The Nanny

From our very beginning, we the people of the United States have honored and fought for the right to live free and support ourselves without government interference under a sacrosanct principle called “The American Dream”—to live and let live.” This is the bedrock that provided the opportunity for all citizens to create the greatest nation on earth.

But over the last century and especially the second half of it, numerous agencies have been created that violate that ethic. The taxes, regulations and mandates we now suffer have held us back from the greater prosperity we could otherwise achieve.

During the George W. Bush recession in 2008, we decided that overbearing government had gone too far and started the Tea Party movement. The objective was to trim government at all levels down to a manageable size—to make all of it smaller, less intrusive, and less expensive.

Unfortunately, a majority of people, to avoid being labeled as “racist,” elected Barack Obama for President, and worse yet, Democratic supermajorities in both houses. The result was a catastrophic eight-year surge in just what we needed to roll back.

Finally, we now have Donald John Trump, a business-like President who has the backbone to take serious steps to rectify these impositions.

If we look at our Constitution and check out its principles, we will see that about 90% of the federal government’s actions are unethical, unconstitutional, and yes, criminal.

What is that 90%? Most of it can be classified into three portions. The greatest one is our menagerie of mostly counterproductive “safety net” and social-welfare programs. Another is warmongering, empire building, foreign aid, and other meddling we should not be doing overseas. The third is the gross excess of regulatory agencies and their enforcement.

What IS constitutional? Essentially three things:

1. Legitimate national defense—but not the foreign interventions

mentioned above.

2. Public roads, bridges and waterways.

3. Protecting citizens from wrongdoers, including government wrongdoers.

That’s really about it.

About 80% of all of our state, county and city government is also unconstitutional and counterproductive. This includes licensure, excessive safety and environmental mandates, eminent domain abuse, hostile annexation, law enforcement overreach, victimless “crime” prosecutions, civil asset forfeiture, and tons of little nanny laws and their enforcement.

Like the federal, nearly all state and local governments have become too authoritarian. Montgomery is a good example. It used to be a great place to live. But it has gone downhill over the last several decades.

What did Montgomery have then that it does not have today? Why are so many people fleeing to Pike Road, Millbrook, Prattville and elsewhere to get away?

It’s not what Montgomery lacks. It’s what it has—excessive nannyism,

regulations, abuses, and taxes:

And while the police have been really busy enforcing them, crimes, especially property crimes, have escalated, even though we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Back in the good times—in the 1960’s and earlier—people could let their grass grow “too tall,” park their cars on their lawns, have a “junk” car for spare parts, have a thickly wooded vacant lot (a mini wilderness area), go shirtless in the public parks on hot days, salvage items from the landfill, shoot fireworks, build a bonfire to dispose of trash, dive for relics and antique bottles in the river, ride a horse on a public street, raise chickens and other animals, and stroll around on summer nights without being “suspect” or guilty of an ordinance of some kind.

The children had fun exploring old abandoned houses and buildings, crawling in the storm sewers (the only “caves” available), playing in the woods (now mostly destroyed because of “weed control” laws), running barefoot almost everywhere, occasionally running around naked without being viewed as sex offenders, building tree houses (the higher, the better), collecting “treasures” in the city dump and various private dumps, and riding bikes and motorcycles on the public roads and in the gravel pits (which are now gone) without helmets. High school students with drivers’ licenses were allowed to earn money by driving school buses.

The total sales tax was only 3%—1% city, 0% county, and 2% state.

Lodging taxes, as far as I know, didn’t even exist. Traffic fines were a lot more reasonable—overtime parking, $1; stop sign, $2; red light, $5; speeding, $10; reckless driving, $25; and the maximum fine for any offense, like DUI, $100. No court costs were added.

Prior to tampering by the AEA and the imposition of federal mandates (like the forced busing of children away from their own neighborhoods) from the LBJ administration, Montgomery’s public schools were rated as some of the best in the nation and were efficiently funded with a tiny percentage of what we now pay for our dismal education failures.

Intrusive nannyism is everywhere; it has flooded our entire nation like an Ebola pandemic and infected every level of government from the federal down to the municipalities. Freedom-loving Americans are absolutely fed up with its explosive and reckless growth.

But nearly every time we have an election and “throw the bums out,” we still end up with more government growth and abuse. When will we ever be able to elect effective and responsible leaders to put an end to it?