Month: November 2015

Last week, I drew a word picture about the outrageous growth of the federal government and its cadre of domineering agencies. I likened them to a bad case of acne. At issue was the BLM’s charges against members of the Hammond family who are facing sentencing under Bill Clinton’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Some people thought the word picture was too disgusting. I actually don’t think it was strong enough. After all, most of us outgrew our teenage acne problems. So my comparison makes it seem as though these agencies aren’t that bad because we all survived our adolescent bouts with acne.

It turns out acne does’t invoke the powerful imagery that is necessary to illustrate the fatal nature of these tyrannical bureaucracies. Acne is not terminal and is nothing like the plague, small pox or Ebola. Today’s federal intrusions are more serious, more akin to a metastasizing cancer.

A metastatic cancer is a cancer that grows and spreads through the body’s own bloodstream. As it spreads it takes root and spawns more growth. This grow/spawn/spread scenario is eventually fatal because the host’s systems slowly get drained of their normal function and utility.

However, cancer too, is a more localized tragedy. It may have affected you, a relative or a friend, but it doesn’t indiscriminately attack a culture or society. The federal government, on-the-other-hand, is an all-consuming force.

We see this force hammering against industries like Obama’s war on coal, or the governments actions against hydro-power, mining, cattle ranching or timber harvesting.

It even strikes at the heart of our nation’s communities, families and individuals. It is happening to good people like the Hammond’s in Oregon, the Bundy’s and Hage’s in Nevada and Andy Johnson in Fort Bridger, Wyoming.

In order to grasp the unrestricted and arbitrary nature of the swollen power housed within these bureaucracies thumb through a few pages of this documentation for the BLM v E. Wayne Hage case.

Here it becomes plain that by using our tax dollars, the federal agencies can continue to pursue outrageous legal actions despite the Court’s contempt rulings against the conduct of the BLM Manager and USFS Rangers. The bureaucrats at these federal agencies are tireless when it comes to using our tax dollars to win their fights against our families.

Throughout human-history vast accumulations of power have created more problems than they’ve solved. The federal government does not have undifferentiated ‘governmental power.’ Instead, the constitution vests three different branches with three unique types of power – power for legislating, executing and adjudicating the fairness of any actions.

During the 1787 Constitutional debate the Anti-Federalists wrote extensively on their skepticism for the long-term success of such a vast central government run by fallen men:

“The powers vested in Congress by this [proposed] constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government, which… will be an iron banded despotism.”

This annihilation and absorption of state powers is not like an internal cancer because it is an over-powering external force. It is more like a predator consuming its prey. It exerts crushing power against each independent and sovereign state.

The Founders recognized that pervasive power could be the, “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government.”  This in turn would be, “the means of annihilating the constitutions of the several states, and consequently, the liberties of the people.”

In this sense, today’s concentrated federal power is more dangerous than ever. Congress has abdicated their constitutional responsibility to legislate and this abandonment has led to the insidious bureaucratic and regulatory growth that we witness today. Additionally, the House of Representatives consistently refuses to exercise their  “Power of the Purse” to limit the growth of government and protect, preserve and secure the inherent rights and dignity of the American people.

Congress’ continual surrender works like this: First, Congress passes a very generic law to manage “Federal lands to meet the needs of present and future generations.”  This legislative function, however, does not provide many specifics. Even ObamaCare and ObamaTrade (Affordable Care Act, Trans-Pacific Partnership agreements) at nearly 10,000 pages of legalese leave most of the real dirty work to Executive level Cabinet members, not Congress.

This tactic authorizes various unelected commissions, bureaus or departments to create and empower other bureaucracies, such as the BLM, USFS, BOR, FWS, NPS, EPA, etc. to establish benchmarks, science and goals set by special interest groups intent on gaming the system.

Each of these new regulations comes complete with a phalanx of enforcement measures, such as, fines, permits, fees and operating restrictions (i.e., the force of law).  When these new regulations crush a citizen, family or an entire community we often hear the perpetually re-elected incumbent rail against the bureau’s actions.

Yet, Congress created this status-quo and they continually provide vast sums of borrowed money to fund it.

We see it constantly. Agencies routinely make regulations, administer the rules and adjudicate any complaints or appeals. By their very nature these administrative agencies are unconstitutional because they violate the intrinsic principle of consensual governance which stems from the separation of powers.

As the federal government becomes more corrupt and disengaged from its responsibility to, “We the People” the concentrated power becomes evermore treacherous. These agencies glow with absurd arrogance and self-righteousness while demeaning wholesome citizens.

This fatal corruption flows continually from the core. It diligently usurps state and local authority with a steady stream of new rules and regulations published in the Federal Registry. This registry is itself the bloated encyclopedia of administrative abuses costing taxpayers hundreds of billions. Politicians, in turn, make more exotic promises and gather more special interest groups, crony-capitalists or citizens as favored constituents.

Our fight is to reign in out-of-control bureaucracies and return America to it’s roots founded in personal responsibility, individual liberty, free-market ingenuity and a government intent on securing the God-given, unalienable rights of the American people.

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man,
but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

–Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798