I just read in the
New York Times that the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nancy A. Nord, has written to Congress asking that current legislation to double the size of the CPSC be scrapped. This is in the wake of great ideas like selling children's toys from China that were painted with lead-based paint, putting industrial waste into pet food and toothpaste, and other fantastic situations.
This brilliant idea from Nancy Nord follows the consistent pattern of the Bush administration's goal to eliminate government altogether. The theory is that by systematically dismantling the government, all of our lives will be simpler, better, and happier. Unlike other administrations, Bush's has even extended this theory to the military, outsourcing "security" in a warzone to companies like Blackwater. Perhaps the theory is correct.
After all, for the first time ever, the standard deviation from the median income in the United States is nearly zero - there are no poor people, and no super-rich people! Our military is spending less money and less time in conflict zones, inspiring other governments to follow the United States' lead and hire mercenary forces to do their dirty work for them! For the first time, all products and chemicals brought to market are being evaluated for their potential detrimental effects. Also, surprisingly, every American has full access to health care and private insurance with no danger of bankruptcy from a single hospital stay. In fact, every small child has guaranteed access to essential care, cutting down dramatically on future health care costs when these children get ill later in life. Perhaps the next best step is to turn over our interstate highway system to private companies, so that we can truly reap the benefits of lower taxes.
Oh wait, scrap that, for the first time since the late 1800s, we have a huge disparity of the super-rich and the poor, a shrinking middle class, and the U.S. is the only "rich" country in the world experiencing this fact. The stock market is at an all-time high, and yet millions of new home owners are about to lose their homes. Private security firms contracted by the U.S. government to do the military's job do so at double the cost or more, with no oversight or accountability, resulting in callous disregard for the lives of civilians in the countries they work in. The European Union is leading the way in safety of chemicals on the market, forcing U.S. manufacturers like Dow to conform to standards much higher than those in the U.S., and the U.S. dollar continues to drop relative to the Euro, suggesting that these increased safety standards don't hurt economic development at all. The EU is also leading in environmental regulation. Health care is obviously a disaster because it is private - compare costs and benefits to any other country with systemic government-sponsored health care for your evidence.
What most self-described conservatives fail to appreciate is the total cost of things. Taking into account only taxes and regulations is short-sighted at best, and dangerous at worst. When comparing costs, one must take into account how much things would cost if you have to pay for them yourself. Health insurance is a good example. Your employer can take advantage of economy of scale to get you a much lower rate for the same thing than you can get yourself, sometimes hundreds of dollars lower. The government is on an even larger scale, and can therefore smooth over large differences between groups with minimal pain to those on the extreme edges.
For an obvious example of how government works successfully, the interstate freeway system was entirely government-funded, and has worked with minimal interruption or problems with thousands more miles of concrete than other countries.
The truth is that saving a few bucks now by reducing the size of government has a huge impact on the cost of living, especially for lower-income brackets, resulting in not only worse living conditions for low-income households, but increasing unstable political environments as a result. Organized crime or corruption/fiefdoms steps in to fill the void of an absent government, much as we have seen in countries like the former Soviet Union.
It's time for Americans to wake up and smell the toxic waste. Voting "for the other guy" is the knee-jerk reaction, but won't do anything substantive. You need to contact your current representatives in the government, your senator and representative, and let them know that you understand the importance of government as a service to the people, and oppose dismantling government as a principle. Take some time out of your day to do some research into how smart people who have studied the effects of government versus privatization have documented the way the world actually works, don't take my word for it. Be a real citizen already!
