OPINION

20 Reasons I Detest The Government

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

1) Our own government chides those of us who pay taxes for being greedy because we don't want to give the politicians even more of our money to do things we don't want done at any price.

2) Increasingly, every bill that is proposed in D.C. seems to be crafted with the hope that at least 51% of the American people are ignorant or not paying attention to what the legislation actually does.

3) When there's a slip-up and members of Congress and their staff are *** gasp *** expected to follow the same laws as the rest of us on something like Obamacare, they immediately start looking for a way out.

4) Having an unelected bureaucrat decide that your property is a "swampland" because it rained yesterday or that you didn't follow some arcane legislation can lead to your spending years of your life dealing with an army of government regulators in court and costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees; yet the bureaucrats pay no price at all for being wrong.

5) IRS employees like Lois Lerner can take the 5th Amendment when they're asked to testify about breaking the law to go after American citizens, but we're not allowed to take the 5th Amendment when the IRS demands information from us.

6) Who in the government was held responsible and punished for Fast and Furious? Benghazi? The subprime crisis caused by the government? Wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Solyndra? Detroit going bankrupt? The IRS scandal? Giving someone as unstable as Bradley Manning access to classified data? How about allowing eight of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers to be registered to vote? The correct answer: nobody, which is exactly the problem.

7) The average government employee makes more than the people who are paying his salary.

8) If the economy goes bad, you may have to tighten your belt, but our government NEVER thinks it should have to cut back on its spending.

9) Inconvenient campaign promises by politicians are treated as almost entirely unrelated to what they do while governing.

10) There's so much stagecraft and deliberate deception in D.C. that it's impossible for the average person to understand what's going on without having someone who understands politics explaining it to him.

11) CBO scores on legislation are treated as legitimate and meaningful despite the fact that the rules have been rigged in such a way that the CBO ALMOST ALWAYS DRAMATICALLY UNDERESTIMATES the cost of government programs.

12) When Congress is in session, you won't find a more corrupt or dishonest group of human beings all gathered in any one place outside of a prison.

13) Our Congress REGULARLY votes on pork-laden bills written in legalese that NO ONE has actually read cover to cover.

14) We have so many laws and regulations that almost every American is breaking the law somehow on a daily basis.

15) When the Republican Party and Democrat Party collaborate in a bipartisan manner, it's almost always to screw the American people in order to help some influential or deep-pocketed special interest group.

16) Our politicians in D.C. are just as corrupt as those South American politicians we laugh at for taking bribes. The only difference is our politicians are smarter about it. A bribe is illegal, but giving their relative an incredibly highly paid job or slipping an earmark into a bill that will end up helping their investments to thrive is considered par for the course in D.C.

17) Our overbearing politicians and bureaucrats feel entitled to tell you how to run almost every aspect of your life. They think they know better than you what health care you should have, where your kids should be allowed to go to school, what you should be able to do with your own property, what TV, toilet or shower head you should be allowed to buy, what light bulb you should have and even what size of soda you should be able to drink.

18) The priority scale for most politicians goes campaign contributors, special interest groups, political bosses, lobbyists and then if they're in a competitive district, their constituents. Very few politicians in D.C. ever seem to give a thought to what's good for the country.

19) Almost every bill that passes is sold with lies that later turn out not to be true; yet the bills aren't repealed and the politicians who deceived the American people are rarely held accountable.

20) We have government employees whom we put into office, whose salaries we pay, telling US what to do and acting as if we work for them.