“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
This is a most disturbing (emphasis mine):
A Houston-based federal judge ruled that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration does not owe the owner of a small Texas trucking company anything, not even the cost of repairing the bullet holes to a tractor-trailer truck that the agency used without his permission for a wild 2011 drug cartel sting that resulted in the execution-style murder of the truck’s driver, who was secretly working as a government informant…“She [the judge] is basically saying you can’t sue the feds,” he said by phone.
The Houston Chronicle story
also points out that the ruling will spare the DEA a “potentially embarrassing trial.” Another way to phrase that might be that the ruling prevents the public from knowing the details of just how ruthless and indifferent to collateral damage drug warriors can sometimes be. In fact, the owner of the trucking company, Craig Patty, said that this was his reason for bringing the lawsuit — to shed light on what happened. This ruling will prevent that.
Not that the action didn’t hurt his business. Patty had only two trucks at the time, and the truck the DEA decided to drive to the border and load up with drugs was out of commission for two months. His insurance company also refused to reimburse him, because the vehicle was used to commit a crime. The DEA also introduced this trucking business to the world of Mexican drug cartels, potentially putting its owner and other employees at risk as well.
“Your property is our property – and we don’t even have to ask” – isn’t this more akin to The Divine Rule of Kings than a Republic that was built on the Right to Private Property? We should expect better from our Government but it has become so large, how can it be overseen? And as we have seen with the IRS, the Interior Department, the State Department, Treasury, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Energy, EPA, they are becoming laws and powers unto themselves. Have you watched some of the Congressional oversight committee hearings and felt the utter condescension of those testifying (i.e., IRS Commissioner Koskinian)?
So this “not working” should surprise you? But once again, and as Ian Underwood (once again) points out here, if those that are supposed to serve us (and certainly make “law” to which we are to obey) refuse to apply those laws to themselves, at some point a lot of folks are going to do exactly the same. There will be pushback, of course, but I bet that will just increase the velocity of that downward spiral.
Are we witnessing more (and faster) examples of “destroying it to save it”? And if so, can it be stopped? And if not, how badly will it end?
