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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Carl Hiaasen
It's fashionable to be mad at the government these days, but many folks are unclear about how to join the movement.
The first step is to master the idiom of outrage. It's not just government, it's Big Government. Or even better: Big Guv'ment.
Huge, clunky, intrusive, exorbitant -- that's Uncle Sam. Get off our backs, get out of our lives and let go of our wallets!
The sentiment has been around for 234 years, but never before did we have the Internet to make it feel so fresh and original. Every red-blooded patriot should aspire to a life that's more or less free of government, which apparently can't do anything right.
Let's begin with health care. President Obama should immediately abandon healthcare reform and turn the whole confusing mess back over to the insurance companies, with no federal rules or supervision.
Wouldn't that be swell?
The problem with such a bold plan is
So, OK, leave that one alone. But, otherwise, government doesn't know squat about health care!
Now let's talk about this so-called "financial reform" that the president keeps pushing. Big Guv'ment has no business meddling with our venerable Wall Street banks and brokerage houses, even though they brought the country to the brink of a catastrophic depression. Heck, everybody makes mistakes.
And why should the Federal Reserve set monetary policy when we've got all these sharp dudes at
The only snag with banishing government completely from the financial sector is something called the
At least 240 banks have gone belly up since the financial crash, yet most depositors didn't lose a dime. That's because the mission of the
True, it's another layer of federal bureaucracy, but many Americans would have been ruined without it. So, fine, don't touch the
Other than that, Mr. Obama, you let the bankers run the banks!
The same hands-off philosophy should guide our national energy strategy -- where does Big Guv'ment get off telling the oil and gas companies where it's safe to drill?
Washington should get out of the way and let the energy industry police itself, because it has the very best expertise and technology....
OK, bad example.
Then how about that pesky
Say your child comes down with the flu. Is it really necessary for government to hassle the pharmaceutical companies over which cough syrups are safe and which are dangerous?
Never mind -- that's another not-so-great example.
Along those same lines, it's also probably not a terrible idea for
Because this is getting a bit confusing, let's recap: Government is totally inept, wasteful and useless, with the possible exceptions of
Come to think of it, now would also be a foolish time to chop up the TSA, CIA, NSA, FBI or any of our national security agencies. There are too many terrorists hell-bent on killing Americans, and -- no offense -- most local police departments aren't geared up to screen airline mainfests or track al-Qaida's cell phone signals.
Oh, heck, I just thought of another federal bureaucracy that seems to work pretty well:
With the storm season starting next month and the Gulf of Mexico turning black with crude, let's add NOAA to the not-so-worthless list along with
As for the rest of Big Guv'ment, get your shiftless boot off our hard-working necks and let us be -- at least until we're old enough for
Then we'll tell you where to send the checks.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
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