So finding ways to devalue older houses serves his needs nicely.

Our economy is now based on selling homes to each other at higher and higher prices, and using the magic equity from each inflated price to buy imports from China. We need to keep this going for another few years!

Please see my earlier comment. Belief in the toxicity of lead has, in my opinion, become a religious belief. Listen to the evangelist talk about fighting off Satan. It’s the same thing. Suppose one saws a board that had been painted by lead paint. The disturbed surface area is small compared to the total surface of a board and any lead released from the sawing would be minute indeed. Such released lead will settle out and be picked up by a vacuum cleaner or adhere to a wall surface for decades. The probability of it be ingested is as near zero as near zero gets.

I am reminded of Barry Scheck’s argument that when Mr. Fung removed the cap from the vial containing OJ’s blood, a partial vacuum released OJ’s DNA into the air. It did not go out the ventilation system, attach to clothing, or adhere to a wall or the floor. No it landed on the swabs from the real killer and obliterated the DNA of the real killer.

If Barry Scheck’s argument makes sense to you, then you are beyond hope. So too with the lead scare.

Say what, now?

Licensing and regulations are not wrong per se. Licensing of doctors, dentists, and barbers is a good thing, and the life insurance companies owned by AIG and regulated by New York State survived the blow to AIG caused by the poorly regulated Financial Products division.

This is a case of excess regulation only because incidental lead is not a dangerous toxin. The inane rules for lead paint were driven in large part by the need of plaintiff’s lawyers to frighten the jury pool for their extortionate litigation. Then we have idiotic pediatric doctors who go along with the nonsense to protect the children. Not only do these regulations harm average middle class home re-modelers, they make painting the Pulaski Skyway prohibitively expensive.

For religion to work as I indicated, the group had to distinguish their members from interlopers. You can’t use the square root of sixteen as a test as that can be figured out. Instead rituals and creeds are used, as long as the ritual or creed has no rational determinism. I did not attend church for some years before my grandmother’s funeral. I stood when I should have kneeled, and sat when I should have stood during her mass.

Thus religion will select for those who accept a group’s orthodoxy, such as the belief in a virgin birth. The asversion to toxins is a religious belief, and cleaning up is a cause. The regulations against lead make no sense at all scientifically but James August and other jealots control our regulatory institutions.

Our legal and political institutions are inefficient in handling this form of Religious extremism. It took 15 years to stop the Breast Implant Litigation. There is a widely held irrational belief that the air near the former World Trade Center was contaminated, even though the air was constantly refreshed and no measuring device had positive readings. (There was a dubious claim of one positive reading.) Representative Adler and others allocated about $800 million dollars to bogus claims and plaintiff’s lawyers.

The Catholic Church was hoisted by its own petard in being crucified by bad litigation that passed billions of its members’ dollars to phony claims. (And the evidence is strong that all the claims came from suggestion and access to money.)

I wish that I knew how to improve the situation. It is not just dumb Americans, as Europeans are just as bad. I take some comfort from Mr. Olson’s coverage of CPSIA and of this home restoration fiasco. Thank you, Mr. Olson.