The People Do Not Trust Government

Well, duh. Trust in the US federal government has been dropping ever since LBJ.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/19/the-sinestro-theory-of-the-administrative-state/

Check out the graph.

Quote:
“This graph from Pew with data running through the fall of 2013 shows how people answer the question: “How much of the time do you trust the government in Washington?” The answer is pretty clear: not much at all.”

Taxcutter notes:
Today it is “distrust” by a 3:1 margin.

Quote:
“…how far the Administrative State is willing to blatantly ignore any checks on their ability to enact their whims.”

“The Constitution made the action of government – in nearly all areas outside of waging war – deliberately difficult, and that was on purpose. It was supposed to be hard to pass new laws, not because the Founders were opposed to new laws, but because they wanted to make it impossible for those laws to oppress the people.”

“What the Founders did not anticipate was the degree to which those invested by the Constitution with the power to make law would find it politically advantageous over the course of a century to steadily cede their power to unelected governmental bodies of vast size and with an ever-enlarged mission.”

“This new unchecked branch of government has seized the power it wants along the way: the power to reward friends and grant waivers and special privileges to people and firms who they like or who play by their rules, to abuse their power in the course of punishing those who they don’t, the power to live large and cover up mistakes without that difficult legislative process.”

“What we’re talking about here is really just human nature, of course. Government employees want just what everyone else wants. The only difference is they think they have the power to make good on their whims.”

“…in reality, the Administrative State is most interested in making things better for the people in government.”


Taxcutter says:
I keep telling you…the bureaucracy is the enemy of the people. By a 3:1 margin, people know it.

The time has come to attenuate the Administrative State.

 

To some degree, that is what is happening in Ferguson, MO. The people don't trust the government (police). It's not just us rightwingers.

 

Taxcutter says:
Don't trust the police.
Don't trust the IRS.
Don't trust the EPA.
Don't trust the Department of Agriculture
Don't trust the Department of Education
The list goes on and on.

Polls show the people trust the military and literally nobody else in government. The time has come to attenuate the power of government.

 

OK. Reduce the government.

Begin by eliminating the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.

Then the FBI. Then state & local police departments.


We'll see how much distrust exists after that. If the distrust continues and life improves, we'll proceed with further reductions.

 

Robert Higgs, The State is Too Dangerous to Tolerate

[video=youtube;RILDjo4EXV8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILDjo4EXV8[/video]

Dr. Higgs also has a pretty good take down on the FDA and Consumer Welfare for an excellent illustration of why the government shouldn't be trusted.

 

However the right tends to target Washington while the left tends to go after the locals.

 

Wow! That's an understatement! Especially this one...

 

This is not unusual. The more power the governing authorities try to exercise the less they will be trusted and the more incompetent they will appear to be.

 

There are two main problems with how everything's developed, imo...

1. The Supreme Court does a really terrible job of interpreting the constitution.
2. Power has been continually centralized away from the individual; local, and state governments in favor of national, regional, and international governments.

It's like Orwell said - conventional wisdom rarely becomes so within the lifetime of its pioneers - it becomes accepted in the next generation.

 

After Bush's $4,000,000,000,000 charge into the Middle East on a whim, McConnell's pledge to oppose everything Obama tried to enact, and Cruz's stunt to defund the government, I can't say I blame the people.

 

And so the blame gets deflected from Obama yet again. The next President will be blaming Obama 24-7 !

 

Phebe would you quit spouting arrant nonsense? Bush never spent a dime and the Democrats controlled the senate for two of those eight years and could easily have blocked anything they wanted to block in the senate every year Bush was in power. Presidents can only spend what congress appropriates. Further of Bush supposed 4 trillion dollar deficit between 2/3 and 3/4 went to domestic programs and Spending. This has been true for every president since LBJ.

 

We should go back to what Article I section 8 says the Congress is authorized to do. I agree with getting rid of the FBI. State and local police forces are not part of the federal government.

 

What does that have to do with anything? The domestic programs were enacted by the will of the people and their representatives. Doesn't matter whether they were domestic programs or not. Same with the invasions. The man didn't pay his bills, choosing to borrow a portion of it instead (yet more deficit).

 

VOTE!!! (And remove as many self-serving bastards as possible. It won't happen overnight, it's a process.)

 

amen brother, amen

 

Page one Blame BUSH

 

It is so much more than that.......I think the number of people who have had enough is growing every day

 

And, of course, it doesn't help that so many supporters of the current administration have a problem telling the truth. I think President Obama's trillions in debt for his friends, and Sen. Harry Reid refusing to discuss over 350 bills from the House, and President Obama throwing a temper tantrum and holding elderly tourists hostage to get his debt ceiling raised might have some influence on people's opinions.

 

Well, one DOES have to place blame where it belongs, right?

- - - Updated - - -

That is, in a nutshell, The McConnell Plan of 2008.

 

The government is turning into a tyranny that cares only for money, power, and expediency, not any form real morality.

 

If you have to force someone to do something, you are no longer Chief.

 

George Will expands on the subject with his usual eloquence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...5997e4-27c9-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html

quote:
“A cupcake-policing government will find unending excuses for flexing its muscles as it minutely monitors our behavior in order to improve it…”

“Resistance to taxation, although normal and healthy, is today also related to the belief that government is thoroughly sunk in self-dealing, indiscriminate meddling and the lunatic spending…”

“We can’t allow toxic things to be in our schools,” said a spokesman for the Texas school district that confiscated the suntan lotion of a 10-year-old who then became sunburned on a school trip. Students, the spokesman explained, “could ingest it. It’s really a dangerous situation.” Not as dangerous as entrusting children to schools run by mindless martinets.”

“Contempt for government cannot be hermetically sealed; it seeps into everything . Which is why cupcake regulations have foreign policy consequences.”


Taxcutter asks:
Why do we tolerate an expanding government that we distrust and despise?

 

Good lord, it's been that way from the beginning.

 

Phoebe is at least somewhat right.

Government is by its nature tyrannical.

That's why we need to reduce its size to the workable minimum.