Extortion of Businesses Using a Safety Regulation Scam

This is a particular examination of a regulatory case which applies to relatively few people.  This makes it a more viable scam which does not generate voter ire during elections.  Some voters are actually deceived into thinking that big government is doing its job of protecting them.  This case is instructive in terms of understanding what motivates most regulatory agencies and about their competency as a regulator.  In that way, it should of interest to everyone who wants rational, ethical government and cares about the rights of the individual.

The state of Maryland under the Dept. of the Environment has a Radiological Health Program which regulates all x-ray generating equipment except the cathode ray tubes (CRT) used in the older TV and computer monitor technology.  Yes, CRTs generate x-rays.  The electron beam that causes the light to appear generates x-rays at moderately high energies such as 25 to 40 KeV energies.

My laboratory operates a scanning electron microscope whose electron beam energy is commonly in the 15 to 25 KeV range and so can generate x-rays with energies up to the electron beam energy.  But, unlike a CRT computer monitor or TV, the SEM has very thick stainless steel walls.  Just as is the case with a CRT, the x-rays are contained within a vacuum system into which no human body part can be inserted while under vacuum.  When the sample insertion door is opened, no x-rays can be generated because if the electron beam-producing filament was on, it would instantaneously burn out and the electron beam would be eliminated.

This SEM instrument and the entire class of them was ruled a couple of years ago in Maryland to be safe enough that it does not have to be listed and no x-ray tube tax is assessed on it by the state of Maryland.  I thought this meant that the only reason my laboratory still had to register as a certified radiation facility was because of our x-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS) system.  Apparently not quite so.  Under this belief, and knowing that there is no conceivable safety hazard in operating the XPS system and that it is actually clearly much safer even than either a CRT or an SEM, I attempted to get it exempted from regulation.

As a regulated radiation facility, I have to hire a state-licensed inspector to come to my laboratory every two years and run around with a Geiger counter looking for radiation near the SEM and the XPS system.  He sometimes thinks he can see something, but never enough radiation to warrant any health issue.  What he is actually seeing is the radiation emitted due to very energetic cosmic rays hitting the massive steel structure and generating x-rays at higher levels than does the air when he backs up a couple of feet from the instrument.  He is not seeing any radiation from the inside of the instrument due to its operation.  But, he does not know enough radiation physics to know this.

I pay the state Radiological Health Program a $215 x-ray tube charge every second year for each x-ray tube they require to be listed.  I also have to pay for radiation badges, which in 18 years of operation have never had a quarterly reading other than 0 mRem.  This is despite the fact that I leave a badge on the instrument at the most vulnerable point 100% of the time, so it collects at least 100 times more radiation than any operator possibly could.  It is a hassle to mail these back to the radiation measurement company to be read and recorded due to the unusual size of the envelope and the bulk of the badges.  The post office requires a different amount of postage almost every time.  In addition, I am supposed to have my instruments maintained by a state-licensed company, none of whom know anything about an XPS instrument.  Presumably, this is to assure that safety issues are addressed, but if there are no safety issues, I am baffled as to how they are to address them.

A couple of years ago, I had a phone conversation with one of the radiological health bureaucrats about getting the absolutely safe XPS exempted.  He flat out told me that the radiation physics and the fact of whether there was any possible danger or not was of no concern to him.  He said their purpose was to make people feel as though they were safe from radiation.  Whether there actually was any radiation or not was of no interest to them.  This time around, I thought I would write them a letter and explain why this instrument should be exempted and why my laboratory should not have to register as a radiation facility.  This letter follows:

Roland G. Fletcher

Program Manager IV

Radiological Health Program

Air & Radiation Management Administration

Maryland Dept. Of the Environment

1800 Washington Blvd.

Baltimore, MD 21230

Phone: 410-537-3000

Dear Roland Fletcher,

Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc. does not now and never has operated any radiation machine with any safety hazard.  The only radiation producing equipment we operate produces low energy radiation completely contained by a vacuum containment vessel, which cannot be breached without the instantaneous destruction of the filament which creates the electron beam and hence the x-rays.  These instruments are:

•                    Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Computer Monitors

•                    Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)

•                    X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS)

These are listed in the order of the danger posed by each.  Your agency has rightly acknowledged that the first two do not require registration as a radiation facility.  Therefore, the much less dangerous XPS system does not require registration either.

The CRTs have electron beam energies of 25 KeV and higher and therefore can generate Bremsstrahlung radiation inside their vacuum containment vessel up to an energy equal to the beam energy.  Our SEM is operated in the electron beam energy range from 15 to 25 KeV.  These are acknowledged safe instruments.

Our XPS system is operated at only 10 KeV and the radiation is only emitted into the analytical vacuum chamber after passing through an x-ray monochromator which filters out all x-ray energies except those precisely at the 1.487 KeV energy of the main aluminum Kα characteristic x-ray.  This is an incredibly low energy x-ray, which precisely suits the purpose of having as much of the x-ray absorbed in the outer 20 nanometers of a material surface as possible.  The only photoelectrons useful to us are those emitted from this depth or less.  This beam has no penetrating power!  If it were possible to enter air, its mean free path is still less than 1 millimeter.

I have raised the issue of getting this instrument exempted before and I have been ignored.  I am unable to continue spending money and my time on this pointless nonsense.  The Obama economy has sapped our resources sorely and your new requirement that only licensed x-ray maintenance companies provide the maintenance on this highly unusual system with no safety issues is not one it is possible to comply with.  They know nothing about this system and nothing they can do can possibly make the system safer than it already is.  There are no fail-safes which have any possibility of failing to work.

So, there is no reason for Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc. to renew its Radiation Facility license # 27-0563 and there is no reason we should be taxed for having an x-ray tube.  It is high time that some semblance of rationality is applied here.

Best wishes,

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

President & Principal Scientist

I would have viewed a reasonable response one in which they simply said OK the XPS instrument is exempted or we will send our radiation physics expert out to your facility to make a determination of whether it might be exempted or not, perhaps at my expense.  The response to this letter strongly suggests that it was viewed as an insurrection to be dealt with even more sternly and forcefully than King George III moved to put down the rebellion in the colonies in America.  Here is the response, not from Mr. Fletcher, but from the Queen herself:

Dr. Anderson,

Thank you for your letter dated December 6, 2013 in response to the Notice of Violation that the Department issued.  I appreciate the concerns that you have raised but each of our 5,000 regulated facilities must adhere to the Maryland regulations in order to ensure the the general public and the occupational worker are not exposed to unnecessary radiation.  

The scanning electron microscope does require the registrant to denote possession of this unit on the Radiation Machine Facility Registration Form (RX1).  Also the State licensed private inspector does inspect and perform an area survey of this unit.  

The X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS) must undergo a state certification inspection by one of the state licensed private inspectors. This unit is not exempt from complying with the Maryland regulations.  

Failure to comply with these regulations will subject the facility to further enforcement actions.

Thanks,

Eva  

Eva S. Nair
Division Chief, Radiation Machines
Maryland Department of the Environment
Radiological Health Program
(410) 537-3179

It is interesting that all of my letters to my Congressman and my Senators and any bureaucrat of the state of Maryland start with a thank you for my letter and then an assertion of complete disagreement without any attempt to actually address the argument I gave for my viewpoint.  This is the response to be expected from Imperial Government which prefers a minimum of insurrection, but will put any insurrection down with brutal force if that proves expedient.

The violation she claims is because I had not put in for a renewal of my radiation facility registration by 16 November because they demand 45 days to process those registrations.  In reality, I am only in violation if I operate the XPS instrument after 31 December when my current registration and certification runs out.  So, I probably will not be able to operate that instrument in early January or maybe all of January.  If that condition continued longer than that, I and my employees will all be unemployed.

So, once again, I am forced to apply for a radiation facility certification when the most dangerous radiation sources in my laboratory are the CRTs we still use on a number of our computers.  Logically and rationally, any CRTs in residences and offices throughout the state should be regulated by the Radiological Health Program given that my equivalent or safer instruments are.  Imagine the insurrection if this were done.  That would be a loser at the polls, so it is not done.  But, it is always easy to extort businesses, whose owners are but a small fraction of the vote.

Now in the mind of a big government bureaucrat, no possible instance of misleading the public into believing they are being protected by that big government can be missed.  The more facilities they regulate, the bigger their income from the x-ray tube tax, the bigger their budget from the taxpayers, and the higher their inflated salaries with the least risk of unemployment.

Yes, medical and dental x-ray instruments do have real safety issues.  But, this Maryland agency does not at all care if an instrument has no safety issues by virtue of its function, design, and radiation physics.  It is only interested in setting itself up under the pretense of providing safety.  It reveals itself as having no actual radiation physics expertise, which makes one wonder how it can be doing a credible job of protecting the People from those radiation-producing instruments which can do real harm.

The Emperor has no clothes.  But the nude Emperor is vicious and brutal.  This is nearly an invariable rule with government regulatory agencies.  They are particularly a plague upon businesses, because that is where the money is and because most of them have little political clout.  They care not a fig for the legitimate function of government of protecting the sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.  They get rich by violating the individual right to earn a living providing one is doing no harm to others.  The Emperor lives high on the hog pretending he is protecting the People, few of whom understand that most of those claims are fraudulent.

The Federal Government Extortion of Businesses

I have often written that when government takes on the powers of illegitimate government, it becomes a threat to businesses and other special interests operating in the private sector.  Business is especially vulnerable, because that is where the money is and many people have a bias against commercial interests.  Government politicians have a hankering for their money and want to pretend to be protecting the People from some powerful threat to them.  So, politicians shake down companies by threatening them with harmful legislation and simply by using their access to and influence over the press to give businesses a bad name.

Companies, like it or not, are forced to become lobbyists.  Once they get into that, they are generally tempted, as are other special interest groups such as labor unions, public employees, trial lawyers, accountants, environmentalists, and religious groups, to take over the controls of government.  This is fairly easy to do since the government has by then become far too complex for most of the People to understand and control.  Indeed, some companies and other interest groups see how easy it is to take over the controls of government and leap to those controls without even being extorted.  It can be an easy route to power and influence and to riches.  Control of government can also be used through regulations and licensing requirements to reduce competition.  The great Institute for Justice is renowned for trying to eliminate licensing and similar restrictions that keep people from earning a living.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute tries to reduce the number of regulations designed to reduce competition.

Timothy Carney has a very interesting tale of how Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican Senator, forced Microsoft to get into the lobbying business very much against its will.  It is well worth reading.

Government Thugs Extort Bank of America

Today, Judge Andrew Napolitano announced on Fox News that several government agency officials threatened to remove Bank of America members from the Board of Directors if they did not continue with the government demanded purchase of Merrill Lynch for $50 billion. Bank of America auditors had discovered that Merrill Lynch was only worth $35 billion and Bank of America had a clause in their agreement to purchase Merrill Lynch that allowed them to back out of the deal if ML was worth less than $50 billion. They consequently told the government that they were going to back out of the deal, but a number of government officials from the Treasury Department and other agencies with power over the bank refused to let them exercise their escape option. Later, Bank of America found that ML was worth not more than $34 billion due to bonuses paid.

The government forced Bank of America to take TARP bailout money, which they may have needed due to the very bad deal in acquiring ML that they were forced into. A $16 billion loss will cause most any company some considerable pain! But, the federal government does not own any voting stock in Bank of America and should have no say in who serves on the Board of Directors. It can threaten the bank with audits and many very costly and time-prohibitive requirements as part of its massive regulatory control over banks and the financial industry. So, this is what it did and the executives of the Bank of America did not have the courage to then announce to the public that the executive branch of the federal government was using extortion to force the bank to throw away $16 billion of stockholder's investment, while making depositor's risk escalate.

Similar instances of federal government extortion are becoming commonplace under the despotic regime of Obama. His government is simply an extortion ring on a massive scale. In addition to the threats against individual companies to confiscate and destroy their property and wealth, Obama has used extortion to gain unprecedented control of the financial industry and the auto industry.

He is threatening to takeover the health services industry, which is already being squeezed by the various Medicare, Medicaid, and new prescription drug benefit programs. These government programs have long driven up the costs of private insurance, since the privately insured have long subsidized the government insured. The government is now moving to increase the number of people insured by government insurance massively. This will massively drive up the cost of private insurance until no one can afford private insurance and all private insurers are driven out of the market. The government will be left in control of all payments and in complete control therefore of the entire health care industry. There will no longer be any control on costs, except the limiting of services and the rationing of care. Medical equipment will become obsolete as it has in the United Kingdom and in Canada. Fewer able people will choose to enter the field as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and administrators. Bureaucrats will tell doctors what medical procedures to follow. Our medical system quality will collapse and the wait for low-quality care will become life-threateningly long, as it has been in Canada and the U.K. Efforts to make innovative improvements and new developments in medical care will decrease, both due to shortsighted government efforts to cut costs and because the personal motivation of researchers and doctors will decrease.

The Capitalist system of free markets allows individuals to choose the goods and services they want and also makes huge quantities of decision-making information available to them. This system requires that the laws be known and stable. It requires protections of property rights and the roles of investors and employers. These are very much among our individual rights whether as investors and employers or as consumers and employees. When our government forsakes its responsibility to provide these protections and instead becomes an organized gangster mob shaking down businesses, whole industries, and their customers, the Capitalist system of free choices collapses. Tyranny is all that remains. Obama is the head tyrant and he has a strong following of thugs in the upper echelons of the Democrat Party and among his appointments to powerful positions in the executive agencies who also lust for unbridled power. There are still further long-term government employees who also too much enjoy power when the President and high-level appointees do not set a higher-minded standard for good, limited government. The damage to our society is massive.

Massive Socialist Government Gang Extortion

The gang of brutal socialists who have taken over control of the Presidency and Congress have escalated their extortion racket to much the worst levels ever. Have you ever wondered why many very wealthy businessmen and companies have for years donated more money to the Democrats who dislike business from an ideological perspective than they give to Republicans who are commonly thought to be the champions of the fat cats? Heck, have you ever wondered by the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are always wealthier than those to the Republican National Convention?

The answer is in two parts. First, many of these businessmen give more to the Democrats because they are trying to buy them off to keep them from doing as much harm to the businessmen. This is like Chamberlain buying Hitler off by giving him Czechoslovakia. Appeasement is always a popular strategy when the cowardly are faced with an especially vicious bully. The second part of the answer is that by allying themselves with the socialists they actually get a payment from those in power with legislation favoring them in a variety of ways. For instance, complex and intrusive laws will always create great opportunities for trial lawyers, who are massive donors to the major socialist party, the Democrats. Regulations such as the bureaucratically massive requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping procedures will hold back small and smaller mid-sized companies more than really big companies, so the big companies are protected from competition.

Cumbersome Federal contracting laws make it hard for small companies to go after Federal contracts, with their 10 pages of fine print references to many laws imposing obligations and mandates on the company taking the Federal contract or simply bidding for it. Generally regulations putting insurance, pollution, recycling, safety, family leave time, anti-discrimination, the display of tens of posters to employees, and many other mandates fall more heavily upon small and the smaller mid-sized companies than the large companies. The result is that it is common for the largest companies and the wealthiest investors to ally themselves with the Democrat mob than with the Republicans who pretend to stand up for small business interests. Yes, this is more pretense than substance on the part of the Republicans, but they really are a bit less active in doing harm to small businesses.

So, what is our small-time community rabble-rouser up to now that he has his hands on the big-time power of the Presidency? Well, he is unabashedly putting the extortion techniques the socialist Democrat Party has spent a long time perfecting to work. Let us examine how he is doing this.

According to a 9 April report by Eric Dash in the New York Times called "Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Help," the 19 largest American banks are being given stress tests led by the Federal Reserve. Testers say there is a wide range of results on the tested banks. Those that fall short will have six months to raise capital from private investors, but if they cannot do this, the Treasury Dept. will make them take taxpayer money. Timothy Geithner says he will take a tough stance. He claims that many banks believe the value of investments and loans on their books is higher than the government does. He says the government will make some banks sell off the assets the government thinks are overvalued on their books at whatever private investors are willing to pay. What an extortion tool? If the bank does not give enough to socialist politicians campaign funds, the government in control of the socialists, declares that some of the banks assets are worth less than the bank thinks they are worth and forces the bank to sell them in a fire sale. Meanwhile, we can be sure that generous Democrat campaign contributors are likely standing in the wings willing to buy up assets at bargain prices offered at the coming fire sales.

On another front, the socialists are launching still another attack on start-up companies in Silicon Valley. They want to regulate venture capital firms to prevent systemic risks. Geithner wants to force these VCs to register with SEC and file reports with them on their investors and their investments, so that investors will be protected from schemes such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This is odd. The SEC did not save anyone from Madoff though his firm was long registered with the SEC as an investment advisor and for decades as a broker-dealer. Very odd, indeed, it is. The Wall Street Journal Opinion piece by James Freeman linked to explains:

The entire venture capital industry is smaller than the Madoff fraud. VCs invest a total of $30 billion each year, far less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. financial transactions. Venture investors -- affluent individuals and institutions -- are putting up equity and know that they can lose it all. SEC regulation could have the same negative impact on them that it had on Madoff's investors: creating an illusion of safety in what is an inherently risky endeavor. Or the regulation could become so severe that it actually does eliminate risk from venture investing, killing the innovative ideas that can only be funded by risk-takers.

The VCs use very little debt. The banks dealing with them are well-secured by the assets of the companies for the small amounts they loan to them. There is no reason for Washington to poke its nosey nose into the VC business. There is a strong downside.

Attempts to limit risk pose a systemic threat to American technology. Venture capitalists, mainly veterans of the tech industry, are deeply involved in the companies they back, often helping to recruit each of the key employees at a start-up. This hands-on feature of venture investing means that innovative companies and their backers tend to cluster in areas like Silicon Valley. If the VCs move offshore, that's probably where the next generation of companies will be born.

Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers points out that the Democrats have already heavily burdened America's technology industry. Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed multimillion-dollar compliance costs since 2002. The SEC then forced companies to count stock options twice, once as dilution of stock and then as an expense. The result is already a disaster. Only one Silicon Valley company had an initial public offering of stock in all of 2008! Are the socialists purposely destroying the growth of Silicon Valley firms because Silicon Valley has had something of a reputation for being somewhat libertarian? I believe that this is a big factor in this attack on these rather independent-minded and innovative businessmen. The socialists hate business and they hate independence, rationality, and innovation even more.

Of course, we have already observed the socialists taking control of the banking and financial industries and not wanting to let go. We have seen them dictate who will manage GM and seen them micromanage which vehicles will be produced by American automakers, while dictating minimal changes for the United Auto Workers Union. They continue to encourage high risk home and auto loans for new purchases, while using the risk of defaults on prior risky loans as a club to gain control of banks and other financial institutions.

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring." [See the Washington Times, 10-11 April 2009 edition.] Thus, any environmentalist person, imagining that he may one day suffer harm from global warming, will be able to sue the U.S. government to take drastic action to prevent global warming. If they find a sympathetic court, the U.S. may be held responsible for the harm of what may well be results caused by natural forces, and forced to take drastic action against fossil fuel users whether they have in fact caused harm or not. It also rewards the massive contributors to socialism among the trial lawyers, once again.

The mandated extent of the replacement of dependable coal-fired electric power plant capacity with undependable wind and solar alternative energy sources will be certain to result in widespread electric blackouts. The governments will undoubtedly then play a role in further rationing energy, giving more to favored users and less to the politically unfavored. No doubt, unionized industries will be allowed more access to energy than will un-unionized businesses. Large companies with sufficient political pull (givers of large campaign contributions) will get energy, while small businesses will not get it.

The tax system is also to be skewed to give the socialists much more power. They tried to take the influence of wealthy people over charities away by greatly reducing the tax deduction for charitable giving by the wealthy. This was checked, for now. They use taxes as never before to put the wealthy under the feet of the mass of less wealthy voters. They are using the tax system to bind college graduates to their cause, which reinforces the tendency of young college graduates to spout the propaganda of socialism which they were infected with while in public high school and college. They will then be enrolled in government service agencies, which will complete their indoctrination. The tax system also favors selected industries such as the alternative energy industry, so that they become dependent clients of the socialists.

Rules favoring the easy unionization of small businesses will also favor the socialist-oriented unions and hurt an enemy of the socialist cause. The broadening of the Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions will give government another tool to control our lives, which they will also use to pick winners and losers based on political pull. Tariffs, created under the guise of discriminating against polluters, low-paid workers, and non-union labor users abroad, will give the socialists still another tool to use to pick winners and losers in American industry.

Make no mistake, the Obama socialist gang wants control of every aspect of your life. It is a massive extortion ring. They are seizing power rapidly and with a breadth of attack which is mind-boggling. This assault on the rights of the individual has been long dreamed of and long planned. The worst thing is that it was very clear that Obama was the Messianic leader of just such a gang during the election process, but most Americans refused to see what was almost immediately before their eyes. He still has most Americans hypnotized even as most are now beginning to criticize his various programs.