Michael Snyder
The control freaks are winning, and they are absolutely killing America. Our founding fathers intended to establish a nation where Americans would be free to pursue “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in an environment where freedom was maximized and government interference was minimized. Unfortunately, our nation has turned away from those principles and is now running 180 degrees in the other direction. For some reason, our political system tends to attract psychotic control freaks that want to micromanage our lives and make most of our decisions for us. These control freaks are actually convinced that freedom and liberty are “dangerous” and that there should be a rule or a regulation for just about everything. This is not just happening on the federal level either. The truth is that the control freaks are often the worst on the local level. When you add up the red tape on all levels of government, we literally have millions of laws, rules and regulations in America today. All of this red tape is suffocating our businesses, destroying our liberties and our freedoms, and slowly sucking the life out of all of us. If we ever want to have any hope of restoring America to what it once was, then we have to start doing something about this horrific mountain of red tape.
In America today, there is very little that you can actually do without getting some sort of a “license” or a “permit” first.
Do you want to leave your home?
You better get a license to drive first or find someone that does.
Do you want to get married?
You won’t be able to do that without a license from the government.
Do you want to build a house?
Get ready for miles of red tape.
Do you want to start a business?
You better get ready for a very long relationship with licenses and permits.
At the rate we are going, pretty soon we will need permission from the government just to use the bathroom.
Our liberties and our freedoms have been turned into “limited privileges” that the government can revoke at any time. With each passing day the grid of rules and regulations that we all live our lives inside is getting tighter and tighter.
How much tighter can this prison of red tape become before we all start going insane?
The following are 10 examples of how control freaks are killing America with their completely ridiculous regulations….
#1 An industrious 13 year old boy up in Michigan has had his hot dog stand shut down because of a zoning violation. The funny thing is that Nathan Duszynski and his parents actually thought that they had jumped through all of the proper licensing and permitting hoops….
On Tuesday, as the young entrepreneur was downtown setting up a hot dog cart he helped buy with $1,200 saved from mowing lawns and shoveling snow, he got an unpleasant surprise courtesy of Holland City Hall.
Duszynski was told by city officials that his cart was in violation of a Holland zoning law that protects existing food businesses downtown against competition from mobile food vendors, and he would have to cease operation immediately.
It was a shocker for Duszynski, who, along with his parents, thought he had jumped properly through all the licensing and permitting hoops with the city and county.
#2 Could you imagine being sent to prison for collecting the rain that falls from the sky on your own property?
Well, that is exactly what happened to one man in Oregon recently. The following comes from CNS News….
A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater.
What are they going to arrest us for next? Breathing the air?
#3 Santa Monica, California has decided to make it illegal to smoke inside your own home.
The following is from a recent report by NBC Los Angeles….
Smoking is already banned at beaches, parks, restaurants and near buildings in Santa Monica, but Tuesday night the city council sought to expand that prohibition and voted 4-2 to ban smoking for all new tenants of apartments and condos inside their residences – with one exception.
“It also requires existing residents to designate their units as smoking or non smoking and from then on it will be prohibited to smoke in a non smoking unit,” said Adam Radinksy, head of the Consumer Protection Unit in Santa Monica.
#4 Apparently you are now considered to be “a terrorist” if you even dare to film what is going on at a TSA checkpoint. But the TSA has no problem strip-searching elderly women and fiddling with their feeding tubes.
#5 In New Jersey, if you are driving around with an “unrestrained” cat or dog in your vehicle you can be fined up to $1000 for each offense.
#6 Do you believe in being generous with your neighbors?
If so, you might want to be very careful what you share with them.
For example, it is illegal to milk your cow and sell the milk to your neighbors in America today.
If you share raw milk with your neighbors, there is a very good chance that federal agents will be raiding your home at the crack of dawn with their guns drawn.
#7 Down in Miami Beach, Florida it will soon be absolutely mandatory to properly recycle your trash….
City commissioners passed a recycling ordinance on Wednesday.
Once the ordinance goes in effect in July 2013, people who don’t recycle would be fined $350 for their first violation, $500 for their second violation and $1,000 for the third violation.
If you live in Miami Beach and you don’t like to recycle hopefully you have a really, really big bank account.
#8 In Hazelwood, Missouri it is actually illegal for little girls to sell girl scout cookies in the front yards of their own homes.
#9 In one Denver neighborhood, children have been banned from drawing on the sidewalk with colored chalk.
#10 All over the United States, lemonade stands run by small children are being shut down by police because they do not have the “proper permits”.
#11 In the United States it is absolutely illegal to sell natural cures for cancer – even if they have been proven to work.
#12 Recently I wrote about a man that was arrested for hosting a Bible study in his own home. Well, it turns out that he is still in prison serving his 60 day prison sentence.
#13 Are you growing a garden?
If so, you might want to be very careful that it is not violating any regulations.
In a previous article, I discussed how one unemployed woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma had her survival garden brutally ripped out and carted away by government thugs…
A Tulsa woman is suing the city’s code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.
Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.
She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.
Last August, Morrison’s front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.
That unemployed woman was relying on that garden to provide the things that she needed.
But the government control freaks savagely ripped it all out and left her with nothing.
Now she will have to be dependent on the government because she has no other way to take care of herself.
#14 Does your child ever throw temper tantrums?
If so, your child may get arrested and sent to a mental institution if he or she throws a tantrum in front of the police.
For example, a 6-year-old girl down in Florida was “throwing objects, hitting administration personnel and screaming uncontrollably” so police handcuffed the 40 pound little girl and shipped her off to a mental institution for evaluation.
#15 Did you ever take plastic utensils with you to school when you were a kid?
Well, these days if you live in Florida you better not do that.
An 11-year-old kid down in Florida was actually arrested by police, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony simply for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.
#16 In the state of Massachusetts, all children in daycare centers are mandated by state law to brush their teeth after lunch. In fact, the state even provides the fluoride toothpaste for the children.
Isn’t that just so nice of them?
#17 In the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania it is illegal to make even a single dollar from a blog unless you buy a $300 business license. The city government even went after one poor woman who had earned only $11 from her blog over the past two years.
#18 If you saw someone that was thirsty, would you give that person a cup of cold water to drink?
Be careful before you answer that question – you might be breaking the law by giving someone water.
For example, down in Louisiana one church was recently ordered to stop giving out water because it did not have the “proper permit” to do so.
#19 This last example might be the saddest one of all. If you can believe it, all over the United States cities are actually banning feeding the homeless. The following comes from a recent USA Today article….
Philadelphia recently banned outdoor feeding of people in city parks. Denver has begun enforcing a ban on eating and sleeping on property without permission. And this month, lawmakers in Ashland, Ore., will consider strengthening the town’s ban on camping and making noise in public.
And the list goes on: Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Oklahoma City and more than 50 other cities have previously adopted some kind of anti-camping or anti-food-sharing laws, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
