THROWING AWAY ELECTED AUTHORITY AND TRASHING THE CONSTITUTION

Authority is one of those things you question when you are growing up...and rightly so.  After all, if you don't question authority, how do you learn what it means and who to trust with authority over your life?  This is a normal developmental process with children.  Starting with the "Terrible Twos," it is a process.  If all goes well, by the time a child reaches a level of maturity and enters the adult world that person knows a little something about what justifies authority and what doesn't. That is the point of becoming an adult, after all, getting to take charge of one's own life and knowing who has justified authority in our society.  Authority, in a free society, is granted, not forced upon others.

But what happens when people who have been given legitimate authority through the election process in America decide to abdicate the responsibility they have been afforded by others' votes? What happens when the load of responsibilities handed to the elected class becomes so outrageously huge that the elected class willingly hand over their duties to the unelected government employees known as staff or to the unelected bureaucrat class?  We elect people to do a job and lately, all too often, we discover those we elected are not even close to doing that job. 

I've been watching this abdication of duties going on in my city for the last few years, to my consternation and disgust. I've seen policies show up out of nowhere in City Council meetings, policies that make no sense, that have no relevance to anything real, and yet invariably involve growing the bureaucracy by using more and more tax monies. At the same time, the tax coffers shrink and the elected whine about not having enough money for the necessary infrastructure projects. It truly is amazing to watch. We are granting authority to people who show up at ribbon cuttings and Chamber of Commerce meetings, but who hand over the reins for the real work to unelected boards and non-profits.

I did some checking around and found that I am not the only person noticing this.  In fact Amazon has a book by Bill Gertz published in 2008 called "The Failure Factory," on this same subject but focusing on national security. 

Here is an excerpt of the book description:

The U.S. government is in crisis.

With America’s attention fixated on who will step into the Oval Office in 2009, no one has noticed where the real power has shifted—to a vast network of unelected officials whose authority has grown wildly out of control. In his latest blockbuster book, acclaimed defense and national security reporter Bill Gertz exposes these astonishingly powerful leaders and their enablers in the political class—and their devastating impact on America's national security.

Gertz shows how entrenched liberal activists have become dominant even under an ostensibly conservative administration. And he names names of those who actively subvert official U.S. policy—including not only liberal Democrats but also a number of so-called Republicans who have joined this insidious “Blame America First” crowd.

So then, from my perspective back in the local trenches, here is what we see in the City Council meetings:  Some unelected board representative shows up at the City Council meeting with some perfumed version of a new program involving regulations and / or spending revenues, the discussion briefly describes all sorts of fictional speculative benefits of the program, a vote is called, and in the blink of an eye another coup overtaking our freedom has been swiftly and quietly accomplished.  Slam, bam, thank you ma'am.  We are not privy to any negotiations that might have taken place under the radar or behind closed doors prior to this vote.  The only thing visible for public consumption is the condensed, Cliff Notes version I just described.  And remember, most of the public isn't even watching this at all.

This is from Danville, California:

The Danville Town Council will be soon voting on devastating policies that will shape the future direction of Danville. Unelected unaccountable regional boards and bodies threaten our local control and want to force us to overbuild our town. Please help get the word out about Tuesday’s Town Hall.

 

I just told you exactly how Agenda 21 / Sustainable Development has been implemented in the United States.  This is how a bloodless coup takes place...on cat's feet, surreptitiously, insidiously.  This has reached critical stage at this point.  Agenda 21 is in place all over America and is growing every hour of every day.

Here's the deal. If you ask me who is in charge of this government at this point, I will tell you without any doubt, it is the unelected bureaucrat class, as in "soviets."  If you ask me why, I will tell you there are three reasons. The first reason is that government at all levels has become so convoluted and overpowering that no elected official could possibly keep up with it. (For instance, our State legislature had to deal with well over 500 bills this session alone...so many that no human being could possibly dissect and study that many bills. ) Secondly, the majority of elected politicians are in it to be liked and have big egos.  They are easily convinced by staff and lobbyists that they will be adored by the public for accomplishing the passage of so many bills. "See how much I did for you, Joe Citizen!!!"  Thirdly, there's money in this game. I can't begin to understand how that works or explain the many variations of that. (Our local poster child for this is a County Commissioner who has bought properties for which he keeps trying to get tax money spent to increase the values of those properties. )

The bureaucrat class cannot be fired by voters. They aren't vulnerable to popular elections. In fact, they don't go away unless the elected class defunds the bureaucrat class and their positions. It is only the elected officials who have the capability to shut down this bureaucrat class.  And how is that likely when the bureaucrats are enabling the laziness, wallets, and egos of the elected??  One wonders where you can find candidates for elected office who actually will get in there and get rid of this contagious disease that is killing America.

All of this could be fixed if there was a will to do so.  America, where are you?