COVID Revealed America To Be a Nation of Rulers, Not of LawsLife is returning to "normal" after two years, but that normal includes even fewer limits on executive powers.
By STEVEN GREENHUT
3.25.2022
"The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced," noted the late musician and satirist Frank Zappa. I often think of that snarky comment as I write about the sausage-making process in city councils, state legislatures, and the federal government. Did I mention that California's state government has 518 agencies, boards, and commissions?
Our system of checks, balances, more checks, additional balances, impact reports, legal challenges, voter initiatives, regulatory rulemakings, and administrative hearings frustrates people who want to "get something done." Americans spent $14 billion on the 2020 election cycle to influence political outcomes—and that was just for the presidential and congressional races.
I once ran a modest state bill to reduce the insanely onerous licensing regulations for people who shampoo hair at salons. After months of hearings and debate, the Assembly defeated it for going too far. That explains the public's desire to cut through the red tape and, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once promised, "blow up the boxes" of government.
Yet after COVID-19, it's obvious our democratic system of lawmaking is, as Winston Churchill put it, "the worst form of government, except for all the others." Given the choice between a system resembling a Rube Goldberg cartoon (with his bizarre and overly complex contraptions designed to complete simple tasks) and one that's streamlined and efficient, I'll take Goldberg's vision any day.
As we saw throughout the country but in California in particular, governors were happy to dispense with the usual checks and balances and impose rules by executive order and fiat. Some initial rules were defensible during a public-health crisis, but it wasn't long before elected officials operated like czars—imposing illogical and contradictory restrictions that made no rhyme or reason.
They kept moving the goalposts. One day, counties were on lockdown based on such and such infection rates, but the next day standards changed. In September 2020, for instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a re-opening blueprint based on COVID cases per 100,000 population, but then he refused to let counties that met the standard to loosen up their rules.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/03/25/covid-revealed-america-to-be-a-nation-of-rulers-not-of-laws/
