An Existential Threat to Democracy, Gas Stoves and Highways

Last week we examined the Federal government’s trial balloon to do away with our gas stoves.  After an uproar from normal people asking, “What the H***”, the Chair of the Consumer Products Safety Commission denied there was any “current” proposal afoot to seize favored methods for cooking our food.

This didn’t mean that we can relax.  The next week, a Denver City Council member initiated his own plan to electrify all of Denver’s residential homes (having already banned future gas installation in commercial buildings). Further, the Colorado Public Service Commission created a system that even Xcel Energy contended was so complex and costly that no new residential development would ever have natural gas again.

So, this week we hear that the Federal Highway Administration (yep, the “Highway” Administration) has issued “guidance” from Stephanie Pollack, Deputy Administrator (whatever that is) to FWHA staffers that when approving Federal Highway Fund grants for highways to states (wait for it…), that they should deny competitive grants to projects that “add new general purpose travel lanes.” So, Stephanie says, no new highways.

In Colorado, we saw the same game when several legislative sessions ago, our legislature hit us with a billion dollars in “fee increases” in order to save our crumbling roads and bridges.  It was so bad that I thought that the word “crumbling” was permanently attached to the words “infrastructure”, “roads”, and “bridges.” Crisis…panic.

Then came the state bureaucracy deciding that if anyone wanted money for a new road, they had to show that it would not result in an increase in greenhouse gases.  Hmmm…you say.  One would think that it wouldn’t be a highway improvement unless it would lead to more safety or reduce traffic congestion, make trips more efficient or pleasant which will naturally result in more cars using the improved, safer, more efficient, pleasant transportation system. But,…you would be wrong.  No money for your crumbling infrastructure.  No money to make your commute better.  

Ok, we have had a lot of fun (at our expense) on stupid projects and public bait and switches, but what is the real issue.  Well, the real issue is: who are these idiots who get to make these decisions?

If you remember your 8th grade social studies section on “How a Bill becomes a Law,” you were taught that a legislature passes a bill with a majority vote of legislators (rightly or wrongly chosen by the electorate).  Then, it goes to the President or Governor (rightly or wrongly chosen by the electorate) who disagrees and vetoes it or agrees and signs it. We give up the freedom to do whatever we want and delegate it and our money (a lot of money) to a group of elected folks that we have chosen who ideally make the best decisions they can on our behalf and our society.  That is the basic deal of democracy.  We elect representatives. They take care of us and pass laws, and if we don’t like it, we vote for someone else the next time.

As you can see from the above examples, it doesn’t work that way (and actually hasn’t worked that way for some time). The members of Congress are busy raising money and campaigning for reelection and investigating things, (oversight).  They really don’t have time to decide what the laws should be that will apply (or burden) their constituents. In their defense, there is so much that the government has stuck its fingers into in order to regulate every aspect of our daily existence (i.e. whether to cook with natural gas or not) that they do not have the time nor the expertise to make judgments on our behalf.  State governments operate in the same dysfunctional way. 

However, since our representatives do not have the time or ability to come up with a plan to remedy our crumbling infrastructure and the myriad of other issues, they should at least be decent enough to kick it back to the people so we could run our lives as we see fit. Instead, they delegate the authority granted to them by the people to rule over us to the petty bureaucracy, a bunch of people who are neither elected, accountable nor vetted, giving them massive power to tell us what to do.

As Thomas Sowell recently said, “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than putting those decision in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

The system of “how a bill becomes a law” no longer exists.  While the campaign in the midterms cited Donald Trump and his continued display of being a “poor loser” as an existential threat to our democracy, I would suggest that the power to make laws given to Deputy Administrator, Stephanie Pollack, whoever she is, and others who are not elected is a greater threat to our democracy and way of life.