At the same time, while I truly don’t begrudge assisting people who are struggling with serious illness, unemployment, family crises, or unexpected calamities, I find it quite disheartening that accessing a handout from the government is typically much easier than getting it out of the way so one can build a house, start a business, or hire a new employee (which can require a roomful of lawyers and accountants and the patience of Job!). For example, before my wife, Janet, and I could build our house along the Florida Panhandle Gulf Coast, we needed a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Because the permit was being sought at a time of devastation in the real estate and construction markets, with virtually no construction going on, getting a building permit should have been a snap. The DEP had the same number of employees working that area as they’d had during the boom times in 2004 to 2006, when there were dozens if not hundreds of permit applications being submitted. The window for DEP to issue a permit, once requested, was ninety days. The contractor assumed that since there were few if any applicants ahead of us, our permit might be granted much sooner, probably in thirty days at most. He had several crews of construction workers who hadn’t been on a job site in months, and this would give them their first real paychecks in quite a while. The sooner the permit was issued, the sooner these crews would go to work and get paid.
So, we submitted our application, and then … thirty days went by … forty-five days … sixty days … seventy-five days, and still no permit. A couple of times during this waiting period, DEP would ask our engineer or architect for some aspect of the plans that had already been sent. Our people would respond that the information had been sent, noting the date and even the acknowledgment from DEP that they’d received it. Their response was to channel the late Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella character from the early days of Saturday Night Live and say, “Never mind.” More days wasted. More days that working-class people were at home waiting instead of on the job, building. Finally, on about Day 88 of the process, the permit came. My contractor was understandably disgusted, as was I. It was costing everyone money—the contractor, the workers, me. The only people to whom it didn’t matter were the ones determining the timetable: the brick-wall bureaucrats at DEP, who took eighty-eight days of a ninety-day window to issue a simple permit that shouldn’t have taken more than a week.
Trying to bring some comfort to the contractor, or at least some explanation, I told him: “There’s a reason why that office would slow-walk the permit and take it right to the limit. If it were known that permits could be issued in far less time than ninety days, someone might determine that maybe there were more people than necessary in the DEP office. After all, since so many construction workers and real estate people were laid off during that time because of the lack of work, it would stand to reason that government employees serving the industry might need to experience some layoffs as well, to save the taxpayers some money. But if you think that, you don’t understand how government really works. Never mind how things work in the private sector, where money matters and if you aren’t making any, then you have to cut expenses. In the public sector, you just slow everything down and continue to insist that you need more employees and a bigger budget. Cutting expenses equals survival in the private sector economy, but suicide in the public sector economy. Never, ever forget that!”
Most Americans agree that some regulations are sensible and defensible. We would like to know that the airplane we’re flying in has been inspected by someone other than Goober Pyle down at the filling station. We want to know that the drugs being injected into our child’s veins for his Eustachian tube surgery were thoroughly tested first and are known to be safe. We feel better if someone inspects a suspension bridge over the Mississippi River before we drive a car full of grandkids across it. Yes, there are some things government can and should do as a way of providing some protection to those of us who might not have the time or expertise to test drugs, bridges, or airplanes.
I realize some of my libertarian friends would end pretty much all government regulation and let the market decide, but some of us fear that by the time the “market” figures out that a particular restaurant is serving salmonella, some of us might already be dead.
But even the most Big Government–loving, die-hard liberal Democrat should think about the unintended consequences of taking oversight to the level of overkill. An example from Florida illustrates: Fort Walton Beach is not too many miles from where I currently live and spend most of my time. In January 2014, the city council voted 3–2 to outlaw the practice of local churches allowing homeless people to sleep at the church without a permit from the city. The reason given was that it might not be safe for homeless people to sleep in a church facility that hadn’t been inspected by the fire marshal, the health department, the building code inspector, and God only knows who else. City manager Michael Beedie said, “We can’t allow them to sleep in the doorways. We can’t allow them to sleep in the halls” [Northwest Florida Daily News, “FWB May Enforce Tougher Standards for Cold Night Shelters,” January 15, 2014]. (No, of course we can’t. So we’ll just let them sleep on park benches or on the beach—that’s much better.) At least six area churches were sent scrambling to get permits so they could continue their ministry to people nobody else really wanted to deal with. The city council indicated that it was considering spending up to $30,000 to hire a consultant to study the issue of homelessness and make recommendations, which might include going out and building or buying a facility that would accommodate them.
Here’s what I find hard to understand: Churches were already providing the services for free as a ministry, but the city would rather hire a consultant for $30K and then spend considerably more so the city could do at great cost what was already being done at no cost. Yep, that’s how Big Government thinks and acts!
I don’t mean to be overly critical of the city council. The council genuinely thought it would be helpful to have city inspectors check on the facilities to make sure they had good fire escapes, hot water that met the code, and safe food to serve the homeless. But if a person is eating out of dumpsters, sleeping on a park bench or in a car, and shivering under a donated blanket on a cold night, doesn’t an unregulated church building where there’s food, bedding, a shower, and some warmth represent an improvement? And the fact that it’s being done by caring people who get paid nothing means it’s not at taxpayer expense. The city did not address the amount of money churches might have to spend to comply with all the rules, but it did announce they would give the permits at “no cost.”
Well, la-de-freaking-da! How very generous of the city not to charge the churches to do what it otherwise would likely have ended up doing in some form—including charging some of the homeless with vagrancy and locking them up in a nice, state-approved jail cell. If the churches were running the shelter as a commercial enterprise and charging homeless people for the beds, clothes, showers, and meals, then I’d be a bit more sympathetic to the city for wanting to make sure things were on the up-and-up. But if no one had filed a complaint and the homeless people seemed better off than they’d be on the streets begging for coins, one would hope that what the city would be saying to the churches is Thank you.
In Shreveport, the Louisiana State Health Department ordered 1,600 pounds of venison to be destroyed. This deer meat—worth $8,000—had been donated by hunters to give to the homeless, but health department bureaucrats rushed in and saved those hungry homeless people from putting their teeth into some of the leanest, healthiest protein that humans can eat because the state hadn’t “approved” it. The homeless people did—they would have appreciated that meat. But it was taken to the dumpster, and those valiant and courageous protectors of the public poured bleach all over it to make sure it wouldn’t be consumed. (Never mind that this bleach-contaminated meat might have poisoned scavenging animals.)
The bureaucrats’ reasoning: This deer meat is not allowed to be served, even when it’s been processed at a slaughterh
ouse permitted by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture, because government inspectors weren’t there to verify how the deer were killed and how the meat was prepared and stored.
The Louisiana Health Department issued a statement that said, “We must protect the people who eat at Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow potentially serious health threats to endanger the public.” Excuse me, but isn’t hunger and starvation a much greater threat to the public than some deer meat? This was well-prepared meat; it’s not as if someone had dragged in a pile of roadkill and said, “Here ya go!” Gee, I eat meat year-round from the deer I take during hunting season; I guess I’m not worth much to the government because they don’t stop me from eating it or serving it to guests at my house. Considering the amount of venison I eat each year, it’s a miracle I’m not dead already. And my dinner guests must get horribly sick!
Public outrage at this insane overreach resulted in legislation being introduced that would allow hunters to donate meat and game for the hungry and homeless. The only thing more absurd than dumping 1,600 pounds of perfectly good meat into a dumpster and pouring bleach over it is having to pass a law that allows generous hunters to share the very food they feed their families with people who are poor. That’s right—we actually need laws that allow one to be kind.
I am a hunter and I eat what I hunt. I’m not an animal hater; I’m an animal lover. I love them baked, fried, roasted, grilled, sautéed, steamed, smoked, and poached. Kidding aside, I am very respectful of the life of the animal. I never take the shot without trying to make sure it will be accurate and the animal will go down immediately and not suffer. I’m also aware that without a deliberate harvest of certain animal species such as deer, they would overpopulate, become starved and sick, and ultimately face a cruel death. I know that part of the “circle of life” is hard to swallow (pun intended) for PETA members, but it’s the way God made the natural world. One of the most awful things I ever saw was a severely diseased deer venturing into a field where I was hunting. He was a 10-point buck that normally would have been a real trophy for south Arkansas, but he was sick and wasting and obviously suffering. Taking down a deer is usually for the sake of putting meat on the hunter’s table, but in this case, it was to end the irreversible misery of a once proud and strong buck. No one who sees a deer in that condition and wants such horrible suffering to continue can be called an animal lover.
In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill that would have sent all of $10,000 to farmers in Texas for seeds to help them through an especially hard drought. His reason? “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,” wrote Cleveland. This doesn’t mean that he was hard-hearted and didn’t care about the farmers. It means he knew it was his sworn job as President to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. He knew not to try to redefine the role of the federal government. He clearly would be appalled to see what D.C.—and specifically the President—is up to these days.
We’ve drifted quite a distance from the original design of our federal government. The Founders were scared senseless that government would try to grow and stick its national nose into the people’s liberty, so they tossed in a few exclamation points at the end of the Constitution that we know as the Bill of Rights. They wanted to make it double-dog definite that future members of Congress wouldn’t take it upon themselves to pull a “Captain Kirk” on the people and “boldly go where no man has gone before.” The fact that Congress (and, incidentally, the other two branches) ignored their prescribed boundaries, not only veering off course but heading in the opposite direction of the original intent, is testament to their stubbornness and arrogance.
Our country was built on the bedrock belief that government was to be limited and local. Limited, because government can grow only by feeding on the liberty of the ones being governed. If government tells me how bright the lightbulbs on my porch can be, my liberty as it relates to my own property has been taken from me and transferred to the government. The classic lie, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” might well be translated, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to control you because we think you’re too stupid to make decisions on your own.”
Also, government was intended to be as local as possible, because the more local it is, the more accountable it is to the people who are being governed. Think about it this way: If you and your family sat down and decided what to have for dinner, that would be called a “family decision.” If your neighbors all came over and you decided what to have for dinner, that would be called a “potluck dinner” where I come from. If the federal government sent you a decree and told you what to have for dinner, that would be called insanity, otherwise known as the official policy of the Democrat party.
Most people would prefer to make their own decisions about dinner and a lot of other things, but in this day of inviting Uncle Sugar to take care of you, more and more decisions will be made for you rather than by you, and they will be made by people so far from you that you will never know or even meet them. Worse, those people will never know you. This is why any power not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution is supposed to be off-limits to the federal government. How has that worked out for you?
The value of local decisions is that you will likely get to participate in them. A proposal to build a new park in your neighborhood probably requires that some meetings be held before your city council and planning commission. If you love the idea, it’s probably within driving distance for you to slip into the meeting and say so. Try going to D.C. and getting your voice heard on Capitol Hill without hiring a high-priced lobbyist and/or making huge, strategic campaign contributions. You may as well howl at the moon!
Let’s be fair in at least acknowledging that government grows because the people demand it. I found out as governor that even self-proclaimed libertarians and “real conservatives” are against more government until they are for it. We end up with laws being passed and boards, agencies, and commissions being created because people sit around whining about something or somebody they don’t like and sooner or later someone pipes up and says, “There ought to be a law!” It might be a law to make people pick up their dog’s poop on the sidewalk or a law declaring that when a pedophile molests a little girl, he has to serve life in prison. No argument there, but just know that when someone says “There ought to be a law,” you’ll need to reach into your wallet. It’s going to cost you. Of course, no one thinks that the part of government they want is bad—it’s “the right thing to do.” But once we create a law, we have to hire someone to see that it’s being obeyed. Then we need someone to enforce the law. And someone to adjudicate the law if it’s broken. And someone to carry out the punishment of the person who broke the law.
Every law is like that. In a perfect world—if all people were naturally good neighbors who never did selfish things but always acted in the best interest of others—we wouldn’t need nearly so many laws. The proliferation of laws is directly proportional to our failure to live by the “Golden Rule” that my mother drilled into me when I was growing up: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Many of our laws exist to deal with those situations caused by people who just “do unto others.”
No one wants to be beaten to a pulp by a thug, so if everyone abided by the Golden Rule, no one would get beaten by a thug. By definition, there would be no thugs. There would be no domestic violence because no one wants to be a victim of domestic violence. There would be no theft because no one wants to have his or her stuff stolen. There would be no littering because no one wants his own yard covered in someone else’s trash.
We pass laws when people don’t behave kindly toward others. By and large, that’s what inspires someone to say, “There ought to be a law!” And the next thing you know, there is one. Soon there are pages and pages of them.
This is why I feel I must educate my hardcore libertarian friends who say, “You can’t legislate morality. I don’t want the government
involved in moral or social issues.” But that’s exactly why we pass laws at all. When people act immorally or without regard for others, laws get passed to set a standard of behavior that would have existed naturally and organically if we all demonstrated a little empathy.
A free people can’t exist in a moral vacuum. Liberty is more abundant when the personal behavior of the citizenry is abundantly moral. When people steal, attack, defraud, abuse, or kill, citizens want the government to crack down. Laws will be passed and government will grow to more clearly define the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
When someone violates our law, it costs money to investigate the crime, arrest the criminal, pay for his trial (and often for his attorney), and incarcerate him. The cost just for incarceration is staggering. In most every state, it costs more to keep someone in prison for one year than it would to provide college tuition, room and board, books, and even some spending money! The monetary burden created by people who act in contradiction to the morality of the community is far greater than most people realize. It’s the cost of paying sandblasters to remove graffiti from buildings and bridges; the cost of juvenile detention homes; the cost of more expensive insurance premiums to cover theft; the cost of policing, surveillance, and enforcement on our streets; and the higher cost of products on the shelves to cover stores’ losses due to shoplifting.
And while some call for longer prison sentences and the end of parole, those modifications dramatically increase a state’s prison budget. It was my observation that some people who labeled themselves “fiscal conservatives” never saw the disconnect between their call to increase the cost of government and their pride in not raising taxes to pay for it. This is where priorities must come into play; an increase in one area of the budget means a decrease—a real decrease, not just a fool-the-eye accounting trick—somewhere else.
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