The Federal Government As Jabba The Hutt - Too Big and Too Slow To Get Anything Right

In the early part of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" I make the case that the U.S. Federal government is really nothing more than the political incarnation of Jabba The Hutt from the Star Wars movies. As you may recall, Jabba was a formless, slow moving, overweight entity that ruled with an iron fist while devouring resources brought to him. He did not pay for anything, he just took them, and he was not there to help anyone but himself. Those he ruled over had no say in how their resources and wealth were used and had no chance in dislodging Jabba from his position of power. Kind of sounds like our political class currently sitting in DC.

Jabba came to mind today as I thought about some recent occurrences in which the Federal government has gotten so big that it is doubling back on itself and putting itself in some very weird situations and conflicts with the reality of the world around us:

• According to an article in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a Boston Federal judge has ruled parts of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. This act forbids the Federal government from recognizing gay marriages and granting Federal benefits. The judge ruled that the Federal law forces Massachusetts to discriminate against it own citizens. Now for the weird part. the Obama administration is now forced to appeal the ruling, even though his administration and the Democrats in charge of Congress oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and want it repealed. The Federal government has gotten so big that it is expending legal resources for something that it does not want to exist in the first place.
• This weird situation is similar to the illegal alien situation we blogged about a few days ago. You may recall that the latest statistics relative to illegal border crossers shows that the Federal government recently had the highest levels of prosecutions for illegal aliens and the highest deportation levels of illegals but at the same time was fighting the new Arizona state law that was trying to stem the flow of illegal aliens into that state.
• Getting back to gay marriages, according to a July 15, 2010 Associated Press article, the country of Argentina recently became the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage. The article reported that Chile and several other South American countries are likely to try and follow suit. Do we think that our Jabba, parading as the American political class, has any chance of making that happen in this country when it finds itself in court defending against gay rights?
• According to an article in the August issue of Reason magazine, since 1996 fourteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana use for medical purposes and several other states are considering doing the same. This is in direct conflict with Federal law which has sometimes resulted in Federal raids of medical marijuana providers which are illegal under Federal law but legal under state law. This is also in conflict with Obama the campaigner who wanted to decriminalize the drug when he ran for President but now defends the outlawing of it at the Federal level. Again, government has gotten so big that we have entered the weird zone regarding medical marijuana where it is legal at the same time as being illegal.
  If you think the Federal government has a problem now, wait until next week when the Associated Press reports that the Oakland City Council will vote on whether to allow industrial farming of marijuana to be established in city limits, industrial farms which would produce marijuana for medical use as well as for use in products ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants who would operate these farms would have to pay annual permit fees and eight percent of their sales to taxes as well as carry $2 million in liability insurance. Similar efforts are being pushed in other cities throughout the state along with a November ballot issue to legalize non-medical use of marijuana, according to the article. Now consider the contents of a short blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine that reported on a Rand Study that concluded from their analysis that the legalization of marijuana would reduce the street price by up to 90%. Thus, the efforts in California may help reduce the street price of the drug which in turn would significantly reduce the power, wealth and influence of the Mexican drug cartels which would be a good thing. However, in the face of this good set of outcomes (more revenue for the local governments, less of a stigma of marijuana users, less law enforcement resources spent on busting marijuana users, the weakening of the Mexican drug cartels) do we think that the Jabba the Hutt beast in DC is nimble enough to understand what the benefits are or will it continue down its path of conflict at the Federal drug enforcement level?
• If I reach back into my book research I come across a Washington Post article from May, 2007, entitled "Federal Loans Fuel Push For Coal Power Plants." The article discusses a Depression era Federal program that provides low cost loans to build coal fired, high pollution power plants using taxpayer money. According to the article, "the support is a major force behind the rush to coal plants, which spew carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming." Thus, while the Obama administration is pushing a climate control bill in order to fight against global warming, the same government is funding power plants that do just the opposite. Makes no sense.
• In our last blog we reported on another Associate Press article about how the Feds had busted 94 people for defrauding the Medicare program. This was a good development but why was our Jabba so slow in getting these arrests done? Medicare fraud has been going on since the day Medicare started several decades ago, why did it take such a painfully slow time to start arresting the cheats? One of those arrested had filed over 3,700 fraudulent claims under her name, how slow can you get?

We could go on and on. The U.S. government has gotten so big and so slow, just like Jabba the Hutt, that its many folds of skin hide waste, stupidity and the doubling back on itself, i.e. government laws and actions in conflict with itself or the desires of those running the government. We could go on and on about how slow, ineffective, and wasteful our Jabba is, about how our Jabba never solves a problem whether it is insecure borders, failing public schools, escalating health care costs, etc., how our Jabba wastes untold billions of dollars on earmarks, useless initiatives, and fraud-infested programs, or how our Jabba does not know how to regulated the economy, resulting in sky high national debt levels and a very creaky economic situation with low growth and high unemployment.

Jabba is very bad for all of us but he is difficult to dislodge. Through the earmark process, the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, do-nothing campaign finance laws, and other methods, Jabba has many defenses against defeat in an election, defenses that even a Jedi light saber could not easily pierce. That is why November is so critical as is Step 39 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 39 would impose term limits on politicians so that they never again get as fat, slow, wasteful, and ineffective as Jabba The Hutt and November is critical since it begins the process of voting out the Jabba incumbents and finally getting in some sleek, effective, and courageous Jedi warriors who will make the difficult decisions to get the size of government under control and make that downsized government more effective and less weird and less conflicted.







Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Also visit the following sites for freedom:



http://www.cato.org/

http://www.reason.com/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/