Bad Apples

     Much of the recent news has been about bad apples in
the government barrel.  The IRS end of the barrel seems to be
shedding bad apples like a cat sheds hair in the spring.  The
National Security Agency has yielded a lot of rot too.  Whoever
named that agency certainly had a sense of humor.  It would be
better named The National Insecurity Agency.

     The search for bad apples at the State Department has
been on going since Benghazi became a household word.  Who
knows where someone will discover the next rot?

     What amazes me is how the politicians act surprised,
even shocked, at the discovery of those bad apples.  I remember
the noise about bad apples being found in government since my
early years in grade school.

     Bad apples in the government barrel is the theme of
several of the older books of the Bible, Samuel, Kings and
Chronicles for starters.  In the "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" Gibbons devoted many chapters to the bad apples in the
Roman government barrel.  Eventually those bad apples
produced so much rot that the whole Roman barrel fell apart
ushering in the Dark Age.

     The politicians' favorite "solution" is to cast out a few
bad apples and replace them with fresh ones.  Then they assure
us that all is well.  Next thing we know those politicians are
expressing surprise and shock that the government apples are
still rotting.   Again, the politicians prescribe fresh apples as the
solution.

     Sometimes the action to purge the rotten apples is more
drastic.  Throw out all the apples and start with a new barrel.  It
isn't long before the apples in the new barrel are as rotten as
those in the old one.  After thousands of years of this cycle of
failure, Why do naive voters still believe the solution that never
has worked will work next time?

     The apples in the government barrel always rot, sooner or
later.  Usual more sooner than later.  Might it be that the
problem is the barrel not the apples?

     Getting rid of the government apple barrel isn't an option. 
Like Freddy Kruger, it always rises from the dead.  We can't
eliminate the barrel.  And, we can't stop the barrel from rotting
the apples.  John Dalberg Acton observed one of the few eternal
truths. "Power tends to corrupt.  Absolute power corrupts
absolutely."

     Power  is the fungus that inevitably rots the apples in the
government barrel.  Government is power.  Without the power to
enforce "Do it my way, or I will hurt you," government wouldn't
be government.

     Rotten apples in government is an incurable, insoluble
problem.  Should we just give up and accept endless abuse from
government's rotten apples?  Incurable isn't necessarily
untreatable.  Individuals with incurable disease may with
appropriate treatment still live a reasonably decent life.

     A small amount of rot in the government barrel won't
enslave and destroy us.  When rot in the barrel is inevitable
there is only one way to limit the rot.  That is, limit the size of
the barrel.  A smaller barrel will rot fewer apples and be easier
to clean out from time to time.

     Putting new apples in the IRS barrel, the NSA barrel, or
the State Department barrel aren't solutions.  Everyone knows
what rotten barrels do to fresh apples.  The only treatment that
has a chance of helping is drastically shrinking the entire
government barrel.

     Government will never volunteer to shrink its barrel. 
Only if voters demand a much smaller barrel will the politicians
take action.  The politicians' knee jerk response always is to
make the government barrel bigger.  Some even claim Detroit
went bankrupt because government was too small.

     It is well past time to stop quibbling over how to shrink
the barrel and simply start chopping.  Most of that huge barrel
didn't exist less than 100 years ago.  We can live without most
of it.  We won't live much longer with it.

                                 * * * * *
                                  * * * *
                                   * * *
                                    * *
                                     *
Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum