Government Aint So Good

 

This is a retort to the warm and fuzzy, yet wholly inaccurate Government is Good site.

I'll be adding subsequent chapters when I stop laughing. It may be a while. 

Part One (Of Your Vivisection): Prison by 8 AM

6:30 a.m. You are awakened by your clock radio. You know it is actually 6:30 because by law the National Institute of Standards and Technology is the only organization allowed to keep the official time regardless of how outdated, inefficient, or bloated this bureaucracy has become and how badly it has performed over the past century and hobbling our trade by keeping us on the Standard system when the rest of the world is Metric. And you can listen to your favorite radio station only because the Federal Communications Commission limits your choices and makes sure that radio, television, and cable remain monopolized and Byzantine. It ensures, for example, that radio stations do not overlap whose signals crowd our nation’s airwaves with many different "options" all owned by the same very few providers, but most importantly it gives the Federal government the power to pull the plug on anyone who doesn't tow the Party Line.  Hooray for the illusion of choice!

6:35 a.m. Like 17 million other Americans, you have asthma. You get out of bed you notice that you are breathing just as poorly as usual this morning. This is thanks in no small part to government clean air laws that reduce the air pollution that would otherwise greatly worsen your condition. that establish legal pollution levels allowing  polluters to continue killing 60, 000 people every year with the very air they breath.

6:38 a.m. You go into the kitchen for breakfast. You pour some water into your coffeemaker. You simply take for granted that this water is safe to drink. But in fact you count on your city water department to constantly monitor the quality of your water and to immediately take measures to correct any potential problems with this vital resource, just like the people in Flint Michigan could count on it when the Federal city manager appointed during the near bankruptcy of Flint did. The government’s Gold Standard for Lead in your drinking water. The prosecutor subsequently dropped all charges against the perpetrators. No one will ever be held accountable. No one will pay a price except the victims. Thanks Uncle Scam!

6:39 a.m. You flip the switch on the coffee maker. There is no short in the outlet or in the electrical line and there is no resulting fire in your house. Why? Because when your house was being built, the electrical system had to be inspected to make sure it was properly installed – a service provided by your local government that adds a considerable amount to the cost of your house and provides you with no warranty against poor workmanship, faulty materials, or even an improper inspection. However, the inspection ensures that you have complied with the many regulations and codes designed to keep certain manufacturers in business and prevent competition from others. And it was installed by an electrician who was licensed by your state government, which may or may not have anything to do with his competence, but certainly has a lot to do with his price, to ensure his competence and your safety both arbitrary standards set by lawyers with self interest in mind.  .

6:45 a.m. You sit down to breakfast with your family. You are having eggs – a food that brings with it the possibility of salmonella poisoning, a serious food-borne illness affecting tens of thousands of Americans every year. But the chance of you getting sick from these eggs has now been greatly reduced as far as individual cases, but do to the consolidation of the food industry and the failure of the USDA to do any meaningful food safety testing when there is an outbreak it affects thousands of people across 7 to 10 States, by a recently passed series of strict federal rules that apply to egg producers. Which if you actually bother to fact check, doesn’t ring true when you consider the “series of strict federal rules that apply to egg producers” amounts to “eliminate prescriptive regulations, including those requiring prior approval by FSIS of egg products plant drawings, specifications, and equipment”, some revisions in inspection that will cut inspectors hours and turn them into traveling spot checkers, and a lot of renaming things that have ZERO effect on food safety.

7:00 a.m. You go into your newly renovated bathroom – one of a number of amenities that you enjoy in your house. But the fact that you can legally own rent your house is something made possible by government who charges you rent every six months in the form of property taxes for the privilege of renting the home. Should you fail to pay this rent the government will come and throw you out of it and sell it to someone else. Think about this: “ownership” and “private property” are not things that exist in nature. These are legal constructs: things created by laws that are passed and enforced by government often to your detriment and the governments benefit. You couldn’t even buy your home without a system of commercial laws concerning contracts and a government that ensures that sales contracts are enforced. So the fact that you live in your own home is, in part, a benefit of government and the rule of law. That struck out section is complete tripe, and only contains a scintilla of truth in that government requires all the paperwork so they know who to tax. The fact that it stands up in court is by legal fiat and not some benevolent act by government in your interest. Private land sales and transfers have successfully existed for thousands of years without any government involvement or added expense.

7:01 a.m. Government also helps you own your house in more than the legal sense. Same tripe being restated as if it were true. On a more practical level, the federal government actually gives you money it stole from others every year to help pay for your house. It’s called theft  a  mortgage interest tax deduction and it is one of the larger smaller  thefts  benefit programs run by the federal government – amounting to over $60 billion dollars a year in loot. Which is actually a concession to the Real Estate sector as it makes it easier to sell homes and get buyers to qualify. The more efficient way to apply this would be not to tax money paid towards a mortgage at all. Thereby creating a tax free investment in America’s future. Unfortunate, “mortgage interest tax deduction” sounds like they’re doing something big for you when considering the size of the investment adds up to be a little bit of nothing. You can also deduct any real estate taxes rent you pay. These largely overlooked subsidy programs have enabled millions of people to buy their first home or to move up to a larger home than they could afford otherwise, and sometimes be  wiped out by government legislation and Federal Reserve intervention that set up the continuation of the spiraling housing bubble where we find ourselves in a death roll.

7:02 a.m. Back in the bathroom. You use the toilet and flush it. Your local government then takes care of transporting this waste, treating it, and disposing of it in an environmentally responsible manner – all without a second thought by you, until you get your exorbitantly high water bill and you have third and fourth thoughts over how the hell you can afford to keep renting your house. Later you discover that the water bill is mostly waste water treatment costs which used to be reasonable, but because of recent legislation some municipalities have been completely bankrupted by the new legal “safe water standards.”

7:20 a.m. As you are getting dressed, a glance outside the window shows some ominous clouds. You check the weather on your TV. All these weather forecasts are made possible by information gathered and analyzed by the National Weather Service, a government agency which just like the National Institute of Standards and Technology has a monopoly on weather prediction regardless of how often their predictions are wrong, how inefficient, or bloated the “Weather Shaman Principality” bureaucracy becomes, you will tithe to them . Every day, on your behalf, it takes in 190,000 weather observations from surface stations, 2,700 from ships, 115,000 from aircraft, 18,000 for buoys, 250,000 from balloons, and 140 million from satellites – all at a cost of $7 billion dollars whether you are happy with the service or not. ….all ostensibly just to help you plan what to wear and make sure you don’t get stuck in a snow storm, but who knows? Weathermen earned a reputation for being wrong a great deal while working for the overblown National Weather Service. And oh yes, this agency may save your life (or cost you your life) with its hurricane and tornado warnings, if they get it right for once.

7:30 a.m. Before you leave home, you take your pills to control your high blood pressure. But how do you know that this medicine is safe or effective? You don’t. Without the testing required by the Food and Drug Administration, you wouldn’t you still don’t. And with or without the vigilance of the FDA, you could still easily fall victim to unscrupulous marketers of unsafe and worthless medicines, like oxycodone which not only addicts you but disables you from getting back on your own two feet. Once addicted, thanks to the FDA claiming Oxies were less addictive than other opiates and “safe as aspirin” you fall into a life of crime trying to avoid withdrawal pains and feed your addiction. The DEA, DOJ, and local law enforcement will totally fail to notice hundreds of thousands of oxycodone pills flowing from mom and pop pharmacies every month. Additionally, they will think nothing of the lines of the newly addicted lined up for three blocks or wrapping around pharmacies nationwide for the better part of a decade. What law enforcement will not miss is your latest reckless crime spree and along with the DOJ send you off to prison for a few years where no one will care that all you did was go to the doctor for a broken ankle and 12 months later you ended up in prison thanks to the FDA!