Our Federal Government’s Become EXPERT
in Fixing Everything that Ain’t Broken Yet
We’ve all heard the old rhyme, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!” You may have also heard that the federal government has moved into crisis mode about the rising bedbug infestation in the country, but you probably didn’t know that under the Clinton administration, the progressive politicians in this country and their most progressive expression of the nanny-state . . . the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) . . . began treating the bedbug as an endangered species (not literally, lighten up a bit) and today we’re reaping the rewards of their “enlightened” policies. Furthermore the enlightened feds are not backing down from their enlightened stance so that . . . in a nutshell, just as in the federal government’s law suit against Arizona's new immigration law moves forward, the feds are also giving the state of Ohio an enormously heavy-handed hard time because GASP, Ohio is striving mightily to eradicate the little pests.
How bad has the problem gotten? The EPA has announced its second national bedbug summit for this winter in Washington, D.C. The Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City and the Wall Street Journal discovered bedbugs in their confines last week. And meanwhile since its last bedbug summit in April, 2009, the problem has gotten much worst and the EPA is still sitting on its hands unable or unwilling to make a decision since then on raising their ban on stronger more effective pesticides first put into effect under the Clinton administration. In the eighteen months since the last bedbug summit, the EPA has not been idle, however, they’ve changed their website info on bedbugs seven times.
The bedbug “problem” was practically non-existent between the end of World War II and the mid 1990’s when Clinton’s people decided to fix what wasn’t broken and ban all-manner of effective pesticides. Congress passed a major pesticides law in 1996 and the Clinton EPA banned several classes of chemicals that had been effective bedbug eradicators. And even now as public health officials around the country are clamoring to bring those chemicals back to help solve the bed bug “emergency,” EPA bureaucrats have downplayed the idea and environmentalists are pushing hard against the effort, citing safety concerns. Yup! Yup, they fixed the problem real good! Yup!
And, yup, EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who dismissed Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s appeals over the issue in a June letter, still pompously assumes that only the feds know what’s best for the rest of us. Ohio has just been “presumptuous” enough to assume that they can allow the use of an effective bedbug fighting pesticide called “Propoxur” which has NOT been banned by the EPA yet. The best that can be said for bureaucrat Lisa Jackson is that she hasn’t outright banned Propoxur YET! Propoxur, you see was allowed for use in residential homes until 2007 and has never been actually banned at all. The EPA, in its wisdom said (without studies one way or another) that they feared that Propoxur might prove dangerous for children. Rather than paying for an expensive re-do of their own original studies of the pesticide . . . knowing the vagaries of the EPA’s whims, the manufacturer of Propoxur decided not to strive to sell the product in the United States. Any Propoxur manufactured before 2007 is still available for use in residential areas, so pest controllers have a limited supply they could use . . . and that’s Ohio’s plan.
Are you getting the gist of all this? The federal government is now in crisis mode to fix a problem they created (a very familiar pattern as you’ll soon see). The federal government has become expert in “fixing what isn’t broken” with GIBs and GBSBs (government interference boondoggles and government big-spending boondoggles) and reducing our freedoms and our lifestyles as a result . . . .
ITEM: based on the non-science of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, the United States and eventually the world moved to ban DDT, the safest and most effective pesticide ever created (you can literally drink DDT or use it on your salad as a dressing). Malaria deaths which dropped to 43,000 worldwide in 1970 now stand at 2,000,000 every year. Ms. Carlson’s book and the EPA over-reaction without doing any real studies have killed 75 million people since 1970.
ITEM: to save a three-inch fish, the delta smelt, from getting sucked into irrigation piping, in the middle of a seven-year drought, the EPA has banned much irrigation in central California around Fresno . . . turning the nation’s vegetable basket into a dry, lifeless center of unemployment.
ITEM: In 1975, the United States was the envy of the world averaging 64% private home ownership year after year. Only one in every 404 home loans was made at 3% down payment or less -- almost all home loans were granted at 10-25% down payment. In 1977, the Carter administration passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA ’77) to force mortgage lenders to make bad loans to people who could not reasonably be said to qualify for such loans. In 1993 the Clinton administration used regulatory processes to bypass congress and give the CRA laws real teeth; in 1995 Clinton and congress was able to expand CRA ’77 law twice; in 1998 in a steroid-version expansion of CRA Clinton and congress made another CRA expansion. The result of fixing a system that wasn’t broken?
By 2005, 34% of all home loans were made at 3% down payment or less (an increase of 13,800% in the ratio of presumably unwise home loans in America since 1975); worse, borrowers who would have had trouble getting a $120,000 loan in 1993, were being put into $400-$500,000 homes in 2005. Thanks to the ACORN** efforts (to overload the system a la the same Cloward-Piven Strategy that bankrupted NYC in 1975 after overloading welfare for eight years) on behalf of people without jobs; people with atrocious credit ratings; people without even a rental history; people with food stamps as their only “income”; other people on some form of welfare; and even illegal aliens . . . the country found itself in a “sub-prime lending crisis” that the government with the willing help of ACORN and progressives had created.
Are you still a fan of big government? Do you still think the government knows best? Do you think they can do a better job with your money, after raising your taxes, than you can do with it? Was the system broken before 1965 when Lyndon Johnsons’ “Great Society” programs expanded welfare dramatically; created Medicare and Medicaid (federal and state programs both) and led us to two monstrous entitlement programs that today have put the U.S. government $80 TRillion behind the 8-ball in UNFUNDED liabilities? Did you know that the obligations on the state side of Medicaid will bankrupt all but one or two states by 2024? What about Social Security, did you know that the SSA is $34 TRillion in the hole in UNFUNDED liabilities? That social security, Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid now are approaching $115 TRillion in UNFUNDED liabilities? Did you know that all three of these programs are “set-asides,” but that rather than setting the money aside as required by law, the government used that money and even borrowed more to create not only those three huge UNFUNDED liabilities but also our present national debt of roughly $13.8 TRillion? Do you understand why so many people are up in arms about respecting our Constitution? About taking care of our nation’s fiscal mess? About reducing taxes? About reducing spending? About taking the country back from politicians and putting it back in the hands of the people? About returning to sanity?
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
