Unelected Bureaucrats Gone Wild - Granite Grok

Unelected Bureaucrats Gone Wild

Big government begets big bureaucracies with budgets the bureaucracies want to see made bigger.  To that end these tin-pot dictators of their pencil-pushing fiefdoms exercise power to whatever extent they can, to the misery of everyone else.  It is what Jefferson meant in the Declaration when he wrote “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Most bureaucracies take their cues from their chief executives. No executive in recent memory has erected more “New Offices” to “eat out our substance” than Barack Obama.  Nor has there ever been more evidence in recent memory that these officers exist to intimidate or punish his political enemies.

So why did Obama’s Federal Trade Commission have to strong-arm a small nonprofit representing people who give piano lessons?

WSJ

Every month, it seems, brings a new story of this presidency leveling the intimidating powers of the federal government against some law-abiding citizen. Now comes a terrifying tale of how the Federal Trade Commission, a governmental Goliath, crushes an average David—because it can.

In March of this year, a small nonprofit in Cincinnati—the Music Teachers National Association—received a letter from the FTC. The agency was investigating whether the association was engaged in, uh, anticompetitive practices. This was bizarre, given the MTNA has existed since 1876 solely to advance the cause of music study and support music teachers. The 501(c)(3) has about 22,000 members, nearly 90% of them piano teachers, including many women who earn a modest living giving lessons in their homes. The group promotes music study and competitions and helps train teachers.

The FTC took language from the groups code of ethics and contorted it into a conspiracy to engage in organized price fixing.

Yes, the FTC has the ‘added’ manpower to dig up the code of ethics of a small Ohio nonprofit organized for people who give piano lessons. No, the FTC has no authority over nonprofits.  No, the FTC does not care, and no, the tiny nonprofit does not have the resources or political influence needed to battle the government or to get a rogue bureaucracy off its back.

This is what a big sprawling and unaccountable government does.  It badgers and intimidates flexing its muscles at great cost to those over whom it lords, punishing for no obvious reason.  This intimidation silences voices.  It prevents open association.  It punishes risk takers and innovators.  It stifles commerce and job creation, and builds a burning resentment for the same petty tyrannies that resulted in America seeking separation from England.

Whether it is the intention of big government advocates or not, those being Democrats and far too many Republicans, this is what bigger government does.  The more centrally planned and distant these officers are from the sobering affect of local control the more ridiculous and unresponsive they become.

Asking for local control is not asking for no government.  It asks for a shift in the locus of power, as often as possible, to venues closer to home.  Closer to the people who pay for their oversight.

It secures the pursuit of redress against oversight gone wild by placing bureaucrats within reach of elected officials over whom we have some measure of immediate influence.  This places the power of intimidation on the side of the people instead of the side of the government.  The people are more able to control what government has the power to do in their name.

I think we can all agree that the FTC going after a few piano teachers in this context is an abuse of federal power and an absurd waste of federal resources.  But then so is the IRS audinting a cancer patient who told his story about how a government mandate forced him out of his insurance plan.

This government is no longer ours.  It targets groups at will, for reasons political or just capricious, and it is only a matter of time before the sprawling progressive and viral mass of bureaucrats that this deficit driven expansion of the state has allowed finds a reason to investigate your business, your associations, or you.

 

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