Let’s get feds back to the basics

In a Dec. 1 letter calling for public funding of elections, Gena DiLabio complains about certain members of Congress who voted for privately run security at the nations airports (“Election Reform: We must remove cash from political life”). She states that this service should be federalized and professionalized – a couple of terms that do not go well together.

The idea that the government is the best solution to all of our problems seems to be an all-pervasive American myth that flies in the face of most of the observable evidence.

The U.S. Constitution clearly federalizes the common defense. This is the overriding mission of the federal government. Yet, while law enforcement ran around spending billions of dollars on a drug war, and arresting over 700,000 Americans on marijuana charges, foreign terrorist cells operated internally with a free hand and successfully murdered thousands of taxpaying citizens.

This past October it was announced that mock terrorist attacks against federally secured DOE nuclear facilities succeeded more than half the time. GAO investigators, posing as law enforcement officers, were able to penetrate federal security at the Pentagon, CIA headquarters and the Justice Department.

While the Soviets have 9,000 nuclear interceptor missiles, admittedly crude, we have absolutely no defense against the real threat of nuclear attack.

Until the feds show us that they can perform their primary duty of defending our nation without spending $900 on a toilet seat, while many enlisted members of our armed forces rely on food stamps to feed their families, I would suggest that giving them more to do can only make things worse.

The micro-managing of our individual lives by the federal government isn’t working and wastes resources.

As a positive step in the right direction, let’s take a good look at the 10th Amendment, solve our social problems at the state level, and get the federal government back to basics, where they may have a chance at succeeding. As we have now seen demonstrated, our very lives depend on it.

Libertarian Party of Snohomish County

Everett

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