Starting to be that if you're "just a Citizen", just don't bother - only "Professionals can / should to do that" - Granite Grok

Starting to be that if you’re “just a Citizen”, just don’t bother – only “Professionals can / should to do that”

From The Corner:

“Only lawyers now can argue before Supreme Court.” That was the headline over this article. I’m sure that the new rule makes sense: that you have to be a lawyer, to argue before the Supreme Court. The last time a non-lawyer argued, it was 1978.

Still, doesn’t the professionalization of everything make you slightly uneasy?

Indeed!  Before Government (at any level) starts to touch a new area of Civil Society (before it totally absorbs it a la The Borg), it is Citizens living and interacting in voluntary fashions to, well, live their lives.  Have an interest, an activity you do with others, or something that you feel “hey, this is the US – I should be able to do anything!”, right?  Instead, the Bigger that Government gets, the more it costs – no, not in that it just keeps adding people to it and the cost of the payroll for those people skyrockets.  Rather, it requires, as the above suggests, that everyone that deals with Government has to become more expensive as well.

Two more examples are personal:

My friends, Doug Lambert and Tom Tardiff, a fabricator and a telephone lineman, beat a HIGHLY paid, PROFESSIONAL  fancy shmancy dancy lawyer at his own “profession” at the NH Supreme Court in a RSA 91-A Right To Know action that has become widely cited precedent setting case law here in NH (in fact, this lawyer was downright AWFUL when you listened to the actual oral arguments).

Morale? If only Professionals are allowed to go through the courtroom door, and Citizens are barred from going through that same door, Citizens would now be less empowered.  After all “let the “professionals handle it” has become the mantra, as if simply getting paid to do something, or having a certification, or holding a State sanctioning piece of paper automatically exudes excellence.  Well, it didn’t hold up in that case.

And then this – a couple of the Kennedys (no, not  the singing group – the REAL Kennedys)  in saving an endangered turtle (reformatted):

Two members of the Kennedy family who thought they were doing a good deed by freeing an entangled sea turtle actually violated the law, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  John Bullard of NOAA’s Division of Fisheries said he spoke to brothers Max and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about their rescue of the leatherback turtle and explained to them that what they did was dangerous and a violation of the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to handle an endangered or protected species.

The Kennedys freed the estimated 500-pound turtle from a buoy line wrapped around its head and fins on July 6 after they spotted it while out sailing on Nantucket Sound.  The brothers have been “cooperative and very helpful” as the agency gathers pictures, gear and other evidence involved in the rescue, Bullard told Cape Cod Times ( http://bit.ly/12wdiDr).

And once again, instead of saying “hey, cool – you saved an endangered animal; thank you!”, Government says “what were you thinking??”.  Only government professionals should take risks:

Turtle rescue is best left to professionals because of the danger involved, he said. Anyone who spots a distressed turtle should contact NOAA.  An untrained person runs the risk of getting tangled in the line and pulled under by a turtle, which can weigh up to 700 pounds and hold its breath a lot longer than a human, he said.  “You can get entangled, go under and it can turn into a tragedy,” he said. Only the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies is certified to handle turtles.

That’s right – what’s a dead turtle in importance to having the right certification to save  dying turtles!  Again, this is only ONE way in how Bigger Government grows and grows – by making everyone else spend more and more time and more and more money simply to do the things they used to do…

…and for free.  Right here in my little hamlet, there was a voluntary football team that was set up by the townfolks – “not a taxpayer dime!” we were promised.  Traverse several years down the road, and a couple of bitter years of Budget Committee and Town Meetings, it went from a voluntary association to School Board blessed and then included in the school budget.  Immediately, the costs zoomed up.  After all, we had to pay the coaches, right?

But then the School Board also decided that not only did the “official” coaching and staff folks get stipends (yeah, it all became schoolies that became the staff, and oh, those stipends were added into their salaries for retirement purposes – so then we were paying the professionals then, now, and when their retire – for years to come! But that wasn’t the thing that torqued me the most – Moms, Dads, friends, other family members used to do all of the other stuff that is needed for a game: linesmen, marker folks, scorekeepers, and all the rest.  They ALL began to get a taxpayer funded checks.  In fact, if they didn’t take them, they could no longer participate.

After all – ANYone working for the Goverment needs to get paid.   Another way that ordinary Citizens just don’t measure up.

 

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