Of Bake Sales and Erosion

God help us.  Here it is, another New Year upon us and we are ringing it in with the "underwear bomber".  Sounds funny unless you like to fly from place to place.  But that is not what this post is about.  I am concerned about "erosion". No it's not related to Global Warming; that's for Lefties.  It is the conservative equivalent, and a metaphor for sure.  It is about our freedoms being brought down by the passage of time and the acts of government.

What prompted me to take this on was a recent revelation that the New York City School Board had decided, in its infinite wisdom, to ban school bake sales.  You know, the ones that band programs and intramural programs rely on to close the funding gap because the bureaucrats don't know the right things to spend money on.  Seems that the NYC school board has decided that bake sales undermine the sense that Americans should eat healthy and further that such sales promote or condone consumption that leads to obesity.  Hogwash!

What does this mean?  Who has the time to come up with this crap?   I actually watched someone defend it to a national television audience.  Then it occurred to me what was really at the bottom of this (again).  The revelation?  We U.S. citizens employ people full time to legislate at the federal, state and local level.  It is time for this practice to end.  When all legislators and governors and their ilk can come up with is a law to regulate bake sales and similar inane laws, then it is time to give them a very long holiday.  It is time for a moratorium on new laws and legislation.

Think about it.  Every year literally thousands of laws are enacted throughout the United States.  We have tax laws, securities laws, criminal laws, laws about how we drive, laws about our sex lives and laws about how to make laws.   Whew!  The vast majority of those laws passed have little significance to our daily lives, but with the passage of each one, the freedoms carved out for us by the Founding Fathers are diminished a little more and people are accepting it out of apathy and ignorance.  It is the "boiled frog" analogy that Glenn Beck used so well on his show.    I raise my hand as being guilty too, but enough is enough.  Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and George Washington delivered us a Mount Everest of freedoms and now we have only the worn humps of the Appalachians left.  This is the erosion that I fear.  It will continue unabated unless we stop or limit the legislation being done every year.

The benefits of curtailing new laws would be astounding.  Imagine a part time legislature whose only job was to pass a budget and maybe a handful of essential laws each year.  Americans would not have to foot the bill for Nancy Pelosi's jumbo jet and her "security", the junkets, the bloated congressional staffs and armies of attorneys that crowd the hallways of Congress.  The incentive for corruption would be nearly eliminated.  We could sell off all the fancy real estate used to house the fat cat politicos and do some real downsizing.  We would not miss it one whit.  There are enough laws out there now to handle most any matter that comes up.  If not let the courts handle the oddball issues.  Better yet, let us, the citizens of this country, handle the small stuff ourselves.  After all, that was how it was meant to be.  Thomas Jefferson never imagined a government who'd tell Little Suzy she can't sell Granny's cupcakes to make money for band camp.

But I can't be a hard ass.  It would be unfair to put all these well meaning politicians out of work wouldn't it?  NOT.   I'm a fair guy though.  So I propose a phase in period of five years before we go naked on lawmakers.  In the first five years all the Senators and Congresspeople would be busy REMOVING laws from the books.  They would be paid to root out redundant, superfluous and unnecessarily expensive laws.  Trim the fat so to speak.  With the departure of the unneeded laws we would get a departure of unneeded agencies, bureaus and advisory panels.  The possibilities are endless.  Once underway, I think the Average Joe would get really excited about having the 900 lb. gorilla leave the room.  Somewhere along the way, the US budget deficit would magically disappear, the US dollar would kick ass and America would be a world leader once again.  Somebody stop me!  I'm getting euphoric just thinking about it. 

Then there are the people, a lot of smart people and a lot of not so smart people, that would be out of work.  I have the answer; Green Jobs.  No seriously, that may be one outlet for their energies, but in large measure the newly departed from Washington would be forced into the private sector where their creativity and intelligence would be used to produce things that make life better for everyone.  I think it would help their self-esteem too, not having to be the hangman for the American public any more.  We compassionate conservatives have to take note of their feelings you know.

So let's hear it for the new anti-erosion movement, Tea Parties, conservative resurrection or whatever you want to call it.  Time to give our senators, congressmen, aldermen, mayors, governors and councilmen a long holiday before we are boxed in by laws at every turn with our only escape being drugs, alchohol and video games.