POCKET GOFER 15

ON BIG, SMALL, AND GOOD GOVERNMENT

BIG GOVERNMENTTHE DRAMABIG GOVERNMENT, BIG HEADACHESMALL GOVERNMENTCONCLUSION

We begin with a conclusion: our central government in Washington DC is not doing the job for us citizens. Most of us are very unhappy with what happens after we have voted and paid a big bunch of bucks in taxes.

We call part of the Congress the House of Representatives. We need to ask whose interests members are representing. We will.

A privileged few of us are very happy with our government. These are the insiders, mostly those who work inside the beltway that encircles the city of Washington.

This pocket gofer will have a look at what happens in big government and, theoretically, in small government. After this trip through the hallowed halls of government we will arrive at some additional conclusions.

BIG GOVERNMENT

Rose Wilder Lane in her great book The Discovery of Freedom: "----- Government is a use of force, it is the police, the army; it can not control anyone, it can only hinder, restrict, or stop anyone’s use of his energy."

There seems to be a fuzzy political area dividing us from excessive liberty on one side and excessive order on the other. We call the one anarchy (law of the jungle) and the other a police state. Our task is to determine whether big or small government is better equipped to help us keep our society in this area.

Government by its nature is an imposition on the rights of citizens. Some of us will have difficulty in believing this one.

Meanwhile, Rose again: "Government must take the wealth they consume, from the wealth that productive men create. The important question is, What amount can they take safely? Because they use force, they have no means of knowing the answer to that question ….." Food for thought here. Big or small, government is a parasite.

BIG GOVERNMENT is a drama that needs a big stage. The key actors are the president, members of Congress, lobbyists for special interest groups, influence mongers, lawyers,

pundits, bureaucrats, and journalists. We will see how these Washington insiders work together to make BIG GOVERNMENT hum, --- er, run (stumble?).

Sharp readers among us may notice that we did not include political parties in the cast above. This is not an oversight. There is a reason, and it will surprise many of us when we get to it.

At first blush we could say we are the audience for the performance. Judging by the price, we taxpayers have bought the best seats in the house. But the second blush is the gotcha, as we shall see.

A BIT OF HISTORY. First we need to understand how the small government that our nation started with back in 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, got to be a Frankenstein monster.

The government began after the Revolutionary War as one that protected the rights of citizens. But by 1913 it had changed into one that presumed to guarantee the economic welfare of its citizens.

We will never hear from today's politician what Thomas Paine wrote in the late 18th century: "Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."

Mr. Paine wrote from his experience with government in European countries. But if he were alive today he would point to the above statement as an accurate prediction: We bought the rope which hawgties us. Helluva note!!

In 1870 public spending claimed less than four percent of our GDP (gross domestic product, or the total value of everything we produce in a year).

In 1887 President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill passed by Congress to provide $10,000 for Texas farmers who were suffering through a drought. His message: "A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of (the government’s) power and duty should be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced (our emphasis) that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."

In 1998 Texas farmers had a drought on their hands. The Clinton administration shipped a generous batch of taxpayer money to them.

Seems like a reversal has occurred. Today citizens don’t support (approve of) the government, while the government supports selected groups of people by giving them our money.

The First World War caused a steep rise in spending, and it continued afterward. But then an event took place that is unique in US history to date: a sharp reduction in government spending.

Paul Johnson from his book Modern Times: "Indeed, Harding ----- only president in American history ----- massive cuts in government spending, producing nearly a 40 percent saving over Wilsonian peacetime expenditure.

"Nor was this a wild assault. ------ plan that included the creation of the Bureau of the Budget, -------- to bring authorization under systematic central scrutiny and control.

“Its first director, Charles Dawes, said in 1922 that, before Harding, ‘everyone did as they damn pleased;’ cabinet members were ‘commanchees,’ Congress ‘a nest of cowards.’ Then Harding ‘waved the axe and said that anybody who didn’t cooperate his head would come off,’ the result was ‘velvet for the taxpayer.’" Friends, it CAN be done.

The Great Depression and WWII again dramatically increased spending. Today BIG GOVERNMENT at all levels takes close to 45 percent of GDP (up from 4 percent).

Johnson: "Lincoln had to pay a secretary out of his own pocket. Hoover had to struggle hard to get three. Roosevelt appointed the first six ‘administrative assistants’ in 1939. Kennedy had twenty-three. The total White House staff had risen to 1,664 in Kennedy’s last year.

"Under President Johnson it was forty times the size of Hoover’s. Under Nixon it rose to 5,395 in 1971, the cost jumping from $31 million to $71 million."

The United States of America flew high right up until 1930. That was when our government made a couple of serious miscalculations. These turned a recession into a deep depression, spreading worldwide and lasting painfully long.

We had 24 percent unemployment, little insurance, and no social security. People were hurting. No one had any money.

Into this mess came President Franklin Roosevelt with his "New Deal" social programs. Government was going to help us, especially the poor, and there were a lot of them out there.

Government created millions of temporary make-work jobs, but this helped hardly at all. The real force which pulled us out of the Great Depression was World War II.

Nothing like a war to stir the pot. Too bad about the death, maiming, destruction, and misery.

There was and is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes government programs such as those in the New Deal. A lot of citizen leaders and politicians saw trouble down the road and objected strenuously to these programs.

The US Supreme Court hemmed and hawed for two years, and then okayed them. In this way the Court made new law, even though this is not its job under the Constitution. And this was not the last time it did this.

The war ended, but most of the programs stayed. Politicians had got the idea that they could use them to buy votes, and we have let them do this ever since. The immensity of this mistake has become painfully obvious today, 74 years later.

Back then 17 percent of GDP went to government at all levels. As we indicated, now it's up to 45 percent. BIG GOVERNMENT is eating our lunch.

Back then we kids left home in the morning and played all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones, no beepers.

We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

We did not have video games, 500 channels on cable, DVD movies, surround sound, PCs, Internet chat rooms, blogs, text messages, iPhones, iPods. We had friends.

We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and knocked on the door, or just walked in and talked to them.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. No one to hide behind.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They bawled us out, sometimes swatted us, and sided with the law, would you believe? Rule of law was built into the Constitution.

We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility, and we learned now to deal with all of these. We had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers, insurance companies and government took over our lives.

Since 1960 the cost of state and local government has increased by 350 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. This takes roughly $10,000 a year from a middle-income family of four, in addition to the $14,500 the central government takes.

Some of us yell for a law to deal with the current hot emotional issue. And so here comes yet another one at us. Politicians want to be seen as caring about us.

BIG GOVERNMENT officials crank out laws at a rate of about 7,500 pages a year, plus another 75,000 pages of administrative law (regulation). Our precious individual freedoms are being buried under a crushing load of legalities.

Rose Wilder Lane explained why this load constantly grows heavier as BIG GOVERNMENT grows bigger. "These men are a waste of energy in two ways. To live, they must consume the goods that productive men create; and, since they produce nothing, their own energy is subtracted from the amount of available productive energy.

"Both of these wastes must increase as time passes. ------ because the fact is that all men are free; individuals control human energy. Therefore an attempt to control individuals is compelled, constantly, to come into closer contact with each of them." Cicero: "The more laws the less justice."

Rose wrote her book in 1942. Note how they refer to both the positive and negative sides of human nature.

A baby needs ultimate control, as it is helpless. As a child matures he/she becomes more self-controlling and free.

Then along comes BIG GOVERNMENT, which wants to control this young adult as it forces him/her to pay taxes to support it. As taxes increase and more laws are passed, a young citizen is restrained from becoming fully adult.

The result cannot be pleasant. We are inspired to ask, just how does "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as stated in the Declaration of Independence fit into this life?

An April 1995 Gallup poll showed that 39 percent of US citizens think the central government "----- poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans." We had previously learned that the single primary function of democratic government is to protect the rights of its individual citizens.

After WWII the country commenced upon a period of exceedingly rapid economic growth. We became a truly wealthy country. We began to think that poverty could be completely eliminated.

President Johnson even declared a "War on Poverty" and pumped billions of our dollars into it. Ditto the "Model Cities" and "Great Society" programs (and the Vietnam War).

It became fashionable to buy votes by regulating business (Pocket Gofer 8), and by throwing lots of money at the poor (Pocket Gofer 2). These required higher taxes, and when we complained the government borrowed. Later on we complained about that, so our illustrious congresspersons invented more expensive goodies for us and placed them "off-budget."

We get faked out because the benefits were right now and obvious, while the costs were down the road and kept secret. In this way votes are bought today with tomorrow's money.

Jefferson: "----- the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, ----- is but swindling futurity on a large scale." “The dead rule from the grave.”

Notice how in the end we get the shaft every time. Taxes are obvious. What may be less obvious is that we must not only pay current taxes to support our government, we must also pay taxes so the government can pay interest on a $21 trillion debt. The government also turns to us to pay for anything "off budget" which might come due.

It has got to the point where BIG GOVERNMENT has a life of its own. We will soon see that we taxpayers who are supporting it have nothing to say about its behavior. This is taxation without representation: the second blush. Pocket Gofer 14 elaborates.

On 3/2011 the Economist published a special report called "Taming Leviathan." "------ever larger share of the economy in the rich world for a century, and the state's regulatory sweep has increased as well.

"---- big government is not just the fault of self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians. Conservative voters, ---- kept on demanding that the state do more. -----------. Nothing would add more to the sum of human happiness in the West than a smaller state." We love people, but all too often they don't think enough to determine what is good for them.

Back in 1775 our ancestors didn't like this. They called it tyranny and rebelled against it. And now the monster is nibbling at our wallets and purses again.

Someone said, "America is the finest country anyone ever stole." This is an impressive compliment, as government officials have stolen some fine countries thruout history.

So much for the economics. Now to the psychology. As government grows, constitutional limits on powers gradually change into seeking of money and personal power. This tendency on the part of human beings placed into a big money environment is incredibly strong.

Therefore 12 years of Reagan-Bush and 11 years of Margaret Thatcher in Britain devoted to hacking down the size of government were actually failures. All they succeeded in doing was to slow down the rate of growth of the monsters.

Upon assuming the presidency Reagan planned to eliminate the departments of energy and education and the Small Business Administration. None of this actually happened.

The Economist 9/97 (a British newspaper): "The simplest measure of economic role of the state is the share of national income spent by government. This averaged 30% in the rich industrial countries in 1960. By 1980, ----- the share had increased to 42.5%.

"The next ten years saw a great change: accelerating deregulation, technological advance, and global economic integration. As a result the state …… er ….. increased its share again, to 45% of the economy.

“Since then, the strong wind of globalization has become a gale, market forces have assumed their present overwhelming power ------- and the state has increased its share a bit more, to

46%. Decade by decade over the course of this century and before, in war and in peace, in sickness and in health, government ------ has done nothing but grow.

"Singapore and Hong Kong are already among the richest places on the planet, and still growing fast: their share of public spending in GDP is less than a quarter, a level the US last saw in 1960.

Big government is not something that happens inevitably. It is something which, in democracies, voters let happen.

"If they care for their freedom and prosperity, they should think about that." Friends, we are thinking about that.

Jeff Jacoby (2/98 column): "It isn’t only bimbo eruptions that bring out the brazen deceiver in President Clinton. State of the union addresses do, too. ------ preposterous claim he made ---- last week: ‘My fellow Americans …. We have the smallest government in 35 years.’

"The smallest government in 35 years? ----- federal government entangled as never before in every aspect of Americans’ lives. Not even in wartime has Washington intruded as obnoxiously and expensively into the affairs of ordinary citizens ------."

The CATO Institute is a think tank, which means it is politically slanted and we take what it writes with a grain of salt. However, the following is a calculation that can be independently verified so there is probably some truth to it.

"In 1998, the government will spend more money than the inflation-adjusted total of all federal expenditures from 1787 to 1930." Let’s run that one past us one more time: that’s from 1787 to 1930, or 143 years of government spending. GOOD GRIEF!!

We put all this in our pipe and puffed on it. Then to the word processor, and Pocket Gofer 15.

We believe Maggie Thatcher was sincere in her desire to slash big government, while Reagan and Bush were not. We find it interesting that this key difference made practically no difference: BIG GOVERNMENT just kept on getting BIGGER.

Prominent columnist George Will frequently exposes federal; government skullduggery. Here he outdoes himself: “’Big Governmentt’ is Ever Growing, on the Sly,” News & Observer 2/17.

“In 1960, ------- population was 180m and it had approximately 1.8m federal bureaucrats ----------. Fifty-seven years later, a population of 324m, there are only about 2m federal bureaucrats.

“So, since 1960 federal spending ------- has quintupled ----------, but the federal civil service has expanded only negligibly, ---------. Does this mean that ‘big government’ is not really big? ---------- accomplished prodigies of worker productivity? John J Dilulio, Jr, of the University of PA and the Brookings Institution, says: Hardly.

“In his 2014 book Bring Back the Bureaucrats, he argued that because the public is, at least philosophically, against ‘big government,’ government has prudently become stealthy about how it becomes ever bigger.”

“Since 1960, the number of state and local govt employees has tripled to more than 18m, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and the early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than ten-fold. Because all or nearly all of this mountain of money has strings attached, the effect is to expand top-down big govt exponentially.

“-------- Dilulio writes, ‘there are about 3m state and local got workers’ --- about 505 more than the number of federal workers --- ‘funded via federal grants and contracts.’

“Then there are for-profit contractors, used, Dilulio says, ‘by every federal department., bureau and agency.’ For almost a decade, the defense department’s fulltime-equivalent of 700,000 to 8,900,000 civilian workers were supplemented by the fulltime-equivalent of 620,000 to 770,000 for-profit contract employees.” This is incredible.

“Today, the govt spends more (about $350bn) on defense contractors than on all official federal bureaucrats ($250bn).” Gawd! Shades of Orwell and his 1949 book “1984,” where he forecasted a future of continuous warfare.

“So, today’s govt is indeed big (3.5 times bigger than five and a half decades ago), but dispensed to disguise its size.’’

“Many Americans are -------- liberal. So, they are given government that is not limited but over-leveraged --- debt-financed, meaning partially paid for by future generations --- and administered by proxies. The government/for-profit contractor/non-profit complex consumes 40% of GDP. Just don’t upset anyone by call it ‘big government.’”

Good gawd no!! This must rank as one of George Will’s biggest and best. 40% of GDP. And analysts wonder why so few new companies are formed, so little hiring because of so little expansion, so little trade, etc. The whole mess makes us gag.

Moving forward, the Economist (8/01) published an article entitled "Please Sir, the Dog Ate My Surplus." "In the spring, the Treasury said that it expected to retire $57 billion of public debt between June and September, --------. Now, ------ it will have to borrow $51 billion, making this the largest quarter for federal borrowing since -------- 1996." And this before 9/11.

In 9/01 an Economist article read "Big Government is Back." Had it left? "In the two weeks since September 11th, the country has seen a sharp increase in the role of the federal government."

President Bush declared a war in order to get this, as he was a personal power seeker. Thruout world history, war has never failed to concentrate power in the central government.

"John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, wants to expand the powers of the FBI and CIA." For example, he wanted the 1968 wiretapping law to cover a person, not a phone line. The FBI would then be able to clamp a surveillance on anyone, even as he switches to cell phones.

He wanted authority to detain suspects without trial, although this could lead to indefinite detention. Both are unconstitutional. He wanted to use info gathered by foreign governments in US courts, even if the methods used to gather such info are illegal in this country.

The Economist did not turn this one loose (12/01): "------ detention of more than 600 foreigners." Ashcroft refused to release their names, so no one can check to see if lawful restraint was used in rounding them up.

Bush issued an executive order providing for trials by military tribunals. These do not presume innocence; they may hold trials in secret; there is no right of appeal; and verdicts --- including the death penalty --- require only a 2/3 vote among military judges. Every one of these restrictions is unconstitutional.

This harsh regime cruises next to kangaroo court status. Other country governments are deeply concerned, to the point where they are reluctant to extradite terrorist suspects to this country for trial.

Surely citizens who suffered from 9/11 and many others are justified in reacting emotionally to that terrible tragedy. A government that provides courageous leadership should empathize with their distressed citizens, but also respond with reason.

But politicians in any oppressive government operate thru media-hyped emotions. Sadly, this is what corrals votes.

We summarize the status of BIG GOVERNMENT today with a review by the Economist (5/02) of a book by David A. Moss called When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager. "----- today’s leviathan spreads into every corner of national life, not just by taxing and spending but also by regulating. See PG8.

"Government has expanded its reach because it is the ultimate risk manager." Note how accurately this ties into paternalism: the Great White Father looking after his flock.

Given a chance by sleepy citizens, government will eventually remove all the risks of life from cradle to grave. This creates a nation of sheep, just as did the government in the Soviet Union and just as Alexi de Tocqueville in 1830 predicted would eventually happen here in the USA.

Before we open the curtain on the drama let's have a brief look at what our forefathers said about big government. James Madison: "What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; --------."

Alexander Hamilton: "The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. ----- frequent infringements of their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.

"The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power."

We were a tiny country then and with practically no army, yet Hamilton felt this concern. Pocket Gofer 11 elaborates on what the "military-industrial complex" is doing to us as the rhetoric continues to claim it is doing for us.

Our conclusion is that Hamilton offered a profound insight into human nature. We might add that the Roman army was by far the strongest in the world of its time, and for centuries, but the empire collapsed.

Mr. Hamilton's remarks also look most applicable to today. We write these words while intending nothing disrespectful to our soldiers, especially those who have given life, limb and brain for their country. Rather, we will grind a different ax.

THE DRAMA

OKAY! Let's raise the curtain. Drum roll, please.

DRUM ROLL: The President enters stage right. Beginning with post-WWII, Truman is considered by many to be the last politician to do a good job in office.

Eisenhower did a good to excellent job, but he was not a politician. Kennedy may have done well, but unfortunately he was killed early on.

Johnson built on Roosevelt's ideas and with wealth among citizens and a cooperative Congress greatly enlarged our government. He is considered a poor president.

Nixon did some good and some terrible things. As president he was at best fair in the job.

Ford was also not in the job long enough to make an impact. Carter is not considered a strong president. The only reason Reagan lasted eight years and is still considered by some as effective is that he separated the nation and its citizens from reality.

Is there a trend here? We see it. BIG GOVERNMENT has over the years since Eisenhower just got bigger and bigger, and done it faster than prior to Ike’s time in office.

Over decades it has gradually got to the point where the job of president has become practically impossible to do well. This is why each one strives to grab more and more power.

Besides simple bigness, one important reason for this situation is that leaders see this trend and refuse to stand for election. They are less willing than politicians to look foolish and take cheap shots. A leader leads, while a career politician is in it for the money.

Enter King George Bush the elder. As a Texas congressman in 1968 he got all over President Johnson after his State of the Union speech because he neglected to mention the "tremendous" central government budget deficit of $25 billion.

Twenty-four years later it was President Bush giving a State of the Union speech. He played down a deficit of $269.5 billion, or nearly 10 times as much (allowing for inflation).

King George has for us a familiar ring to it, as it did for the colonists of 1774. We recall that all people were then British subjects of King George III. Time magazine of 8/31/92 reported on his modern counterpart:

"Last week at the gaudy end of the republican convention the 41st president roared off from Houston in a six-story, 277,000-pound-thrust 747-200B jet. George Bush's seven-plane campaign air force began to crisscross the country from Gulfport to Hartford, bearing hundreds of advance men, surrogates, White House aides, secret service agents, and reporters.

"These hordes will follow Bush through countless paralyzing motorcades and rallies, accompanied by helicopters, armored limousines, blocky weapons vans and scores of VIP-toting luxury autos, all in search of the elusive voter.

"Ronald Reagan's friend Thomas Jefferson spurned carriages and escorts on his inauguration day in 1801. Instead, he strolled from his boardinghouse with some friends to the capitol, where he took the oath of office and became the third US president. He walked back for lunch ------."

Friends this is progress, politician-style. We don't know for sure, but we have a right to entertain our suspicions concerning where the money came from to acquire that 747 and redo it to suit His Majesty.

We go on paying taxes like good citizens. We're fighting it, but we can't stop feeling like subjects and not citizens.

Bill Clinton came into office believing that government can solve most if not all of our social ills. He didn't believe Ronald Reagan when he said "Government is not the solution; it is the problem." (We are not sure Ron believed this one. Maybe he got it from a movie script.)

As an example, we turn to just one of the Great White Father’s jewels (Economist 5/00). "----- glass ceiling that prevents parents from rising to the top at work, -------. ------. You could almost hear that terrible ceiling crack as Mr. Clinton issued his executive order banning federal employers from denying people jobs or promotions because of parental obligations.

"The White House was also worryingly silent on how to prevent women from bearing a disproportionate share of the burden of preparing all these family meals. Should the government offer tax credits so that more men can learn to cook? Or should it issue an executive order mandating that men must do all the table-laying and dishwashing?"

Over the past several years it gradually leaked out that BIG GOVERNMENT had been raiding accumulating surpluses in the Social Security trust funds for years and spending the money, so the fiscal deficit would not look so bad. These surpluses should be kept for when baby boomers retire and the trillions that will be needed to pay their pensions.

Krauthammer (8/01 column): "------ Bill Clinton, -------. So in his 1998 State of the Union address he declared that to ‘save Social Security’ he would not permit a penny of the surplus to be touched. Of course, by that very logic, Clinton had for five years been counting --- and thus raiding --- the Social Security trust fund to offset his deficits. -------.

"No matter. He had found a political winner." OUCH!! This makes us out to be a huge bunch of dummies. We swallowed this one, hook, line, and sinker. Friends, we got to wise up.

Vice-president Gore passed up few opportunities to preach about the environment. We have yet to hear him admit that the central government is by far the nation’s worst polluter.

In 1989 a grand jury investigated activities at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant and found hundreds of violations. These included dumping radioactive waste into drinking water.

Indictments were delivered against plant and government officials. But the US attorney refused to sign the orders before disbanding the jury.

A central government law clamps secrecy on the results of grand jury investigations. Disclose these, and the slammer awaits. Freedom of the press, anyone?

But 19 of the 23 jurors had the courage to do this anyway. We salute them.

The immediate reaction was predictable: a massive media blitz launched against them, relentless harassment and a FBI probe. As we showed in Pocket Gofer 11, criticize anything the government does and it will often shoot the messenger.

The kicker here is that public officials in a democracy actively seek criticism, as they know such feedback helps government to be more effective. See Pocket Gofers 3 and 20.

In 1/10 the Economist commented on BIG GOVERNMENT on growth hormones. "Rising government spending is not the only manifestation of growing state power. The spread of regulation is another.

"But voters, ---- often demand more state intrusion: witness the 'wars' on terror and drugs, or the spread of CCTV cameras. ----------. America now has a quarter of a million people

devising and implementing federal rules." We love people and people are voters, but they are such fools.

And cuts can be found. In the corporate world, slimming a workforce by a tenth is standard fare. There's no reason why governments should not do that too, ----------."

There is a reason. Government is always in the news, and if unhappy campers keep asking for more government cutting will make them unhappier. Many will vote their feelings. Companies cut because if they don't and competitors do they are in trouble.

"Public sector pensions are far too generous. ---------. And the world might well be a greener, more prosperous place if the West's various agriculture departments disappeared."

WOW! Thought we would never see what we have been pushing for in print. Our ag department has since 1933 grown into a huge and wasteful bureaucracy while farming occupies less than two percent of the population.

"Fear of terrorism and worriers about rising crime have also inflated the state." Terror, crime and global warming have created huge "industries" in Washington.

"Four state-controlled companies have made it into the top 25 of the 2009 Forbes global -----list." We see why the Economist titled its two articles "Stop!" and "Leviathan Stirs Again."

Having previously touched upon young Bush, we saw how he worked with other players such as members of the Congress. We turn to them now.

DRUM ROLL: Enter 535 souls stage left. All except 100 are our representatives; the remainder are senators. The former stand for re-election every two years, and the latter every six years.

People watch a lot of TV, so most of the campaigning is on the tube. This is expensive, so congressmen are always on the mooch, grubbing for money.

In fact, each one spends about 40+ percent of his/her time doing this. We taxpayers get little if any benefit from this activity, but we go on paying their salaries and many perks anyway.

They meet every so often to vote themselves increases in salary, sometimes around midnight to dodge journalists who might report this secret meeting to us. They employ a staff of about 37,000 people. We pay their salaries also.

With or without the president's help they pass lots of laws. To our knowledge they haven't consulted us to see if we think we already have enough laws, and maybe we could better enforce those we have. They just go on passing. How about repealing irrelevant laws?

Besides keeping legions of lawyers off the streets, why all this activity? Recall that congressmen need money, megabucks.

Life in Washington is one long bash, but those damned elections keep coming round and they can't remain in office unless they get re-elected again and again. So they hatched a scam that works beautifully, as we see here.

Huffington’s book How to Overthrow the Government: "In 1998, House incumbents ended up running unopposed in 95 districts (out of 435) ------. It’s no surprise then that a record 98.5 percent of the 435 were re-elected, -------.

“In an ideal world, a people that re-elects almost 99 percent ----- be happy with them. But in the real world, you only have to win once to become a permanent figure in a rotting political establishment."

Huffington removed any residual doubt about the role of money. "And we all know that the clearest voices are the closest ones. You only need to whisper if you’ve paid enough to get up really close."

Conscientious citizens vote at every opportunity, but we wonder why. In today’s BIG GOVERNMENT the dollar vote far outweighs the citizen vote.

So now we see why all that lawmaking. Deep within those thousands of laws there is something for everyone who can deliver votes or the money to buy them.

Quid pro quo, folks. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. That's show bizz in DC (and a lot of other places, but without our megabucks greasing the skids).

Let's trace one hot issue, such as crime. Every year Congress passes a new law intended to stop crime. It is almost amusing to watch the annual ritual of fist-waving.

"This year by God we're gonna lock 'em up and throw away the key!" "Three strikes and you're out!" And almost every year the problem only grows worse.

But isn't this a serious problem? It surely is, but for us and not for government officials. Criminals don't often vote and usually their victims don't either (especially if they are dead).

Congresspeople can't throw money at this problem when they need it elsewhere, so they force state governments to build more prisons. And the windbags amuse us with their antics.

Recently violent crime has dipped. Predictably, politicians jumped on this one, claiming that the increase in prisons and policing was doing the job.

Then a couple of social scientists inconveniently explained the decrease by referring back to 1973 and the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. This caused a free fall in births to poor girls over the next several years.

Had they been born, their poor, uneducated, and unemployed sons would be in or close to their prime violent crime years by 1995 or so. But this fact was kept hidden so politicians could look good.

Those of us who understand what is really going on feel ripped. We plan to keep this pocket gofer with us in our travels and discuss some of the facts and feelings in it with other concerned citizens such as friends, relatives, on the job, in church, etc. We think this is a good idea for every concerned citizen.

There is a man in Nevada named Dick Carver who is also very unhappy with BIG GOVERNMENT. He keeps a worn copy of the Constitution in his shirt pocket wherever he goes, and he whips it out at every opportunity.

We're kindred spirits, so we figure he will help us spread the pocket gofers around. Almost like politicians, we too are on the mooch: for thousands of active and concerned citizens like Dick Carver.

The cold war is long past, but we apparently need still more nuclear attack submarines at $3 billion a copy. The name of the game is not peace or war or even principles; it is votes. People with jobs tend to vote for those in office.

So we see politicians buying votes with our money. It is almost amusing to watch congressional doves suddenly turn into hawks when slabs of pork are hung out. Almost.

In late 1993 one analyst felt that members of the House of Representatives behaved like they were in business for themselves instead of their president or their party. He didn't mention citizens; maybe we shouldn't find this rather strange?

DRUM ROLL: Enter the lobbyists for special interest groups. These expensive cats do research on issues and provide lots of information to Congressmen who are getting ready to vote on these issues.

They know who is paying them, so the research results are jacked around to suit the sponsor. Then they take the “information” to the congressman's office, dragging behind them barrels of money.

Huffington: "That’s roughly 38 lobbyists for each member of Congress. Like a swarm of ravenous termites reducing a house to sawdust, they are making a meal out of the foundations of our democracy."

Let's put this one in a real film. We quote from Time (12/14/92): "Sometimes art gets it just right. In a particularly delicious scene in ‘The Distinguished Gentleman,’ the latest Hollywood film about political corruption, a lobbyist asks the movie's protagonist his position on sugar price supports.

"The con artist turned congressman ----- has gone to Washington to commit legalized larceny, but he doesn't have a clue about sugar. Which position would prove most profitable? he wonders.

"It doesn't matter, (Eddie) Murphy is told. If he favors the program, the sugar producers will fill his campaign coffers; if he opposes it, the candy manufacturers will kick in. Similarly, Murphy is assured, he can make a bundle on either side of the medical malpractice issue: doctors' groups and insurance companies will fund him if he supports limiting claims; the trial lawyers will be in his debt if he opposes caps.

"Well, asks Murphy, 'if that's true, how does anything get done?' 'It doesn't,' the lobbyist retorts. 'That's the beauty of the system.'"

Now, we can appreciate beauty as well as the next bloke. Nevertheless, we find this one a challenge.

The Economist 12/23/96: "One of the great confusions of our age is to mistake active government for purposeful government, or, ---- good government. ------. Most conservatives, supposing ------ advocates of small government, are roughly as keen as ------ expansionists for politicos to keep busy, busy, busy."

This smacks of a quote from P.J. O'Rourke's book Parliament of Whores: "When can we say, stick a fork in it, it's done?"

Back to the Economist: "America's constitution allows even greater scope for activity as an end in itself (our emphasis). Changes in domestic policy have to be approved by both senate and house -----, which facilitates the conceit that the house has done this or the senate that -----, when next to nothing has actually happened.

"The same is true of the White House, only more so. The president's independent powers in domestic policy are extremely weak: he can do virtually nothing by himself. (Trump looks strong only because the congress is on life-support.)

“This requires, and allows, an even more impressive display of activity leading nowhere: presidential commissions, task forces and panels of every kind, not to mention the full-time eager beavers on the White House staff, help Bill Clinton, as they would say, to leverage his own prodigious work rate ----- to no effect whatever."

Should we blame our Founding Fathers for this planned gridlock? We should not. Back then the concern was to avoid accumulation of personal power in one or another branch of government.

Those good men did not anticipate members of those branches getting together to preserve a precious and money-soaked status quo. See Pocket Gofer 19.

They perceived representatives frequently traveling back and forth between Washington and back home, even though travel was difficult for them and there were no telephones. This was in order to stay plugged in to the public will, and to represent it in the central government's policy making.

Today congressmen seldom return home unless an election looms large on the horizon. They don't know what we are thinking, nor do they care. This fact suggests that we are not thinking enough.

But it is extremely important to maintain the illusion of public service; hence the apparent beehive of activity. Otherwise we citizens might begin to smell something, and then the party would be over.

If the nose knows, how about the Clean Air Act of 1970? Surely this was a good idea. Who would object to cleaner air? But an environmental consultant has wondered if we might have made more progress in air quality without this law, through bottom-up actions initiated by concerned citizens in hundreds of localities around the country (Pocket Gofer 4).

As usual the government jumped on this emotional issue and provided a top-down program presumably aimed at solving the problem. What actually happened was that the act centralized clean air politics in Washington, where special interests and their lobbyists could undermine it more efficiently.

They were thus able to switch the terms of political debate into technical areas, where they are stronger than are the environmentalists.

Centralizing power makes influence buying much more efficient. It concentrates minds as well as money. Fighting citizen efforts to clean up the air in hundreds of communities all over the land is much less efficient.

Of course, allowing citizens to argue their own policies is a part of the democratic process. But for some reason this fact doesn't get much press. See PG4.

During the 1970s PACs (political action committees) replaced trade unions as the biggest contributors to re-election campaign war chests. Tons of regulations had been passed during the 1960s, which made it difficult for companies to be profitable and competitive.

Therefore managers felt like they had to go where the centralized power was. They quickly learned how to operate in Washington: bring lots and lots of money. They hired some of the best lobbyists.

These PACs managed to get most of business' lobbying expenses tax deductible. We taxpayers must make up the deficit in government revenues.

Congress cooperates in the pretense that such organizations are not political and therefore tax-deductible. With this in mind it is interesting to observe that a recent survey showed 51

senators and 146 members of the House of Representatives as founders, directors or officers of/in PACs.

Here is an excellent example of how lobbyists organize when seeing a threat. News & Observer 10/13: "With automatic cuts, a result of sequestration, to the military set to take effect in January, and a separate round of cuts scheduled for Medicare, lawmakers will have to decide who gets hit the hardest, prompting Washington's lobbying machine ------ gear up to ensure that their slice of federal money is spared in new negotiations over government spending."

Here is our entry in the "forked tongue" competition:

Business to public: ---- greatest asset is our people, good company, etc.

Business to Congress: Here is a big batch of money to help you get re-elected. Give us a break on this proposed legislation.

Politician to public: ----- your humble, obedient servant. I am in Washington at great personal sacrifice to serve your interest.

Politician to business: Thank you for your generous donation. You can be sure I'll vote accordingly. Conclusion: Lobbying is corrupt and unconstitutional.

SMALL DRUM ROLL: Enter the influence mongers stage right. A small one because this industry exists only to provide services for special interest lobbyists. They provide data and information to support a position on an issue as taken by a lobbyist.

Influence mongers have no political allegiance. They will do almost anything if the price is right. For example they may cherry-pick groups of citizens from a senator's home state who support his/her position (often with some deception involved).

An influence monger will generate, say, 1,000 phone calls or 300 groups of citizens as requested by a lobbyist. He/she may make up and run an opinion poll containing questions worded in a way so as to generate the needed responses. In these ways a senator can say he/she has heard from citizens back home on a certain issue.

This defines the terms of the debate for special interests as their lobbyists carry this “information” into our senator's offices (along with the money of course; don't forget this). Influence mongering is a thriving industry.

DRUM ROLL: Enter the lawyers stage left. We specified at the beginning a big stage. With 5 percent of the world's population we have 40 percent of the world's lawyers.

Thousands of these are Washington insiders. Japan has 1,000 engineers for every 100 lawyers. Engineers contribute to economic development; lawyers subtract from it.

In the US these figures are reversed. This alone should make us pause and think.

A recent study of 18 other countries showed an average of 15 percent lawyers in their governments. A second study indicated that the more lawyers in a country's government the slower the rate of economic growth.

A third study (1992) estimated the total cost of complying with government regulations, in and out of government itself, to be $392 billion a year or about $4,000 per household. That was one quarter of the entire national budget. Lawyers mostly drafted these regulations.

We don't trust our government, so we don't trust ourselves. We keep thinking we have a democracy and so therefore we are the government, even though this is no longer true.

Lawyers have refined the language of rights, but they neglect the flip side: responsibilities. The reason is if each of us accepted responsibility for what we say and do there would be little need for lawyers.

The kicker here is that society can't function if all have rights and no one accepts responsibility. Victimology erodes its foundation.

Lawyers and other elitists like order; they don't appreciate boat-rocking change. They thrive on gridlock but serve up reams of baloney ----- er, rhetoric aimed at convincing taxpayers that there is a whole lot of shaking going on (Pocket Gofer 19).

The reality is they prefer to treat us outsiders as mushrooms: keep us in the dark and feed us b-s. If we could look deep inside an insider we would discover contempt for us and a tendency to bite the hand that feeds him/her. We sense this, and so we reciprocate by holding lawyers and other insiders in contempt.

Helluva way to run a government. We should put this one in our pipe and puff on it for a while.

Society can't function without change. Without it there is no progress.

The democratic process is by its nature disorderly. It often looks inefficient because it is.

But for all its warts we have yet to discover anything better (Pocket Gofer 20). In a democracy each citizen may have his/her say, even if he often has some difficulty in clarifying his point.

Nevertheless we like this. Every citizen holds a paintbrush as together we create the grand mosaic of our free-speaking and freedom-loving existence.

How would lawyers fit into this scenario? We would need a few, as disputes are a part of human existence.

However, most of these can be resolved by men and women of good faith without lawyers. We can make our own laws through a bottom-up process with only a minimum of technical assistance (Pocket Gofer 4). We would write them in English instead of legalese.

Lawyers make law for lawyers. Citizens make law for citizens.

DRUM ROLL: Enter the pundits center stage. Eric Alterman's book Sound and Fury: "The punditocracy is a tiny group of highly visible political pontificators who make their living offering 'inside political opinions and forecasts' in the elite national media. And it is their debate, rather than any semblance of a democratic one, that determines the parameters of political discourse in the nation today."

These people operate inside the insiders. They have competent staffs who dig up so much inside skinny that the aggregate result is in essence the reduction of Washington to a gigantic Peyton Place. If we focus our attention on these juicy happenings the Grand Deception can play on and on unmolested (Pocket Gofer 19).

They are the opinion leaders, the head gossips. Everyone goes to them, either personally through their speeches and parties where they may be found or thru what they write and say on the tube.

We are led to believe that pundits alone have the magical ability to distill the essence, the really heavy stuff, the right stuff. Some of US history's most sophisticated balderdash blazes forth from their word processors.

They aren't magicians of course. No one short of God can make sense of Washington, and we confess that occasionally our faith in even Him gets jarred a little (but only momentarily). But the pundits have become so powerful that no one dares to refute their "wisdom," certainly not government officials or bureaucrats.

This includes the president. They are accountable to no one. This means they are dangerous.

Occasionally a pundit will write a scathing critique of some aspect of the mess in Washington. This has two purposes, one to get back at someone who has crossed him (they are nearly all male), and the other to maintain some credibility among his broader readership.

However he must be very careful lest he cut off his vitally important access to the highest reaches of personal power. If this happens he loses his own power base (Pocket Gofer 13).

The notion of elitism helps these self-proclaimed demigods. Elitism is pessimism about the average Joe/Jane's ability to make decisions that are good for him/herself. Government can do a better job, goes the argument, because the issues are too complex for Joe/Jane to understand and process effectively.

Put another way, BIG GOVERNMENT knows just what we need and it is jolly well going to see that we get it, even if it must force-feed us. The reality is that BIG GOVERNMENT has made

the issues complex. Left alone to make our own decisions, we would simplify them to where we could easily handle them.

All we need is the opportunity. With the pocket gofers as a guide, we are jolly well going to see that we get it.

Because self-interest is basic to human nature the elitists who don’t know what we need (they don’t know us) will in fact set up a government to suit themselves and not us. Hence the need to force-feed.

This is why today's citizens and BIG GOVERNMENT is we and they and not us. This is why today's BIG GOVERNMENT is not a government of the people, by the people and for the people (Lincoln). This is why today's BIG GOVERNMENT is not a democracy. (For proof see Pocket Gofer 16.)

Popular opinion wants to focus on issues, such as crime or welfare. Elite opinion is personal power seeking (Pocket Gofer 13), so it wants to focus on candidates. This means image merchandising via the tube and spin doctoring. Pundits thrive on this diet.

Suckers that we are, we sit there watching the tube and fall directly into the trap. We can cease wondering why we never get a good president or a good government.

Friends, in a democracy pundits are expendable. We can launch these power seekers into history. If we think hard and generate a good idea, we will be our own pundit as we promote it.

DRUM ROLL: Enter the bureaucrats stage right. Careers in the national bureaucracy attract a certain type of person, who is oriented toward job security and who avoids risks. These people may hire aboard with great enthusiasm, but very soon the system gets to them and they realize that to survive they must entrench themselves and don't make waves.

This leads to empire building (bloated staffs), avoiding any real changes, huge justification statements, and memoranda to the file. Along comes the inevitable next RIF (reduction in force) action and they hunker down until it blows over (as it always does).

Once they become entrenched a Richter-7 earthquake will not dislodge them. That bi-weekly paycheck is then cast in stone.

This is the reason why a bureaucracy cannot die. Most can only grow and grow: empire building earns promotions, perks, trips, research grants, schmoozing with the glitterati, etc.

The original purpose for the bureaucracy is often forgotten. The objective becomes everlasting life. At this point we need no reminder as to whose money makes up that steady paycheck and generous benefits.

The central government bureaucracy includes about 3,200,000 people. State and local add around 15 million.

The first passes mountains of work on to the second, but not much money. Once money comes into Washington it tends to stay there, except what goes back out to buy votes.

This leaves the second group feeling ticked off. However it dares not make waves because the central bureaucracy has the king's ear.

Bureaucracy is a major part of BIG GOVERNMENT; it oppresses citizens. If this oppression gets severe enough, as it did in the former USSR, citizens become totally preoccupied with simple survival.

All their energy is used up in working around, over, under, and thru stifling rules and regulations. They are not free to start and build businesses.

This means wealth cannot be created. Rose Wilder Lane in 1942 knew precisely what she was writing about. Now it is 77 years later, and we have yet to learn.

Time is a matter of priorities. We have concluded that less of it is required to maintain a democracy than is needed to fight the system.

Shackle business with regulation and the best and brightest young people in a society will gravitate to government service. The kicker here is that government spends wealth while the private sector creates it. Therefore such a society will ultimately shackle itself.

We recall de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who visited our country in 1830: "Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare its charges for a man's life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood.

"It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it.

"It provides for their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?"

"No need to exert yourself beyond work. The Party will care for all," said the communists. De Tocqueville again: "------ that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.

Rose Wilder Lane stated that men are by their nature free. Whenever a force such as BIG GOVERNMENT tries to oppress them and they allow this, they will pursue their nature by reacting against this force.

They will violate laws perceived by them as oppressive. Government will respond by enacting additional laws to restrain them.

Lane: “Stupid men believe that passing a law against an activity will stop that activity.” There follows more violations and more laws, as society descends thru a vicious cycle into an immoral society.

De Tocqueville: "Under this system the citizens quit their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then fall back into it.

"That is not good enough for me. I am less interested in the question of who my master is than in the fact of obedience." Friends, unless we act this will be our grim destiny.

We fool ourselves into thinking that we have democracy when we pay taxes and a couple of times a year take a few moments in the voting booth. We look at the result and conclude that this is not enough.

De Tocqueville saw this in 1830. What he described above was what he had seen in France and in other European countries, not here. Its very absence is what made him so excited about America.

The USDA (department of agriculture) is a good example of a bureaucracy gone berserk. Today less than two percent of us are on farms and there are 110,000-150,000 people employed in the USDA, depending on how we count. In 1932 there were 25 percent of us on farms and the USDA employed 32,000 people.

The USDA has got so big it is at war with itself. It flogs beef and eggs, but also health. It helps tobacco growers while it trumpets the dangers of cigarette smoking.

The outfit first got really active in the Great Depression to help poor farmers and to ensure that we citizens always had adequate food. Now it pays billions each year to store ridiculous food surpluses, but the bureaucracy has had 80+ years to grow and it seems no one can stop it from doing more of the same in the future.

Krauthammer (News & Observer 3/07): "There's nothing quite as beautiful as the space station and the shuttle that services it, and nothing quite as useless. Now, that can be said of many things: ------ a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabakov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers ------."

Wall Street Journal 3/07: "Since its publication on Feb. 18 in the Washington Post, the story of the bureaucratic nightmares experienced at Walter Reed Army Medical Center by soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been Washington's biggest bonfire in a long time."

But investigation of the maltreatment of wounded soldiers began in 2003 and culminated in Feb. 2005. A public hearing was held. In spite of that investigation two more years passed and still no action was taken.

Finally, we deal with the challenge of fixing a (typical?) failed bureaucracy (Economist 6/02). "It is now clear that FBI agents out in the field were investigating the behavior of suspicious Arabs before September 11th, and that their bosses buried their investigations.

"Last July (2001), an agent in the bureau’s Phoenix office told FBI headquarters that he was worried that al-Qaeda agents were training in American flight schools. The Washington bureaucrats did nothing.

"After all, the two memos were both sent to the same place: the FBI’s radical-fundamentalist unit." This lack of result reinforces our argument that, once ossified, a bureaucracy can no longer function effectively.

"It gets worse. FBI headquarters did not just bury these memos ------. It went out of its way to frustrate the investigators.

"For months after September 11th, Robert Meuller, the head of the FBI, swore that his agency had not received any warnings that Islamic terrorists were planning ----- attack. Last week the Minnesota offices’ legal counsel, Colleen Rowley, infuriated by the stonewalling, wrote a 6,000-word memo to the director.

Mr. Mueller’s response was to stamp ‘classified’ on it, but it was promptly leaked to the press."No bureaucrat is ever willing to take responsibility for a mistake. This fact makes up an important component of the definition of a bureaucrat. Like politicians, they are excellent fingerpointers.

Was Mueller fired? No. Bureaucrats, especially the top-drawer variety, are never fired. They might be moved elsewhere, but they are, also by definition, in the business until retirement.

Without that leak, none of this would have seen the light of day. Will this bloated and stale bureaucracy ever get fixed? Bush patched it into the new Department of Homeland Security, which almost immediately became a gigantic bureaucratic disaster.

The only way to fix any bureaucracy is to obliterate it completely, and begin again only if its purpose still exists. Believe it; this will not happen. Unless ………….

Economist: "A post-war attempt to set up a domestic security agency was killed by that famous liberal, J. Edgar Hoover (long-time head of the FBI), on the grounds that it would be an American Gestapo." And today?

FINAL DRUM ROLL: Enter the journalists stage left. Enter also Glenn Reynolds and his book An army of Davids: How Market and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths.

"--- to a degree, prior to WWII --- Big Media power was countervailed by other institutions: political parties, churches, labor unions, even widespread political discussion groups.

When TV news switched from analysis to entertaining viewers, anchors became celebrities who were full of themselves. Their concern for accurate, analytical news reporting vanished. See PG4: The Saga of the media.

Reynolds showed that big media was not the only problem. "When David approached the FBI to tell them that he had captured al Qaeda's website and that he was eager to cooperate, the FBI's response was glacial: 'It literally took me five days to reach someone in the FBI that had an even elementary grasp of the Internet. By that time, the hostiles realized the site I had up -------.'

"It's up to us to make sure that neither the terrorists nor the bureaucrats get their way." This remark is excellent in that it addresses both the enemy without and that within, and also serves notice to us that stale and bloated bureaucracies cannot make us safe.

Bureaucrats who fear new technology can't be fired, as they would be in a private business. Also the competition that is necessary to spur new thinking and efforts is lacking.

We wonder if we have saved the best for last in our elaborately staged performance. Maybe it's a melodrama, where at the last split second the hero arrives to save the poor young maiden from the lecherous clutches of the villain.

We hold hope for a lot of good things, but we are to be disappointed here. Our country enjoys a free press, so why haven't the news media systematically exposed and torpedoed the colossal mischief that "our" government has been up to over the past 50 years or so?

There are four reasons. One is that television has gradually programmed us, transforming our society into the sound bite generation. And today Facebook and other social media have many of us hooked.

The old days of investigative reporting are largely gone. The news media of today "hummingbird" from one issue to another so rapidly that no one issue sticks in our minds for longer than a few seconds. Then it's a string of commercial messages and off to the next one.

One day it's child molestation, the next it's assault rifles, the next it's date rape, then it's racial discrimination, sexual harassment, etc. On top of all that mishmash we go channel-surfing with the remote.

And now we have 500 channels. Does this mean the nine-second sound bite will become the two-second bite?

James Fallows wrote a book called Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy: "Reporting means going out and collecting new material, the very existence of which you may not have suspected before you went to look.

"Sound-biting means working through material that everyone else is aware of, until you can come up with a brief formulation that is cleverer that anyone else's. Why does it have to be material with which everyone else is already familiar? Because otherwise they won't recognize the elegance of your sound bite."

This is how we get the news we need to conduct our daily affairs. "Thin gruel," we'd say if asked. But, no one asks.

A second reason for failure to expose political skullduggery is that our main news media are nearly all big companies whose managers focus more closely on the bottom line than in providing hard news. In the old days most newspapers were family-owned.

Periods of financial loss were accepted. Today newspaper readership and TV news viewing are declining as people grow tired of getting little besides fluff. (However there are some recent signs of a change in policy.)

A third reason lies in the position of today's journalists' noses: high in the air. Fallows: "Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public's representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions no one but their fellow political professionals care about."

They don't know what questions the ordinary Joe/Jane might ask, as they have no connection with this type of citizen. They live in a different world, that of wealth and personal power seeking.

In that world there is never enough of either, and so there is no end to the struggle. Such is life in the fast lane, we suppose.

William Greider is a former journalist who wrote a book called Who Will Tell the People. Before 1960 journalists had high school educations.

These real people habitually went into bars when they were after real news, to talk with the real people who habitually stopped after work for a real beer. Not anymore.

The fourth and strongest reason is access. Because we have allowed such huge money and power to be centralized in Washington, news media cannot report the heavy action to us unless they have access to the highest reaches of power: the king’s knee.

This distorts priorities as news anchors also strive for the highest reaches. Fallows reported on an interview with then-New Jersey senator Bill Bradley by Judy Woodruff: "Near the end ----- Bradley gave a long answer about how everyone involved in politics had to get out of the rut of converting every subject or comment into a political 'issue,' used for partisan advantage. Let's stop talking, ----- about who will win what race and start talking about the challenges we face.

"As soon as he finished, Judy ----- asked her next question: 'Do you want to be president?' It was as if she had not heard a word -----."

This is personality politics, image merchandising, spin doctoring. It is devoid of any ideas that might stimulate citizen discussion of issues relevant to their lives. It's not real news. See Pocket Gofer 13.

We have learned in this and other pocket gofers that the highest reaches are misbehaving while governing. Persistently expose some of this and a news medium is out of business.

The TV news is dramatized to keep us watching (and catch the commercials). Fallows said that even Sunday morning news show people "----- have put on rouge and push-up bras."

Some news anchors enjoy celebrity status. Should they?

About 80 years ago there lived and worked one of the wisest journalists in our history. His name was Walter Lippmann: "A community that lacks the means to detect lies also lacks the means to preserve its own liberty."

Today the news media work hard to serve up tons of disinformation. This means we are being deceived in spite of impressive quantities of news messages made available to us, as Pocket Gofer 19 explains.

AND THE PARTY GOES ON: Near the beginning of this pocket gofer we promised to show why we did not include political parties in the cast of players in our drama. The time has come to deliver: we're not politicians so we keep promises.

Both of our major parties work hard at leading citizens to believe they have two very different philosophies for guiding members’ efforts at governing. This is aimed at motivating us to vote because their candidates need votes. It is the democratic process.

The reality is that this is also an illusion put out there for our consumption. The two parties are actually in bed together with their sugar daddies, the special interests. There is very little real difference between their programs as they pander to the money and not to the concerns of taxpayers (Pocket Gofer 19).

We voters see this as we watch presidential and congressional candidates sling mud at each other on the tube, rather than discuss issues. They think if they did they would lose votes and we would discover this lack of difference.

In early 2001 the Economist reported on party activity. "In Washington DC, it is never too early to start claiming credit or apportioning blame. -------. Now the two parties are blaming one another for a recession that hasn’t arrived yet.

"The Republican plan is obvious: exaggerate the bad news, get it out as early as possible, blame it on Mr. Clinton, build support for Mr. Bush’s huge tax cut ----- and then give the tax cut, and Mr. Bush, credit for the future upturn.

"For their part, the Democrats are just as cynically distorting the problem in order to blame Mr. Bush for the (alleged) recession and stockmarket crash."

Friends, this whole show is a charade. Both major parties constantly maintain the illusion of combat among thieves who long ago united in order to steal big from taxpayers.

Here is another very important point, not mentioned in the article. If outed, the point would squelch any further "combat."

The point is that bad news causes people to demand more from government, and hence to depend on BIG GOVERNMENT more and more. What really scares us is that this result is precisely what the elite class in Washington intends for the greater society. Ever cooperative with government, pussycat news media hype the bad and ignore good news.

The elites want us to remain hunkered down and completely dependent on government. Then they can do whatever they want, whenever, and however. And on our dime.

This worship of electronic holy grail has got to the point where it borders on the insane. The main reason this has happened may be traced to tons of money sloshing around Washington.

For example there is an actor turned director who is pushing for government to spend more on early child development. He lined up a bunch of stars to help make a documentary for ABC, which saw the big names and promptly reserved prime time.

Newsweek magazine agreed to devote a special issue to his cause. The citizen who argued that early child development is a parental responsibility and government should butt out got no press, even when he showed that the proposed spending is unconstitutional.

But hundreds of interest groups are trying to do exactly the same thing. They buy TV ads to influence public opinion, and then they commission (or rig) polls to show the impact. Then they bring results into congressional offices.

But these massive efforts have little real impact, for at least three reasons. The first has any one group lost in the rush almost no matter what it does to attract attention.

The second has groups butting up against the planned gridlock that is Washington (See Pocket Gofer 19). The third has the public all but totally turned off of network TV.

The only key policies in place today are gridlock, personal power holding, corruption, and empty perceptions. All the elites’ desired policies are in place.

2014 webcast JJun27 14A ON A BROKEN GOVT, by Rob Garver“----------two sides of the same ugly coin. Congressional Republicans can’t force the President to govern the way they want him to, so they throw as many roadblocks in his way as they possibly can, from creating gridlock to refusing to fill vital government positions.

"For his part, Obama can’t force the Congress to legislate the way he wants it to, so he is doing everything in his power to work outside the system, effectively depriving Congress of its rightful role in both legislating and overseeing the executive branch.

"The result is that the legislative and executive branches are both trying to exercise authority outside the channels traditionally available to them. This not only gives the impression that each side is overreaching, but creates a system in which the judicial branch, rather than being one of three coequal parts of the government, is now the ultimate authority over decisions it has no business making.”

"Obama Kicks The Can," News & Observer 11/15: "On January 15, 2009, president-elect Barack Obama told the Washington Post that the US was 'at the end of the road' in putting off reform of entitlement programs." This means it is high time to phase them out lest they eventually eat our lunch and dinner.

"What does the Obama-era record show? If your goal ----- enabling the govt to balance its budget while meeting new domestic and defense challenges --- that is, to govern --- the Obama era shapes up more like another 8 years of can-kicking.

The gravy train arrives at Union station on time every day, carrying billions of taxpayer dollars. Where’s the problem?

The unavoidable conclusion is that the above scripts do not describe a drama. Rather, it is a tragedy.

BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG HEADACHE

The late Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman discussed what is called "social engineering:" "We're all different, but BIG GOVERNMENT would have the general interest oppress ------ er, govern us." The kicker here is, if we're all different, how can Uncle Sugar or anyone else define the general interest?

The only general interest lies in good government. But the elite class is not interested in this, because they like things as they are and no changes please.

BIG GOVERNMENT cannot strangle our innate urge to do good for ourselves. But if we are not rich it comes close.

Some of us feel like we are being strangled. Hence there is frustration, cop-outs with drugs, crime to get money to do drugs, family violence, vandalism, shooting sprees, etc.

A HISTORY OF EROSION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: In 1984 Richard E. Morgan wrote a book called Disabling America: The "Rights Industry" in Our Time. Altho not an easy read (Morgan is a lawyer), there is much in it for revealing the subtle and long-term nibbling away by BIG GOVERNMENT of our individual rights.

He quoted famous 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill: "Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportioned to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric makes the chief danger of the time."

Weirdos can operate for good and bad. Mill obviously looked to the good in making an important point.

Morgan: "We must face the fact that beginning after WWII, and especially over the past twenty years, the American law of civil rights and liberties has been increasingly manipulated, redefined, and expanded at the urging of people with little understanding or sympathy for the traditions and ideas on which this body of law is properly based."

This is what lawyers who smell money can do with the English language, especially the language of law. Morgan takes them on.

"A consequence of this, largely unintended by the rights-and-liberties militants, has been to marginally disable major American institutions, both governmental and private. It has also rendered more difficult the already daunting task of maintaining minimum standards of public manners and morals." Money has no morals.

Morgan showed how immorality creeps up on the unsuspecting. "Initially, the concerns of the activist lawyers were human and reasonable, provoked by evasive legal maneuvers by segregationists -------. But the modes of response were sweeping and doctrinaire, employing a spurious constitutional grammar (new ‘rights’ and broad equitable ‘remedies’ for whole classes of persons) rather than the limited grammar of the individual law suit ----- (our emphasis)."

Thus the notion of group rights intruded on individual rights. If an individual is frustrated because he can’t seem to get ahead on his own, the natural tendency is to form a group consisting of kindred spirits (perhaps a union).

If this doesn’t get results, the logical next step is to look to government for a solution. Pretty soon many groups formed, went to Washington with money and asked for their place at the table of favoritism.

As for segregation the Constitution does forbid it, but it does not require integration of one whole class into another. Nevertheless, activists got carried away and went for broad "social change."

"----- concentrating on their overriding moral mission, became more and more remote from public opinion, and indeed from common sense." Human nature: power-seeking is guided by personal ambition and not common sense.

Morgan’s book illustrates what lawyers have done to society. The more rules, the less trust and hence the less justice. Then the public asks for still more top-down laws, and the vicious cycle takes off.

We think the tons of new rules being written are not to benefit citizens, but rather institutions of government that have been taken over by experts, politicians, and bureaucrats. Therefore the rules benefit the elites rather than the rabble who are paying for them.

Claudia Whitman and Julie Zimmerman edited a book called The Crime Zone, which capably illustrates what happens to some of the "rabble." Some of the inmate essayists are on death row.

Russell Scott Day: "I’m not making excuses; I’m simply pointing out the way my life evolved. -------. The staff didn’t show compassion or a true desire to understand. Corrections officers were there to condemn us for every petty rule broken, rules they created to establish order and discipline, not morality and virtue.

"Over time, you learn how to manipulate the system. You learn to think like a criminal, the very thing they’re supposed to be stopping.

“Children don’t commit crimes because they’re criminals. There’s something missing in their lives; poverty, drug addiction, low self-esteem, peer pressure, ----- can all lead to crime."

Mr. Day argued that the system is organized to make it convenient for "corrections" officers to operate a warehouse. But even simple products must be prepared for the market if they are to be saleable.

Blake R. Pirtle: "----- stole a whole bunch of fishing poles and tackle boxes. -------. Well, later that day, my Mom found ------ turned me in.

“To the surprise of everyone, the police came and took me away. --------. ----- kept me in jail, at the age of 11, for the whole weekend until I could go before the judge.

"This was probably the worst thing they could have done, for it destroyed my mother. She thought she had done the right thing and here they were taking her baby away from her.

“She would never again turn me in to the police and would do everything to protect me from them. ---------. I started selling pot and speed ------."

Willie C. Tucker asked, "So why have education and job training been targeted as expendable, especially when it has been documented that these programs reduce recidivism rate of parolees?"

What has yet to be documented is the fact that the elites want overflowing prisons. This situation fools the public into believing that more rules stop or at least sharply reduce violent crime.

The truth is that more rules stimulate more crime, and then more rules, etc, until eventually the elites have their sought-after police state. And we ordinary blokes will lead our lives hunkered down, rolling with the punches, and wondering what new rule we’ll break when we dare to step out the front door.

Stephen Fraley talked about guns. "I came to prison in 1981 for taking another young man’s life in a street altercation.

“I was attacked by several individuals and shot one of them in my attempt to defend myself. I was convicted of murder ------.

"Guns are unnecessary and provide false confidence, often leading to disaster; they constitute an easy option when one is afraid, hurt or angry. Without the gun, I would not have even felt safe in that area and not have been there to be attacked."

"What would surprise and even shock most jury members is the extent to which police officers lie on the stand to reinforce the prosecution and not jeopardize their standing within their own particular law enforcement community," said Reverend McCloskey.

"The words of one 25-year veteran senior officer on a northern New Jersey police force still ring in my ears: ‘They (the defense) lie, so we (the police) lie. I don’t know one of my fellow officers who hasn’t lied under oath.’"

Seems a helluva way to operate a criminal justice system. To us this smacks of an immoral society.

Today’s Supreme Court justices (and yesterday’s going back several decades) feel free to make law in accordance with what they think is the shape society should take. Whatever the Constitution says in Article III, social engineering is surely not a part of it.

And other lawyers have been permitted by the lawyers on the Court to create a massive fiefdom. We are the serfs, just as Friedrich Hayek predicted in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom.

The whole issue boils down to a perversion of individual rights by converting them into group rights. As group after group lines up for its "deserved" benefits, the lawyers line up for the money.

Morgan’s conclusion is that lawyers have the potential to bury our society, and there seems to be nothing to stop them from acting on it, because, "----- their ideals and self-interest are congruent."

Perhaps we citizens should give voice to our frustration. No problem with this. Government officials frequently remind us that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees us this privilege, right?

Wrong, according to James Bovard in his revealing book Lost Rights. "In 1985, the average libel suit cost $150,000 in legal fees for the accused. Some small newspapers have stopped covering controversial stories for fear of the crushing legal fees required to defend even an accurate story."

This plays perfectly into politicians’ hands, many of whom are lawyers. Among the last things they want to have to deal with is prying reporters who are looking for dirty laundry to air.

This combines two key benefits: dissenting voices snuffed out, and still more money for lawyers. Helluva deal!!

Bovard concluded: "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." William Lederer wrote a book called A Nation of Sheep.

Is anyone starting to feel a little uncomfortable? Wooly? Visualizing the Great Shearer in his/her mailbox?

We have described the current state of the union of today. During an election year this state of being becomes unusually obvious to any thinking person.

Because up to recently we have had far more apathetic than thinking people, the cat has been away and the mice have been playing. And their toys keep getting more expensive.

Therefore the big question today is how much longer is the cat going to allow the mice to play, now that he/she is beginning to understand what has really been going on. We suspect that quite soon the situation is going to change. However we are concerned that the transition be without violence.

We can pull this one off in the voting booth. All we need do is make triple sure the election is free and fair, as the establishment will try to rig it in ways they haven’t already put in place (these should be aired).

In any event we can be sure the elites will be extremely unhappy campers, and will let us know about it. Therefore we should invite foreign experts to monitor our elections (which top leaders in poor countries sometimes do).

TAKING IT ON THE ROAD: An Economist article by Harold Hongju Koh (11/1/03) portrays the impact abroad of BIG GOVERNMENT’s erosion of human rights at home. “America’s anti-terrorist activities have given cover to many foreign governments who want to use ‘anti-terrorism’ to justify their own crackdowns on human rights.

“In Egypt, -------- emergency law, ------- detain suspected national-security threats almost indefinitely without charge, to ban public demonstrations, and to try citizens before military tribunals. President Hosni Mubarak ------ policies proved that ‘we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism.’”

The kicker here lies in such rulers jacking the definition of terrorism around to justify anything they want to do to citizens who give them any guff. But then, this term has been used and misused by the Bush administration and many other folks. Terrorism is just the latest gimmick in a long history of justifications for abuse of citizens.

For example, if a journalist wants to get something published he/she needs only to toss in a couple of “terrorists” or “suspected links to al-Qaeda” and it’s done. Citizens have been programmed to expect these, and so the media oblige.

Hongju Koh added some encouraging news, however. “With each passing day, I see growing resistance to their policies among ordinary Americans.

“The public outcry following the leak of a proposed second patriot act has put that legislation on hold.” Good to hear there are a few thinking citizens who are raising a stink.

In 1759, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither.” Once out of the cocoon (as of 1789 when our country began) being forced to crawl back inside obliterates many human rights.

Some of us have jobs as security guards. These jobs often pay well, because people who have them must fight crushing boredom during 99.9 percent of their time on the job. These jobs are not easy by any measure.

And yet when compared with our liberty they have it relatively easy. This is because they get paid in tangible money and we do not. Furthermore, they guard something tangible, such as a warehouse full of valuable machines and other equipment.

As guardians of our liberty we don't get paid directly in money. Furthermore we are guarding something intangible (can't put our hands on it), and it is not located in one specific place. Our hearts move with our bodies.

This makes it a challenging job, but someone has to do it, and if not us who? Friends, freedom is not free.

In guarding it we don't make money; we guard only the opportunity to keep it. But if we drop our guard, ----- OUCH! Does it cost us!

An 18th-century citizen saw the light when he said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The pocket gofers will provide a light to guide our efforts aimed at putting things right and regaining a vital vigilance.

WE ARE TRAPPED: Let’s begin with one of the Congress’s famous Omnibus Spending bills, 1998 version this time. Columnist George Will commented (10/98): "The 4,000-page bill’s garbage pail nature can be gauged from these two consecutive sentences in the conference committee’s report: ‘The conferees believe that the responsibilities of Nurse Corps officers necessitate that they should be required to have baccalaureate degrees. This provision extends the 1998-1999 duck hunting season in the state of Mississippi.’"

“The bill was hauled onto the senate floor by pages (yeah; sorry about that). It weighed about 20 pounds. Practically no one who is expected to vote on it read it; they were told how to vote by characters like senate majority leader Trent Lott. Tons of pork invariably got slipped into it at the last possible moment, which partially explains why it looked so utterly unorganized (and was).”

GOOD GRIEF! This stuff governs us? They could stick anything in there. How long has this been going on? The Constitution does not authorize laws regulating nurses and Mississippi duck hunters.

"Representative Chris Cox, ---- remembers the first bill he voted on when he came to Congress in 1989. ----- a Sunday vote, at which point not a single voting member had read it. The 1990 budget came to the floor in a large corrugated box containing more than 1,000 unpaginated, uncollated pages ‘tied together,’ Cox said, ‘in twine, like newspapers headed for recycling.’"

Asking whether any such law has achieved its objective has been considered bad form in the hallowed halls of Congress over the past several decades. This cannot continue.

Pocket Gofer 3 shows that several decades ago the notion of the career politician took off. We suspect there is a connection.

From the CATO Institute Handbook 1995: "The decline of values in America is due, not to greater freedom, but to greater dependence on government and to the overlegalization of society. When government and law replace individual manners and morals as the basis for social order, government and the law will fail, and so will society."

Jefferson’s first inaugural speech as president (1801): "’----- the sum of good government’ as ‘----- a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.’"

After examining a welfare bill in 1794, Madison rose from the floor of the House of Representatives to speak. "I cannot lay a finger on that article in the Constitution which grants a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

CATO: "----- as South Carolina’s William Drayton noted in 1828, ‘If Congress can determine what constitutes the General Welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?’

"When the community’s functions are taken over by government, people lose a sense of attachment and the urge to reach out to one another. As social service functions have shifted up the political ladder, people have increasingly looked to government and not to each other for help."

A 1999 report by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that violent crime in major cities rose by 40 percent since 1969. The report went on to mention that in 1995 handguns were used to kill 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, 213 in Germany and 9,390 in the US.

Reacting to a rash of random killings during the same year, Connecticut authorized its cops to enter a home and seize any guns they find. But this is typical of the common approach to problems: top-down by BIG GOVERNMENT.

People don’t realize that they are gradually giving up the few freedoms that remain. This is but one more instance of the old gimmick used so often by the elite class: "But citizens, we are only trying to preserve your freedoms!"

BIG GOVERNMENT keeps playing this chorus, simply because it works. Eventually the elite class will install a police state, all the while "preserving our freedoms."

Now, some folks may challenge our point here, so we’ll ask James Bovard (5/00 column) to clarify it. "Since 1995, the Pentagon has deluged local law enforcement with thousands of machine guns, more than 100 armored personnel carriers, scores of grenade launchers, and more than a million other pieces of military hardware.

"Instead of relying on street smarts, police departments are resorting to high-tech weaponry courtesy of Uncle Sam (read “taxpayer”). There are some cases in which government agents need high-powered weaponry.

“But, too often the possession of the weapons has induced G-men to use far more force and intimidation than is necessary (our emphasis)." Too much testosterone and too little accountability.

When discussing BIG GOVERNMENT we surely should not leave the Supreme Court out of it. Ever since the Warren Court of the 1960s (and even before that) this outfit has frequently been distorting the meaning of the Constitution in order to in effect make new laws. But the court’s proper job is to interpret that document in order to pass judgment on laws created by the Congress and okayed by the president.

Some years back Robert Bork was nominated for a job as one of the nine justices. He was not confirmed, possibly because senators were afraid he would try to stop this nonsense. So he wrote a book: Slouching Toward Gomorra.

"Judicial radical individualism weakens or destroys the authority of ----- ‘intermediate institutions’ ----- families, schools, business organizations, private associations, mayors, city

councils, governors, state legislatures ----- that stand between the individual and the national government and its bureaucracies.

"We are no longer free to make our own fundamental moral and cultural decisions because the Court oversees all such matters, when and as it chooses." We are getting that trapped feeling again. And we never get a chance to vote for or against any of these nine characters in their flowing robes and big chairs.

Italian jurist Bruno Leoni in his book Freedom and the Law: "The ideal of a written law, generally conceived and knowable by every citizen is one of the most precious gifts that the fathers of Western civilization have bequeathed to their posterity." "Generally conceived" means citizen-made law.

Charlotte Twight in her book Dependent on DC: "------ understood meanings of constitutional provisions were simply disregarded by the Supreme Court, changing the Constitution from a perpetual repository of known general rules protective of individual liberty to a document changeable at the whim of five of the nine justices ---------."

Today the US Code of Laws takes up eight linear feet of library shelf space; the US Code Annotated requires 33 feet; and the Code of Federal Regulations occupies another 20 feet (or, maybe three thumb drives).

This omits the court decisions that interpret all these rules and regulations. The conclusion is unavoidable: no one can live without breaking at least a few laws and/or regulations. Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged illustrates this situation in horrendous detail.

There are among us many citizens who want to be active members of their community; they want to contribute. We read about one every now and then in the newspaper.

They seem so few and far between. That is why they make news.

This is because BIG GOVERNMENT is constantly getting in the way of these activities. Therefore it is not easy to help others on our individual initiative.

Such a person must work around, over or against government. This reduces the numbers of contributors far below what we would see if we had our individual freedoms back (Pocket Gofers 2, 4, and 6).

We have lost our sense of community. Back when we possessed it local politicians cared about us.

They bent over backward and pulled strings for us when we had a problem that we couldn't solve. Whenever we felt like getting involved in a project or solving a problem the local ward heeler would show us how to do the most good and coordinate our efforts with others similarly inclined.

Back then things got done in East Overshoe, and they were the things we wanted done. They got done because we did them ourselves, sweating shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors.

Back then we knew what had to be done and so we rolled up our sleeves and did it. Did it right.

We wiped off the sweat as we walked together to the local beer hall, and we felt satisfied. People support what they help to create.

Today BIG WASHINGTON knows just what we need in East Overshoe ....

SMALL GOVERNMENT

Lord Bolingbroke was a British aristocrat. We think the man spoke truth: "By making ill use of his power, the King was the real author of all the disorders in the state ----- and yet, the better to prevent such disorders ----- further powers were entrusted to him. Because he had governed ill, it was put in his power to govern worse; and liberty was undermined, for fear it should be overthrown." Einstein: “Never ask those who created the problem to solve it.”

Friends, all history is shot thru with government officials who have oppressed their citizens in the name of protecting their liberty. This political scam has grown crusty with age.

Nevertheless, Washington is today proving to us that it still works. (Maybe we should say attempting to prove?)

Small government is lean and clean, not mean. It gets mean only when we citizens hose officials who don't toe the line.

Because we need some government, it is quite like fire: a little is fine as it keeps us warm and cooks food for us. But a lot gets out of control and destroys everything. (George Washington said that.)

Jefferson: "But it is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected."

Bonner (his book Empire of Debt): “But the biggest challenge a president will face --- merely staying out of the way. People have their own challenges, their own plans, and their own private lives to lead. The last thing they need is a president who wants to improve the world.”

The Economist (3/10): "--- Mr. Obama needs to squash his apparent addiction to big government quickly. There would be no better way than spelling out where he is going to take a hatchet to government spending; -------."

This act goes against the religion that lies inherent in every career politician and bureaucrat. But now, having dug himself a deep hole, he must bite the bullet. It surely seems that he and

the looters in Washington will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the era of small government. Alas! It did not happen.

Columnist George Will sees increasing dependency on BIG GOVERNMENT with the passage of health care reform. This lump is close to a sixth of the entire economy.

The Economist continued: " Benefits, once granted, are tough to take away. Beneficiaries will thank democrats for their health insurance and recoil from republicans who might snatch it away.

"Government will swell, freedom will recede and the great American tradition of self-reliance will wither a little." We amend this to read "yet a little more."

We further amend this to add that benefits granted/taken to doctors and hospitals will be tough to take away. They can hire lobbyists.

The Economist concluded: "Public spending (federal, state and local), which was 24% of GDP in 1950 and 35% before the current recession, could hit 44% this year.

Small government is far less complex, controls far less money better, has therefore far less corruption, governs on far fewer issues, and has no special interest lobbyists dangling bucks in front of elected officials. In this way those officials could campaign on keepable promises, there would be far greater accountability and we would have honest government.

How many promises? Only two: determine the public will on an issue, and help them act on it.

Sounds easy, but it is not or we would surely have it today. However if all of us work shoulder to shoulder, neighbor to neighbor, institution to institution, and gofer to gofer we would be surprised at the result.

Two hundred years ago Thomas Paine looked around the world and found uniformly bad government everywhere. We looked at the past 200 years and found -----? Maybe good government today is impossible, but we committed ourselves to see this thing thru and so we'll hang in there. See Common Sense II, written by Publius II with inspirations from Paine.

Paine again: "I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered; -----."

KEEPING THEM BACK HOME: Today's communication technology has many of us working at home with PCs and laptops. Furthermore use of the Web means our congressmen could spend more of their time at home too, where we could get to know them and monitor their activities much more closely.

They could carry on debates via teleconferencing and vote from back home over phone wires or via satellite after directly determining our preferences on issues. We could make damn sure our public servants behave like our servants.

This would mean that power would lie in our ideas (Pocket Gofer 13). Like us, it would be diffused throughout the land instead of concentrated in Washington and in state governments.

Congressmen would assemble in Washington only occasionally, and they would not need second homes financed by taxpayers. In the late 18th century when America was an infant congressmen traveled to Washington only twice a year, staying in boardinghouses.

In a democracy there may be almost as many officials for sale; people are people. But with power spread thin a fat cat must buy many more of them to acquire unearned influence.

And it is much more likely that this cat would encounter a key official who is not for sale: we would be watching him. Or there might be a leak (Pocket Gofer 5).

However with BIG GOVERNMENT and power concentrated in Washington it is an easy sale. The Grand Bazaar hums every day. Recall how elder President Bush hated leaks (and his son too).

No central government, however organized, can do much of anything directly for individual people except hand some of our own money back to us. Each one of us is simply too different from every other, and too complex.

Therefore to get anything done on behalf of an individual that person must do it for him/herself. No problem here; human nature urges each citizen to improve his/her lot in life.

This means that government could best provide an enabling framework, or an environment, which protects individual freedoms. It could cause to be done, but it could not do.

A federal government could do a few things for all of us together, such as national defense, foreign affairs, internal order through coordination between state governments, and control of the money supply. We note that none of these functions involves sending a check to an individual citizen, or any other contact.

HEROES IN THEIR PLACE: To break free of the British yoke in the late 18th century we needed our Washingtons, our Jeffersons, our Franklins. Once democracy was established, however, we needed dependable public servants, not heroes.

We don't want men/women of great intelligence and genius in the public sector of our democracy. Rather, we want moderately intelligent, honest, caring, and public-spirited people who will arouse and put into play our collective wisdom and follow its direction.

If we don't let them get near tons of money they would remain honest. The theory of accumulation of money cannot operate. And we would watch closely what they do with what we do give them.

We would encourage our superstars to enter the private sector, outside the system. Here they can utilize their talents to create wealth and thus help enable each of us to improve his/her living standard through making available highly productive jobs and investment opportunities. Excesses would be restrained thru competition and aroused shareholders.

Also, only from citizen discussion and debate can an occasional flaw of the system be accurately and objectively detected and action organized to rectify them. As Walter Lippmann inferred above we need sharp people to smoke out the sharp practices of government that are not in our interest. Route the sharpies into government and we would have lost this vital ability.

We turn to a different type of hero. In this we were inspired by famous statesman Bernard Baruch, who was asked who he thought was the most prominent hero in the US. "The housewife, who prepares breakfast for her husband and children, keeps the house clean, manages the money, and gives her love to her family." (Househusbands are okay, too.)

THE INDIVIDUAL AND GOVERNMENT: What we need is a small federal government. This means a national government that has absolute authority over us according to our consent, but only in several small, clearly defined areas. See the Tenth Amendment.

Under the Constitution the federal government has absolutely no authority to regulate any activities in the private and volunteer sectors of the economy. The Bill of Rights was and is intended to protect individual citizens from just this type of infringement on their rights and freedoms.

Isaiah Berlin in his book Four Essays on Liberty: "The true heart of the liberal political tradition is the belief that no one has the secret as to what is the ultimate end and goal of life. There are many ends, each deserving respect, and it is out of this very pluribus that we get freedom." E Pluribus Unum.

Taxes collected and sent to Washington would be a small fraction of what they are now. The government would be required to use the accrual method of accounting for each dollar it collects: keep books like a merchant. And no secrets (PG5).

A democracy runs on ideas and constructive criticism of ideas to make them stronger. There is a difference between constructive criticism and bitching (PG13).

The former is harder, as it means the person must not only demonstrate weaknesses in the current idea or proposal, but also generate suggestions for improvement. Then he/she must defend them against more criticism.

To repeat, government cannot do it. Government cannot empower people through intervention in their personal lives. It can indirectly enable individual empowerment by getting off our backs.

Empowerment must come from within a person. Today the meaning of the term has been distorted.

What we mean by empowerment is a feeling of self-confidence and control over our destiny. We don't mean exerting personal power over others.

This must come from inside. Many people need only to look within themselves to find it.

Others need outside help to get the ball rolling, but this help must come from caring people, preferably family members, friends and, occasionally, therapists. Government-sponsored "groupthink" need not apply.

Once a person has momentum he/she can enhance it by actively helping others to help themselves. This is one of the positive aspects of human nature: receiving through giving. With the bottom-up approach it becomes a virtuous cycle.

Black columnist William Raspberry offered an interesting viewpoint as he addressed race (4/01): "It’s not that easy being white. I don’t speak from experience, of course. I’m just trying to guess how it must feel to be eternally blamed for anything that goes wrong, ----- and to get credit for nothing that goes well.

"The thought, ----- crystallized ------ when I saw a news report that the New Black Panther Party is sore at Bill Clinton. Why? The former president’s decision to locate his office in Harlem is, according to the Panthers, an element of ‘the white takeover of black Harlem.’

"See what I mean? If whites abandon our neighborhoods, we say they are segregationists who want us confined to a ghetto. If they move in, we say they’re taking over. What’s a poor white guy to do?

This column is a spoof on some dark-skinned leaders who persist in pushing group rights, calling them civil rights. It helps along the current movement away from this unwinnable fight, and toward individual rights and initiative, which is democracy. Raspberry: “Dig for gold, not excuses.”

In a democracy there will always be winners and losers. But a loser need not remain a loser. Sometimes through his/her inner resources and sometimes with a little help from friends he could yet become a winner.

He can pick up the pieces and have another go, and smarter this time around. Mistakes are a great learning tool.

That's one advantage of the free market. Failure need only be temporary, and this applies to someone born into failure as well as someone who takes a shot and falls short. In a top-down government bureaucrats permanently keep the peasants under their thumbs.

In a democracy even the president acts as an agent of the people. He does not send soldiers overseas to make war without citizens’ direct approval, and therefore democracies don’t fight each other. Recall Tom Paine: If citizens must finance a war and fight and die in it could decide on its declaration, “----- we should hear but little more of wars.”

THE ECONOMICS OF INDIVIDUALISM: Robert Genetski is an economist who wrote an intriguing book called A Nation of Millionaires. In it he slams a variety of central government programs, including Social Security. Here is what can happen with private pension funds.

"Assume, for example, that a 17-year-old worker, earning a wage of $4.25 an hour, ($8,840 a year) were to put 10 percent ------- retirement account each year. If those funds earned 6 percent ---- and the worker never got a raise, he or she would retire at age 67 with over a quarter of a million dollars.

"----- only the beginning of the story. Since a private pension system would actually invest workers’ retirement funds, economic growth, real incomes, and returns to investment would increase dramatically.

"Under the same assumptions ----- 10 percent contributions ------ earning 6 percent -----, and economic growth ----- guarantee 2 percent annual wage increases ------ a worker currently earning $500 a week ----- would retire with a million dollars in investable assets."

Did we say this book is intriguing? A mil invested and earning 6 percent (which is conservative) means this cantankerous old fogy has an annual retirement income of $60,000. This may not keep Imelda Marcos in shoes, but it’s far from starvation.

But all this rests on two additional assumptions. One is that we pry BIG GOVERNMENT loose from our retirement money, which officials used to raid and spend every election year instead of putting it aside for our retirement. The other is that a worker has the self-discipline to set aside 10 percent and leave it alone.

Do we have this discipline? If government gave us some choices instead of choosing for us we might. Genetski has a thought on this subject:

"As workers see their retirement accounts grow, a sense of pride and accomplishment develops. Individuals recognize that they alone are responsible (our emphasis) for their retirement. The relationship between a lifetime of work and economic security ----- becomes more apparent than ever before."

This is important: "I did it, and I did it my way." (Frank Sinatra would approve.)

Genetski also probed health care, education, and other areas. One parting shot: "Giving a screaming child whatever he wants just to keep him quiet is no way to raise a family. It’s also no way to run a government."

CIVIC PRIDE: People support what they help to create. Therefore if we in a community would make the rules under which we agree to live we would obey them. If these were made top-down by others and without our consent there would be a crime problem.

If the crime problem gets serious the reaction would be a great emphasis on law and order. Without a fundamental correction the ultimate result would be a police state with severely restricted personal freedoms for all of us. (And this would be done in the name of freedom.)

We in a community would decide the rules and punishment for infractions. In this way justice and punishment could be swift, sure, fair and mild.

This would be the most effective system because we set it up, for us. Put another way, we would be creating a moral society.

We in East Overshoe are a diverse lot. We have old, young, educated and not educated, rich and poor, and several different skin colors and eye shapes. What would unite us is a common civic purpose and the desire to participate in governing ourselves in the way we want.

We would not always agree. In fact, the politics of conflict could be stimulating when many people holding different views participate.

But the spirit of cooperation would shine through; we got together and made the rules. We did it our way.

A colonial citizen said "Sir, I heard what you said, I understand it, and I am in complete disagreement with it. But I will defend unto death your right to say it."

No need to punch his lights out, much less use an uzi to waste him. Democracy is having it out, idea vs. idea, recommendation vs. recommendation. The Age of Reason is just around the corner, where battles over ideas will be fought, won, and lost (Pocket Gofer 13).

Let's call it a sense of community, or civic pride. A citizen of today must be well past 80 to remember this feeling, and then only if he or she can accurately recall events that far in the distant past.

Back then East Overshoe was a self-governing, self-reliant community. It was governed from the bottom up, so the collective of ordinary citizens was actually the boss.

This does not mean going back to the 1920s wholesale. No one can go back. What it means is that we might borrow some aspects of community government from the 1920s as we put together the government we want. It means learning from history. Recall that the young Frenchman Alexi de Tocqueville provided some useful history back in 1830.

We talk half-jokingly about life on the edge. The plain fact is that life exists on the edge. It always has and probably always will.

It is those edges that are perceived as threats to some, the losers, and opportunities to others, the winners. No form of government can cancel this truth.

The term "institutions" smacks of bureaucracy. Our meaning is different: it includes strong families, schools and colleges, churches, civic, charitable, and other voluntary organizations.

These institutions provide support systems, wherein the individual can find the resources to help him/her develop that vital inner self-confidence which is so necessary to move forward. Government is part of this support system, but only if it acts to protect citizens’ basic human rights.

"I can handle it" is a feeling, a perception. Those of us who have enjoyed success in this life have difficulty in relating to those who think they have had none. However, some of us can relate, and we have a critically important job to do through one or more of these institutions.

The job of good government is to avoid interfering as these institutions and their vital people get on with the job. Today's top-down state denies the church, family, and many voluntary organizations opportunities to do a far better job. ("We know just what you need ....") It pre-empts the work, and screws up the job.

This feeling of communal solidarity is more important than economic development. The latter creates wealth, and this can bring on irresponsibility and even corruption.

But once that feeling of community is ingrained we fall in love with it, so we aren't about to let it go. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor dark of night, nor depression, nor wealth, nor deception nor fraud .....

In the world's first real experiment with representative democracy our ancestors held onto it for 160 years. Then along came wealth, and we let down our guard.

The economic slowdown persists. Lack of revenue and ferocious citizen opposition to tax and debt increases demands deep cuts in expenditures.

This may need to continue for the next 40 years or so. Reckless spending over decades has come back to bite government. If we citizens continue our fight against BIG GOVERNMENT we will apparently have economics as our ally.

Can we have both wealth and a sense of community? Yes, if we want it badly enough. If the alternative is BIG GOVERNMENT we think we will want it, really badly.

Because we are convinced it will be, really good.

CONCLUSION

A baby is always very moody. It seems that he or she is either ecstatic, in terrible trouble, or asleep.

Children are also moody, although with growth there is time for serious thought and analysis. They are very defensive when criticized by their peers.

We believe a full adult would not be described as moody or defensive. He/she would know himself and his capabilities well; therefore he would have the self-confidence that is necessary to listen to criticism and to deflect simple personal attacks.

Now, whenever an overbearing and paternalistic government denies him the opportunity to attain full adulthood he could shed his moodiness and ego-defensiveness only in rare instances. This means the typical citizen would be something less than adult, and would react emotionally to rules and opinions more often than would a fully rational adult.

With tons of laws in force he would get into trouble far more readily. This forced behavior pattern would generate public officials’ reactions --- more laws --- to accelerate a vicious cycle, culminating in a police state.

In his book Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman referred to John Kennedy's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you; rather ask what you can do for your country." His remarks:

"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather 'What can I and my compatriots do through government' to help discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?

"And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.

"Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp."

Note the specter of concentration of power into BIG GOVERNMENT, which eventually becomes a Frankenstein monster. This is an excellent analogy, as we created it and it is out of control just as in the 1818 fictional story about Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Milton Friedman died in 11/06 at age 94. We wish he could have lived to see us acting on ideas that he pushed for 60+ years.

Friedman’s last statement suggests that men and women of good will may begin the process of concentration of power, but later a different stripe elbows its way into the upper reaches of power. We recall the theory of accumulation of money and its potential for corrupting otherwise good people.

From a politician’s viewpoint it is natural to concentrate power. In this way it is easier to get things done.

But without power in the ideas of people what gets done doesn’t square with the will of the citizens. Rather, it bends to the will of officials.

What is worse is there is no end to this kind of power seeking. Acquiring some only sharpens the appetite for more.

If power is concentrated economic strength will reinforce it. If power is dispersed economic strength will act as a check on it, but only if eternal vigilance is practiced.

Because without this vigilance we can bet our bippy that personal power will again concentrate. This is human nature.

The British Lord Acton said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And finally Jefferson: "That government governs best which governs least."------ PUBLIUS II

And now comes at us one last question: what to do with this pamphlet. ……….. WEAR IT!!

TITLES OF OTHER POCKET GOFERS WHICH WE CAN DIG INTO, DISCUSS, CRITICIZE, AND ACT ON:

PG 1 - ON HEALTH AND FITNESS IN THE USAPG 2 - ON VOLUNTEERISMPG 3 - ON THE CAREER POLITICIAN IN A DEMOCRACYPG 4 - ON THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO GETTING THINGS DONEPG 5 - ON THE COMING OPEN SOCIETYPG 6 - ON MAKING A CONTRIBUTIONPG 7 - ON CORRUPTION AND ACCOUNTABILITYPG 8 - ON GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF BUSINESS AND THE PHANTOMPG 9 - IT'S ALL IN THE FAMILYPG 10 - ON EDUCATION IN THE USAPG 11 - ON THE US AS A WORLD CITIZENPG 12 - ON THE UN AND POTENTIAL CONFLICTS

PG 13 - ON PERSONAL POWER AND IDEASPG 14 - ON RESPECT FOR TAXPAYERS' MONEYPG 16 - ON DEMOCRACY AND OUR CENTRAL GOVERNMENTPG 17 - ON LEADERSHIP IN A DEMOCRACYPG 18 - ON WAR, WEAPONS, AND PEACEPG 19 - ON THE GRAND DECEPTIONPG 20 - ON LIFE IN A DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITYPG 21 – PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF A CONSTITUTION