Separation of Business and State

In Oregon, the Attorney General proposes to alleviate environmental issues by criminal prosecutions of offenders, especially small businesses. To wit:

"That said, who should be worried about being criminally prosecuted for environmental noncompliance? The answer might surprise you: Mr. Kroger has made it clear that not just so-called big-time polluters are being targeted. Rather, the ECEU will also target small noncompliant businesses—businesses that Mr. Kroger believes have a competitive advantage because they are not paying the costs associated with compliance. All individuals falling into one (or more) of the following three categories are therefore subject to prosecution, regardless of their business’s size:

Those who are responsible for releases that cause potential public health risks;
Repeat violators, no matter the severity of the violations; and
Those who commit intentional or egregious violations of environmental."

Of course, this sounds admirable until you recall that property rights, grounded in natural law and entrenched in western civilizatio for millennia, once protected, as a side effect, the environment. It is only the last 150 or so years of jurisprudence that got us to where one property owner can harm another's with impunity. using prosecution to go after violators is simply putting a bandaid over a gaping wound lawyers themselves inflicted, and then politicizing the process, allowing an attorney general to dcide whose business is destroyed or allowed.

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