There ought to be a law...
There ought to be a law...
Most likely there already is, just awaiting some eager bureaucrat’s fleshing out of implementing regulations. That’s the real problem today, so many more bureaucrats at all levels of government with more power than ever before.
It’s said that 40 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product goes for local, state and federal government spending. So it’s no surprise that most of Washington’s vast economic stimulus funds have gone to prop up unproductive government activities and staffing. Those shovels are still ready and waiting, and waiting.
When Congress passed a law to set up the Environmental Protection Agency, who could have imagined that someday it would be empowered to dictate how much carbon dioxide we may legally exhale? But that’s the case today.
Or who would have thought the Consumer Product Safety Commission would try to regulate even what’s sold at neighborhood yard sales? Hello. Ditto for light bulbs
If promoted by an agency or official influential enough, even the looniest government programs often see the wasteful light of day. To wit: The cash for clunkers program. You would think its promoter would have been run out of town by now. Think again. The idea is now being applied to household appliances.
And Washington pressures us to swap our SUVs for miniature cars, explaining that the resulting increase in highway death and crippling injury is a small price to pay for decreased carbon emissions.
Even the Washington Post sees the light: “[Obama appointees] are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace.”
As a result of such foolishness, our taxes will surely rise and government will go ever deeper into debt while raising, for example, our energy and health care costs. Debt may be hard to understand, but look at it this way. It’s said that 40 percent of individual income taxes this year will go to pay just for the interest on the debt.
Proliferating laws, regulations and enforcers are choking whatever is left of initiative in the private, profit-seeking sector--the lifeblood of our formerly vigorous economy. Do you feel “sound as a dollar?” Really that bad, huh.
And let’s admit what else stares everyone in the face. Most government bureaucracies protect sloth and wastefulness, not thrift. It’s no accident that the largest employee unions are located right there in the innards of government.
“[Supreme government] covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence...”--French historian Alexis de Tocqueville
Meantime here in 2009 we get sidetracked from what’s important by silly campaigns like the crusade against global warming. For perspective, consider: Just as American Indians once danced around the fire to make it rain out west, global warming gurus will huddle in Copenhagen to make it cool. They will thus further confirm doubts about the evolution of “man,” especially since one such specimen a million years older than our previously honored eldest has been unearthed. Our latest contra-indication: Congress.
Tea Parties, anyone?
Most likely there already is, just awaiting some eager bureaucrat’s fleshing out of implementing regulations. That’s the real problem today, so many more bureaucrats at all levels of government with more power than ever before.
It’s said that 40 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product goes for local, state and federal government spending. So it’s no surprise that most of Washington’s vast economic stimulus funds have gone to prop up unproductive government activities and staffing. Those shovels are still ready and waiting, and waiting.
When Congress passed a law to set up the Environmental Protection Agency, who could have imagined that someday it would be empowered to dictate how much carbon dioxide we may legally exhale? But that’s the case today.
Or who would have thought the Consumer Product Safety Commission would try to regulate even what’s sold at neighborhood yard sales? Hello. Ditto for light bulbs
If promoted by an agency or official influential enough, even the looniest government programs often see the wasteful light of day. To wit: The cash for clunkers program. You would think its promoter would have been run out of town by now. Think again. The idea is now being applied to household appliances.
And Washington pressures us to swap our SUVs for miniature cars, explaining that the resulting increase in highway death and crippling injury is a small price to pay for decreased carbon emissions.
Even the Washington Post sees the light: “[Obama appointees] are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace.”
As a result of such foolishness, our taxes will surely rise and government will go ever deeper into debt while raising, for example, our energy and health care costs. Debt may be hard to understand, but look at it this way. It’s said that 40 percent of individual income taxes this year will go to pay just for the interest on the debt.
Proliferating laws, regulations and enforcers are choking whatever is left of initiative in the private, profit-seeking sector--the lifeblood of our formerly vigorous economy. Do you feel “sound as a dollar?” Really that bad, huh.
And let’s admit what else stares everyone in the face. Most government bureaucracies protect sloth and wastefulness, not thrift. It’s no accident that the largest employee unions are located right there in the innards of government.
“[Supreme government] covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence...”--French historian Alexis de Tocqueville
Meantime here in 2009 we get sidetracked from what’s important by silly campaigns like the crusade against global warming. For perspective, consider: Just as American Indians once danced around the fire to make it rain out west, global warming gurus will huddle in Copenhagen to make it cool. They will thus further confirm doubts about the evolution of “man,” especially since one such specimen a million years older than our previously honored eldest has been unearthed. Our latest contra-indication: Congress.
Tea Parties, anyone?
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:10 AM
