Well as much as I hate to promote the continuation of this thread, I have to add my thoughts on “government regulators”. Misdirection is a good word. Although I think misunderstanding or lack of education on technical subjects is more correct. Either way, “regulating” is less about helping the people as it is about “feathering the regulators nest”. There was a time when government regulators where actually looking out for the best interest of the public. Now with the economy, jobs situation, and everybody thinking they are entitled to life, liberty, and happiness, this is no longer the case. The “regulators” I deal with seem to be more interested in protecting their jobs and an early, cushy retirement than actually helping the people. If they solve the real problems, they would be out of a job. So they use misdirection to make people think they are trying to help, when in reality they are perpetuating the situation to maintain their position and salary. I see this happening from the lowest government official to the commander in chief himself.
One case in point is the lead scare tactics. If you know anything about California Prop 65 you should understand this. Prop 65 requires that all lead be removed from plumbing fixtures, pipe, and fittings. Even though a small percentage of lead is an important part of many metals, and there has never been a problem with lead leaching into water, the government is determined to protect us from this “non-problem”. They get to say they are protecting us from the big, bad corporations that are trying to poison our children with leaded products. They go so far as to say “the 800 million dollars that this will cost California alone, will be more than offset by decreased health problems and better jobs for citizens, since they will be more intelligent from the decreased lead exposure”.
The government used the real scare of kids chewing on Chinese toys coated with lead paint to enact tons of regulations that don’t make our water supplies any safer, but just cost us more for products and justifies billions of dollars spent on government policies and salaries. Now the federal government is determined to follow California, so it will cost the public 800 million per state. BTW, they are “helping” by making us switch from products with less than ½% of lead to Stainless Steel which has 15% Chromium. “Misdirection” at it’s finest.
Another case in point is government mandated or subsidized energy savings programs. Again government knows more about using this to create more government jobs than how to actually save energy. There is a lot of “misdirection” on this subject as well. We should all get out and vote for candidates who are for smaller government. If we could just turn out the lights at these unnecessary government agencies, it would save more energy that all the government programs put together.
