SUMMARY

If you followed the path, you have seen how the often senseless, often stupid and much too often abusive long arm of the Federal bureaucracy reaches out to inflict harm on every level of our society – individuals, Business, Cities, Counties, States.

Hotlining amounts to a blatant betrayal of trust.

It would be difficult to find anyone who would disagree with the need to protect the environment, have clean air, clean water, protect the endangered species, ensure safe working conditions, have schools that provide a solid education, etc.

A Latent Defect In The System

The objectives listed above are noble causes, worthy of pursuit. But the system has a latent defect.

In “Analysis of The News,” in the “Local Government” segment, you saw it. To refresh your memory, we’ll reproduce it here:

“Over the past 40 years, a huge army of central planners has come to Washington, become ensconced in the political branches, and is now seeking to impose its vision of the good society upon the country.’

Public policy groups also support the trend for three important reasons:

* You don't have to run 50 different campaigns to get things through legislatures.

* Any rule made in Washington trumps state law, giving people with influence in Washington enormous leverage.

* You don't run into grass-roots opposition in Washington.”

Note: As noted by the author, the branches of government are not “political” The manner in which they are wrongfully used by Presidents, Congress or the Bureaucrats may be in pursuit of a political purpose, but the branches themselves are a part of the technical structure of government.

When the author says they have become ensconced in the “political” branches it does not mean they are in Washington, DC. Most of them are in field offices. What it does mean, however, is that we have people in positions where they can use the power of government to implement and enforce their personal political agenda.

Because of this we repeatedly get situations such as the one in the Southwest where a fifth generation rancher was denied access to BLM land because it was habitat for an endangered plant. He was forced out of business. It made no difference that his family had been grazing cattle on that land for 200 years – common sense would tell you that if a cow thought that particular plant was tasty, there wouldn’t be any left. But that made no difference.

As it turned out, the individual who engineered that travesty was later revealed to be a zealot who had set himself to the task of clearing all human activity out of the uninhabited areas of three states.

Property Seizure

But in the egregious category, nothing matches Asset Forfeiture as applied by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the State enforcement agencies and local police. It has become a license to steal by badge carrying thieves from federal all the way down to municipal. Cash, cars, tracts of land, ranches, homes, businesses, airplanes, apartment buildings, motels and more all have been wrongly confiscated by law enforcement personnel.

The big attraction? Whoever confiscates it gets to keep it. There are multiple instances where examination of Police Department budgets all the way up to Federal, have items to be funded by asset seizure, and was so stated.

In the beginning, the enforcers would seize the assets and charge the target with a crime, sometimes valid, more often not. Then, following a federal district court ruling that seizure plus indictment constitutes double jeopardy, assets would be confiscated but no one would be charged with a crime. Once evidence of a crime was no longer needed, seizure of assets accelerated, seemingly for no apparent reason other than it was something the police coveted.

The outright abuse of this became so prevalent in Missouri the Legislature stepped in with a law stating that all seized assets would be turned over to the State Education fund. What did the Missouri Police and Sheriffs do? When it came time to confiscate, they would call a federal agent who would “adopt” the seizure and then return 80% of its value to the department that originated the action. Since, technically, that department had not done the seizure, they were not required to turn it over to the education fund.

In 1999, Representative Henry Hyde tried valiantly to enact legislation to limit asset forfeiture to after a person has been convicted of a crime. The Senate, however, turned it over to the Department of Justice for comment and all we got, which is something, were provisions to make it easier for people to recover wrongly confiscated property and recover at least a part of the legal expenses.

How To Correct It.

How can this be corrected and how will Repeal of the 17th facilitate the process?

OSHA used to be one of the worst agencies we had. An agent would visit a business, ask permission to look around, which no small business person is going to deny and then leave without consulting with the owner. At a later time, usually 30 to 60 days, the owner would receive notice of fines of $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000 for infractions of the voluminous OSHA regulations which the owner had never had the time to read and probably wouldn’t be able to decipher them if he or she had.

As the complaints mounted and the business community banded together with enough force to let Congress know their reelections were in jeopardy, it was all changed. Now, OSHA is required to work with the business owner to correct deficiencies before any fines are levied.

So, Congress can do it. All they need is proper incentive. The promise not to reappoint them for another term by someone with enough clout to back-up the threat will work very nicely.

The Legislatures will have that kind of clout. After suffering under the thumbs of arrogant, dictatorial bureaucrats and catching the heat from their own citizens tangled in this web, they will enter into it with glee. Not only to get the bureaucracy off their backs, but off the citizens also.

On the question of asset seizure, The House of Representatives had passed the legislation Congressman Hyde wanted, confiscation only after a conviction. It was the Senate that changed it. That just simply would not have happened had the Senators been dependent on their Legislatures for reappointment.

The procedure is simple. All it takes is for Congress to amend the enabling legislation to require the bureaucrats to work with people to correct problems rather than to land on them with draconian fines and criminal charges. After all, the purpose of the legislation is to correct problems. Punishment has to be there, but only after the target has refused to work with an agency to implement corrections. It won’t happen immediately. But it is the first step we have to take to get there.

Other Benefits

No more Senatorial election campaigns flooding the airwaves with negative ads, which also means no campaign contributors.

But of manifest importance, the day will come when a Senator will look the DNC, RNC, Mainstream Media, Lobbyist and Special Interest Representatives in the eye and say, “I don’t care what you want. I don’t work for you. I represent my Legislature and they don’t want it.”

The day will come when the House of Representatives, fully aware that the Senate will not approve legislation in response to a currently, popular, hot-button cause, will not bother to do it.

The day will come when you need to object to or support something your Senator is doing. Today there’s no way you can talk to him or her. But after repeal you can talk to your State Legislators and they will have a direct, hotline to the Senator.

Today, Congress can’t seem to find sufficient funds to provide adequate care for our men maimed, wounded or disabled or deliver promised benefits. They can find money for billions in earmarks, but not for our warriors. It’s shameful and it will change.

The day will come when there will be no more anti-gun legislation coming out of Congress.

Public schools will be under local rather than federal control.

Where Will We Be?

We’re not going to go away. We are going to be right on top of this situation. Pointing out to the Legislatures every area where freedom is being denied to our people.

Currently, our signature effort is directed to Repeal of the 17 th Amendment. Once the Senators are not beholden to the DC power structure, we will push hard for legislation specifying that all new regulations must be approved by a majority of Congress, by voice vote only , before they become effective. To assure nothing is missed we will establish an organization charged with reviewing all proposed regulations so that our evaluation of them can be passed on to the State Legislatures. Since Congress includes the Senate, it will be the end of new, abusive, one-size-fits-all regulations.

In conjunction with the effort of the paragraph above, we will be reviewing existing regulations and enabling legislation to propose and push for changes to shift the federal government away from its current adversarial stance to an organization that works with people, cities, counties and states to handle problem areas in a common sense manner, to be partners with the People, Cities, Counties and States rather than dictatorial adversaries.

We owe it as a debt of honor to those who gave their lives to preserve freedom for us or others. It is a debt we will pay.

When you sit down to dinner the next time, think about those men and women who would like to be doing the same, but no dinner is served where they are resting.

From here, your next stop, we hope, will be to Join or Contribute.

The future is in your hands.