By Ron Ewart
Every time government passes a law, the unintended consequences come back to "bite" those who must pay the bills of a government gone drunk with its own power and passing law, after law, after law. The worst bottom feeders in our culture, "law-yers", line up at the starting gate to see who can gorge on the biggest morsel of the new law first. Unions, socialist groups, environmentalists and almost every Tom, Dick and Mary special interest group, hire the "law-yers" and fight like a bunch of Hyenas, ripping flesh off of a rotting carcass, their snarling jaws dripping with red blood. The problem is, that flesh is being ripped off of the American taxpayer. Law-yers, who would hire out to a rock if it had any money, hide in the shadows, waiting to pounce on the next new law that comes along. Some are even engaged in writing the new law. After all, most politicians were law-yers first.
What attorney firms and special interest groups have learned, is that for each piece of legislation that a legislative body passes into law, there is a well-spring of riches to be made by suing the government for not complying with its own law. The more complicated the law, the more opportunity for untold wealth. Law-yers don't have to chase ambulances any more, they just follow the trail of the government and feed off the government's own excrement.
Let's take for example, the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In a recent memorandum dated May 26, 2010 (see "ESA Memo.pdf" attached) the Budd-Falen Law Offices (Cheyenne, Wyoming - yes, there are some good attorneys) outlined the legal cost to the American taxpayer for environmental groups "gorging" off of the ESA carcass. The ESA was signed into law in 1978. From the Budd-Fallen memorandum we learn that as of May 17, 2010, there are a total of 1,374 species listed as threatened or endangered. The list includes even bugs, worms, plants, snakes, spiders, bogs, moss, mice, rats and other species. According to a report, purportedly from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the average cost of listing a single species is $85,000 and the average cost of designating critical habitat is $515,000 per species. Thus, the approximate cost to the taxpayer for listing 1,374 species is $824,400,000. That's $824 million dollars folks, almost a billion dollars. But there is more. Federal agencies want to add 341 more species to the threatened and endangered list. If successful, that will cost the taxpayer an additional $204,600,000 at current estimates.
But this cost to the taxpayer is well before the cost of litigating whether or not a species will be listed, or the huge settlement awards to special interest groups and their law-yers for suing the government for not complying with every detail of the law. Over $11.7 million dollars in legal fees were paid to radical environmental groups and their law-yers because the government simply missed deadlines. We could go on about the millions of dollars in legal costs for individual species, but we're sure the reader gets the point.
But ESA doesn't even scratch the surface of the legal cost to the taxpayer of other federal, state and local legislation. Many groups have funded their entire operations by legally "feeding" off of almost every type and kind of legislation, including energy, water, food, health and a whole host of other acts and laws. The motive isn't to enforce the law, or for altruistic reasons, it is simply to enrich the "plaintiffs", at the taxpayers expense.
Now, just think of over 2,000 pages of Obama care and the opportunity to "game" the system for additional riches by those who care not one whit about health care, only about scamming the law for their own gain. Then add the 1,800 pages of the Cap and Trade bill working its way through Congress right now. But what of the over 1,000 pages of the new "Wall Street" regulations, soon to pass both houses of Congress? Talk about the untold treasure of the lost Dutchman gold mine. Law-yers must be salivating at the prospects.
Meanwhile, the stupid little American people just sit there and watch their taxes increase, their retirement accounts dwindle and their job prospects evaporate. Property rights go out the window and freedom, liberty and sovereignty are but a pipe maker's dream. In this scenario, whom are the dumb ones?
But it even gets worse. Add on top of all this legal black mail is the waste, fraud and abuse at the hands of those who occupy the great American bureaucracy. Government employees charging personal items on their government credit cards to the tune of millions of dollars. Government employees watching porn on government computers, instead of doing the jobs they were hired to do. Government employees, with management approval, buying "stuff" for their operations, that are little more than enriching management and the employees. Examples abound, but there isn't space here to cover them. When you hear that government is going to "fix" waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare to pay for Obama Care, history has proved that it is a bald faced lie. If they were going to "fix" it, they would have done it already.
The picture we paint is a cultural malady that government can be openly scammed with impunity, government is negligent, wasteful and fraudulent and government couldn't "manage" its way out of a wet paper bag. And all this scamming, fraud and negligent management is tacitly approved by the American people who are the only ones getting scammed. Government doesn't have any money. It only has the money it takes by force from the taxpayer.
Once more we must reiterate: "YOUR MONEY IS GOVERNMENT'S MAJOR POWER OVER YOU: The first power that government has over you is YOUR perception that YOUR money is their money. The second power that government has over you is by using the money they take from you by force, against you. The third power that government has over you is that you will religiously obey their laws."
"Only when the people realize that their tax money is being used to environmentally enslave them; only when the people realize that their tax money is being used to "feed" a growing population of other people dipping their bills in the government "pig trough" and those "takers" voting for those very same politicians who take our tax money by force to keep the "trough" full; only when the people realize that their government is using their tax money to merge America into the one-world-order; only when the people realize that the only way to stop this insanity is to resist government in every legal way possible, will principled changes ever occur."
So, ladies and gentlemen, as of this moment, the bottom feeders are in control. What we need is a large pod of killer whales to clean up the bottom feeders. The only killer whales we know of that can do the job, are millions of freedom-loving Americans who have discovered the bottom-feeding scavengers and are hungry enough to add them to their dinner menu.
Let us close on this Memorial Day weekend by saluting all those who have, or are still wearing the uniform of the United States of America and those who gave their lives, their limbs, or their minds so that we can live in the land of the free and the brave. Let us not let their sacrifice be in vain by refusing to defend the principles and foundation of liberty, right here at home. We owe them and future generations no less.
Mr. Ewart is President, National Association of Rural Landowners and nationally recognized author on freedom and property rights issues.
NARLO: Spreading the message of American Freedom around the globe.© Copyright May 29, 2010
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