar?). In the 1980s it was AIDS that was going to kill us all in the following 20 years, and in the 1990s and 2000s it was Global Warming. The new "crisis" is lead.
     A friend of mine owns rental property in the inner-city, and in some neighborhoods the only tennants he can attract are the government subsidized section 8 recipients. During a recent inspection in one of his houses he was failed because of three scratches on the back of a basement door. He was told that as a result of the Environmental Protection Agency's new lead rules, he could not simply paint the door himself. He was given the option of having a lead abatement specialist perform the work, which would have cost him thousands of dollars, or become certified to perform the work himself. He chose the less expensive route of paying what turned out to be around a thousand dollars and made the repair himself. He still had to get the work certified by an "independent" inspector, who turned out to be an EPA emloyee who operated his own lead insepction business on the side. Talk about an incestuous relationship.
     To make matters worse, my friend found out that in areas that had been or are currently industrialized, one can pass the inspection only to fail again days later. This is due to amounts of trace lead in the ground that gets blown into the house by the wind or carried in on the soles of peoples shoes. This creates a never-ending process of lead abatement and inspections that can cost thousands of dollars a year. At present, this affects commercial properties, but will eventually expand to all residential property.
     The lead scare by the Left, like every other "crisis" created by the Left, uses the most vulnerable in society (in this case the health of children), to expand the power of government over private property owners. Any legitimate chemist will tell you that enormous amounts of lead paint would have to be ingested to have any real detrimental effects to a human being. But like other manufactured crisis by Liberals, the truth or legitimate science doesn't hold sway over their desire to destroy property rights and limit an individual's ability to accumulate wealth.