The Federal Government As Jabba The Hutt – Too Big And Too Slow To Get Anything Right

which would be a good thing. However, in the face of this good set of outcomes (more revenue for the local governments, less of a stigma of marijuana users, less law enforcement resources spent on busting marijuana users, the weakening of the Mexican drug cartels) do we think that the Jabba the Hutt beast in DC is nimble enough to understand what the benefits are or will it continue down its path of conflict at the Federal drug enforcement level?

– Consider a Washington Post article from May, 2007, entitled “Federal Loans Fuel Push For Coal Power Plants.” The article discusses a leftover Depression era Federal program that provides low cost loans to build coal fired, high pollution power plants using taxpayer money. According to the article, “the [loan] support is a major force behind the rush to coal plants, which spew carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming.” Thus, while the Obama administration is pushing a climate control bill in order to fight against global warming, the same government is funding power plants that do just the opposite. Makes no sense.

– A recent Associate Press article reported how the Feds had busted 94 people for defrauding the Medicare program. This was a good development but why was our Jabba so slow in getting these arrests done? Medicare fraud has been going on since the day Medicare started several decades ago, why did it take such a painfully slow time to start arresting the cheats? One of those arrested had filed over 3,700 fraudulent claims under her name before she was arrested, how slow can you get?

We could go on and on. The U.S. government has gotten so big and so slow, just like Jabba the Hutt, that its many folds of skin hide waste, stupidity and the doubling back on itself, i.e. government laws and actions in conflict with itself or the desires of those running the government. We could go on and on about how slow, ineffective, and wasteful our Jabba is, about how our Jabba never solves a problem whether it is insecure borders, failing public schools, escalating health care costs, etc., how our Jabba wastes untold billions of dollars on earmarks, useless initiatives, and fraud-infested programs, or how our Jabba does not know how to regulate the economy, resulting in sky high national debt levels and a very creaky economic situation with low growth and high unemployment.

Jabba is very bad for all of us but he is difficult to dislodge. Through the earmark process, the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, do-nothing campaign finance laws, and other methods, Jabba has many defenses against defeat in an election, defenses that even a Jedi light saber could not easily pierce. Long term, it is critical we begin to impose term limits on politicians so that they never again get as fat, slow, wasteful, and ineffective as Jabba The Hutt. Short term, this November is critical since it begins the process of voting out the Jabba incumbents and finally getting in some sleek, effective, and courageous Jedi warriors who will make the difficult decisions to get the size of government under control and make that downsized government more effective and less weird and less conflicted.

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