Quis
Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
"Who
Keeps the Keepers Themselves"
One of the
most disturbing trends in American society over the past 40 years is the
tendency to rely on government to provide safety and security in our daily
lives. Regulatory agencies have multiplied to the point where either
federal or state governments monitor virtually every aspect of life. If
some unscrupulous person rips off a few Americans, there are immediate calls
for government regulation of that person's industry or trade. This has
become an accepted practice by a majority of Americans.
Before calling for government control and regulation, there are some important
questions that Americans need to ask themselves:
Are
there really government "experts" available who have the education,
training and experience to oversee the field?
Especially in those industries on the "cutting edge", the government
regulators are often many years behind the innovators in industry in their
education, training and experience. Yet the American public somehow
thinks if only government regulators are involved, the public will be
protected. What really happens is one of two things: 1. Either the
government regulators must rely on the true experts in the private sector for
their information and therefore are open to being misled or used by the certain
segments of that industry to control competition; 2. Or, they must learn about
what's going on in the specialized field (if they're capable of understanding
the new technologies or areas of experimentation) and really serve only to
unnecessarily slow down the progress of the field they're trying to regulate.
Most often, a combination of the two results in corrupt regulators who only
seek to protect their "new jobs" and a further erosion of the freedom
of American citizens in general and specifically in the freedom of innovators
to develop new products and complete research. The resulting loss of
freedom is accompanied by increased costs in innovative products and less
innovation.
Does
government regulation really provide safety for the public and improve the
delivery of goods and services?
One of the most striking answers to this question is found in the field of
long-term care. Strong, pervasive regulation of the long-term care
industry came into being in the 1980's with the regulation of skilled-nursing
homes, assisted living facilities and mental health facilities. At either
the federal and state levels, government regulates almost every aspect of life
for a person needing long-term care. The facilities themselves must go
through an expensive and rigorous process to obtain licenses or permits to
operate; federal and state agencies decide in what type of facility a person
may receive long term care; the facilities must occasionally undergo
rigorous inspection in which the regulators (who are often untrained and
without experience in long term care) deliberately attempt to find infractions
even when the facility has been running successfully and without complaint from
those who use the facilities.
As this essayist has learned from personal experience, these regulators are
often corrupt and not above setting out on vendettas against owners of long
term care facilities simply to demonstrate the regulator's power or in an
effort to extort bribes or other considerations from the owners. In
Georgia, the regulators from top to bottom in the personal care home industry
are mostly inept and are often corrupt — accepting payoffs and favors from the
skilled-care nursing home proponents seeking to insure the continued full
occupancy of the skilled-care nursing homes.
This has resulted in the placement monitoring in expensive and institutional
skilled-care nursing homes of persons needing only minor help with daily
activities and having no need of skilled nursing care or continuous medical
care. As the state regulators themselves admit, up to 40% of those in
skilled care nursing homes would be better off in assisted living facilities.
Outside sources assert the number of nursing home residents who do not need
skilled nursing care or continuous medical monitoring as high as 70%.
The overall results are the essential incarceration of thousands of elderly,
handicapped persons in institutions who would be better off in the more
residential setting of assisted living facilities (personal care homes in
Georgia) and the outright theft of more than $300,000,000.00 annually from
Georgia taxpayers in the form of Medicaid payments to skilled-care nursing
homes for people who would be much better off in other facilities. This
pattern is repeated in every state in the union.
In the regulation of long-term care, US taxpayers are being ripped for at least
$45 Billion annually in the name of "protecting" the elderly,
handicapped and mentally ill and thousands of them are unreasonably
incarcerated in institutions instead of being allowed to live out their lives
in more normal fashions.
How
much freedom are we willing to give up in the search for "safety" and
"security"?
In the
well-meaning "war on drugs", Americans have weakened our security from
oppressive and corrupt government by eroding the protections of the U. S.
Constitution's Bill of Rights protection against search and seizure by
government. Local, state and federal law enforcement officials routinely
confiscate personal property from those they suspect of drug activity. In
the process, they often seize the property of innocent citizens in violation of
the Constitution and it seems no one worries about it but the victims. The
victim's only recourse is to sue the government for redress and these cases are
not often won. The innocent victim's property may be returned but the victim
almost never receives reimbursement for the legal costs involved nor for their
time lost or damage to their property while in the hands of the authorities
In the methods of collecting taxes for government, we allow the government to
force our employers to withhold taxes from our paychecks (which is
unconstitutional) and our educational system is so poor that most people don't
even know how much tax they pay. We also allow the government to tax
corporations with impunity, which is only a method of indirectly taxing
citizens. Corporations do not pay taxes; they only collect the taxes in
the form of property, sales and use tax and pass these costs on to consumers
with higher prices of their products. Governments must be careful in
openly raising taxes so they avoid the appearance of raising taxes by levying
fees on almost every product and service produced in this country. We
have allowed government at all levels to now confiscate more than 50% of the
money we earn.
In the name of making American women more "equal", we have decimated
our military forces by social experimentation and "sensitivity"
training. If there's one thing a good soldier should not be subjected to,
it's "sensitivity" training. The purpose of the military is to
kill our enemies and break their capacity to harm us if there is no diplomatic
alternative protecting our nation.
In the name of highway "safety", we allow state and local governments
to confiscate billions of dollars annually from drivers whose only crime is
driving faster than an arbitrary speed limit. Any expert on highway
safety will confirm that speed alone is responsible for less than 3 % of the
fatalities on our highways. As Germany and many other countries have
proven, there is no appreciable rise in either accidents or fatalities when
there are no speed limits posted on autobahns (interstate highways).
In the name of "protecting" the poor, social programs, which have had
the exact opposite effect of their declared intentions, have wasted hundreds of
billions of taxpayer dollars. Aid to Families with Dependent Children and
other welfare programs have had the net result of further incarcerating
minority populations in inner cities and the resulting erosion of family
structures. This has had the further result a high percentage of children born
out of wedlock to minority and other populations in inner cities and millions
of abortions annually. Costly "housing projects" built on the
top of razed slums have themselves now become slums.
The list of the regulations and legislation, which have eroded personal freedom
in the USA, is almost endless. Yet an uninformed American populace led by
socialist, communists and liberal elites and their comrades and allies in the
mass media continue to call for more regulations and more loss of freedom.
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the other founders of this country must
figuratively spin in their graves twenty-four hours a day.
Conclusion
As I wrote on my blog
recently, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States and
the socialist expansion of government taking place with his administration and
the Democrat controlled Congress may present a setback from which this country
cannot recover. Read the short article
called “America’s King”.
The strongest
ray of hope in this otherwise dismal picture is the freedom of communication
that is expanding exponentially with wireless communication and the
Internet. Perhaps enough of the population can be educated through this
media to begin to reverse the slide toward totalitarian government and the
complete breakdown of American society. This would still require American
men having the cojones to actually do something about what they learn
and American women recognizing the trap that has been laid for them by the
militant feminization of our society.
Nothing lasts forever; the pendulum always reverses itself; Americans have
a tradition of freedom and self-reliance. Perhaps this country will survive
with most of its foundations intact.
The jury (another American/Western culture tradition) is still out.
Or click “back” on your browser to return to the previous page