American Consequences - March 2018

He’s making a list and checking it twice. Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake He knows if you’ve been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake. And yet, after 364 days of my being a peevish brat, the Erector Set was under the Christmas tree anyway. Due to our instincts and our formative experiences, it is all too easy to confuse a Security-and-Surveillance State with Mom, God, and Santa Claus. The U.S. government is Santa Claus. Federal government annual per capita spending is $21,875. Everybody in America gets almost 22 grand apiece. Meanwhile what the average individual taxpayer gives to the federal government is only $9,655 a year. Making up the difference must keep those elves at the North Pole busy. The U.S. government is also Mom. There are a multitude of “eat your vegetables” federal laws on the books. All of them intended to make us healthy and safe, to give us “Security.” I’m not talking about what really gives us security. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines go begging. (According to a DOD report about 23,000 active-duty members of the armed services receive food stamps.) I’m talking about things like the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The act, as signed by President Richard Nixon, was

39 pages of What’s-Good-For-You that spawned a myriad of federal regulations and bureaucracies. A PDF of the “Occupational Safety and Health Administration Field Safety and Health Manual” is 265 pages long. But that’s barely a note under a refrigerator magnet by federal Good-For-You regulatory standards. The PDF for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Food and Drug Administration’s Public Health Service “Food Code” is 768 pages long. “Don’t put that in your mouth!” Due to our instincts and our formative experiences, it is all too easy to confuse a Security-and-Surveillance State with Mom, God, and Santa Claus. “ The government has a vast apparatus to secure us. And an even vaster apparatus to surveil us. It’s not just the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security. When it comes to U.S. intelligence and investigative agencies, their name is “Legion:” (I have printed the following list in very small type so that you won’t read it all and experience a horrible fit of paranoia.) Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations, Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export, Office of Security Enforcement, and Office of Inspector General, National Institute of Standards and Technology Police, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Marine Fisheries Service Office for Law Enforcement, Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Pentagon Force Protection Agency, United States Pentagon Police, Department of Defense Police, Defense

American Consequences 9

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