One of the Founding principles of our country is that we are a nation governed by the consent of the governed. That has been perverted.
We are now a nation governed by unelected and unaccountable life-long bureaucrats, not by our elected representatives. These people write regulations that have the effect of law with no oversight whatsoever.
The number of federal crimes you could commit as of 2007 (the last year they were tallied) was about 4,450, a 50% increase since just 1980. A comparative handful of those crimes are “malum in se”—bad in themselves. The rest are “malum prohibitum”—crimes because the government disapproves.
In 2013, the Code of Federal Regulations numbered over 175,000 pages. Only a fraction of those pages involved regulations based on something spelled out in legislation. Since the early 1940s, Congress has been permitted by the Supreme Court to tell regulatory agencies to create rules that are “generally fair and equitable” or “just and reasonable” or that prohibit “unfair methods of competition” or “excessive profits,” and leave it to the regulators to make up whatever rules they think serve those lofty goals.
It gets worse. If a regulatory agency comes after you, forget about juries, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, disinterested judges and other rights that are part of due process in ordinary courts. The “administrative courts” through which the regulatory agencies impose their will are run by the regulatory agencies themselves, much as if the police department could make up its own laws and then employ its own prosecutors, judges and courts of appeals.
Whether we are trying to raise our children, be good stewards of our property, cooperate with our neighbors to solve local problems or practice our religious faith, the bureaucrats think they know better. And when the targets of the regulatory state say they’ve had enough, that they will fight it in court, the bureaucrats can—and do—say to them, “Try that, and we’ll ruin you.”
It's time to simply ignore them. If they believe that they are acting within agency bounds, then they can submit substantiating documentation to Congress. Their "administrative courts" need to be disbanded immediately. EPA's "administrative court" took on the wrong people and got smacked down by a judicial court. But it shouldn't be necessary to fight your way through the legal system to make your point.
The easiest approach, probably, is to simply ignore the little jerks. It worked for me: Porkland's Bureau of Environmental "Services" slapped an "environmental overlay" on my property years ago, and sent me hundreds of pages of stuff telling me how they could now enter the property at any time, determine what I could do on the property, and more.
I had an old deck that was rotting out, so I decided to replace it before someone got hurt. Porkland BES wanted architectural drawings and other stuff - and a check for $1200 (nonrefundable). They would then take their sweet time and ultimately issue a determination regarding whether or not I could replace the deck on "my" property.
Screw 'em. I tore off the old one and used their $1200 nonrefundable fee to buy new cedar. Built a new, sturdy deck and then peddled the place to some rubes who are willing to live under the thumb of government.
