The ridiculous legal battle over “the ugliest building in America”

In 1871, as the Reconstruction-era US federal government was growing ever larger, work began on a massive office building in Washington DC to house the growing departments of State, War, and Navy.

It would become known as the SWaN building, and it was designed in the high fashion of its time—the grandiose and gaudy French Second Empire style.

Naturally, though, this being a government project, it took 17 years to finish, at which point the architecture was already out of style.

The building became widely mocked and deeply unpopular; Mark Twain reportedly called it “the ugliest building in America,” and it remained that way for quite some time. Even half a century later, then-President Harry Truman called it “the greatest monstrosity in America.”

It was so ugly that the US government even considered tearing it down in the 1950s.

But the sheer cost and logistical nightmare of demolishing a granite behemoth— just steps from the White House— ultimately spared it. Congress wisely decided that the cost wasn’t worth the benefit. (They seem to have since forgotten how to conduct this analysis.)

It was renamed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in 1999, and today it still looms— gray, streaked with a century of grime, right next door to the White House. The interior has been renovated, but the exterior looks every bit the weathered Victorian artifact it is.

This is why President Trump recently suggested—casually in an interview—that he might clean it up and paint it white.

You’d think something as trivial as cleaning and painting a government building would be no big deal, squarely within the authority of the executive.

But not in America.

Instead, the President was once again sued. What else is new.

On November 14, the “DC Preservation League” and a law firm called Cultural Heritage Partners filed a complaint in federal court to block anything from happening to the Eisenhower Building, “without first complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”), and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”).”

That’s right, no fewer than three pieces of federal legislation regulate how the government itself can clean and paint one of its own buildings.

If that weren’t ridiculous enough, the plaintiffs have actually demanded an emergency hearing (which has been scheduled for December 8) just to make extra certain that NO WORK can begin on the building.

Sadly this is hardly the first time the executive branch has been sued for doing… well, just about anything.

Earlier this year, Florida built a temporary immigration detention center—nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”—on federal land inside the Everglades. The project was done fast, clean, and by government standards, miraculously on budget. Modular pods, floodlights, fences, power, sewage—everything needed to house illegal immigrants detained under state law.

But the site happened to sit inside land managed by the National Park Service. So environmental groups had their excuse to obstruct!

Backed by the Miccosukee Tribe, they rushed into court claiming the facility violated NEPA, interfered with tribal land, and posed some unspecified threat to various birds and bats.

And on August 21, a federal judge issued an 82-page ruling that ordered the site shut down, all detainees relocated, and every bit of infrastructure dismantled within 60 days.

(The state appealed, and for now, the facility remains open while the case works its way through the courts—yet another federal project stuck in legal limbo with no final ruling in sight.)

With hundreds of thousands of federal rules on the books, all it takes is one endangered bat or obscure procedural statute to grind any project to a halt. It’s lawfare, plain and simple— not against any specific person, but against basic reason and progress.

It’s so out of control that government employees cannot be fired— and can sue anyone who tries.

Back in February, the President issued Executive Order 14210 directing federal agencies to reduce headcount—i.e. fire bureaucrats. Many of these bureaucrats couldn’t tell you what their job actually is, because nobody’s asked them in 30 years.

The government unions sued. And, unsurprisingly, an activist federal judge in Northern California granted a nationwide injunction, freezing the order while the case dragged through the courts.

It made its way to the Supreme Court by July, where diversity-hire Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took it upon herself to write a 15-page manifesto howling that these proposed layoffs represented a “wrecking ball” against democracy.

When President Trump moved to prevent executive agencies from contracting with the law firm Perkins Coie—and to suspend their security clearances—another lawsuit followed.

This is the same law firm that helped bankroll the now-debunked Steele Dossier, acting as middleman for Clinton campaign money in the 2016 Russiagate operation.

But another activist federal judge stepped in, siding with Perkins Coie in a bloated, sanctimonious 100-page ruling invoking Shakespeare and de Tocqueville—while somehow forgetting to include, oh I don’t know, an actual legal argument rooted in the law.

If this is the kind of obstruction the federal bureaucracy throws at the President of the United States, imagine what it does to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and anyone in the private sector trying to build, hire, or innovate.

We can only hope this kind of absurdity motivates the current administration to take a machete to the regulatory state and finally free up the economy to produce. Then again, they’d probably get sued for that too.

Ultimately it’s all a sad reflection on the current state of America. It’s hard to be considered a serious country when you can’t even paint an office building.

Source

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur and permanent traveler. His daily letter is both educational and entertaining, and we suggest that those who want unbiased, actionable information about global opportunities sign up for Sovereign Man’s free, actionable newsletter at http://www.SovereignMan.com.

From Simon Black of SovereignMan.com

Source: https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-ridiculous-legal-battle-over-the-ugliest-building-in-america-153926/