Guest Op-Ed: A new regulatory czar?

Increasing numbers of Americans from all walks of life are beginning to harbor deep-seated fears about President Barack Obama's "Regulatory Czar" nominee Cass Sunstein.

They fear he would use his radical position on animal rights to devastate the agricultural industry - and the elderly community as well.

Those fears are both widespread - and justified.

For instance, in a paper entitled "The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer," Sunstein observes, "that there should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments and in agriculture." The paper also asserts that "there is a strong argument, in principle, for bans on many current uses of animals."

In the same paper, Sunstein suggests that the government should endorse actions of persons attempting to act on behalf of animals, "to bring private suits to ensure that anti-cruelty and related laws are actually enforced. If a farm is treating horses cruelly ... a suit could be brought, on behalf of those animals ...."

In short, Cass Sunstein is all set to unleash greedy trial lawyers on every farmer in America. Failed presidential candidate (and successful procreator) John Edwards must be jumping for joy.

Finally, in his animal rights opus, Sunstein opines that " meat-eating would be acceptable if decent treatment is given to the animals used for food."

And who would determine what that "decent treatment" would be?

Why, the very same man who believes in inflicting "extensive regulation" on every farmer in American trying to ply his daily trade. Cass Sunstein by name, radical regulator by trade, scourge of the agriculture industry by any measure imaginable.

Not that Mr. Sunstein confines his far-out views to four-legged animals alone. He also has some bizarre rules and regulations in store for those of us who are of the two-legged variety as well. And as you might have guessed , they dovetail perfectly with the "toss-the-seniors-overboard" philosophy of his benefactor, Barack Obama.

For his part, Sunstein couches his "death-care rationing" in such cold economical terms that one can almost hear the chi-chinging of the cash register in the background. To Sunstein, you see, offing the elderly is all a matter of Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Sunstein has proposed that, wherever the effectiveness of a policy is examined using a Cost/Benefit Analysis, government agencies should adopt a standard that takes into account a person's age. This standard he readily admits "would likely result in significantly lower benefits calculations for elderly people, and significantly higher benefits calculations for children."

For Sunstein, "A program that saves younger people is better ... than an otherwise identical program that saves older people." So he suggests that, "in producing regulatory impact analyses, agencies should ... [use] life-years as well as lives ... in deciding what to do."

<B>Editor's Note:</B> Victor Morawski is a professor at Coppin State University and a Liberty Features syndicated writer.