Are you forced to take a stupid pill upon election to public office?

I guess it is appropriate to rant on the intrusiveness of Government a few hours before The Obama outlines even more Big Government initiatives in his State of the Union address. The point most on the left and the media do not get is that the Tea Party is in favor of a smaller government at all levels. The very idea that hundreds and thousands of new laws, regulations, and statutes are passed by your Local, State, and Federal Governments every year should be a warning flag. That much new regulation, control and governmental dictates can not be necessary in a free republic. Add to that total the mandates and regulations imposed by faceless bureaucrats in the alphabet regulatory agencies at all levels.

This morning I watched the news, appalled at the latest nutcase mandates proposed in my State Government. Shelli Vandenburgh*, an Indiana State Representative has proposed a 10 cent per grocery bag "fee" (re: a tax) for using disposable bags when grocery shopping. source 

This new fee would add a couple of dollars to your average WalMart shopping trip. But that is not the point. The costs will be far greater. Do these idiots even understand how a business is run? Each store, from the multi-billion conglomerate to the locally owned grocery will have to manage this new fee.  Someone will have to monitor the collection and make sure the funds and records are submitted to the State. Someone at the State -- paid for from my hard-earned wages and your hard-earned wages -- will have to monitor, collect, and disburse those new revenues. This all costs money. Business transactions are not free. The cost of this new regulation will be a burden far beyond the pennies per bag. Higher grocery bills and taxes can be the only result.

But Joe, we need to do it for the environment, you claim. Maybe we do. Of course we went away from paper bags to the plastic bags that hold a fraction of the groceries at the urging of the environmentalists. I agree we should use reusable bags for our groceries. But it is not the role of the Government to MAKE me  do the right thing. Those reusable bags are not cheap.  How many of them would be needed to get a week's worth of groceries for a family of five? When my kids were little we did major grocery shopping once a month.  That is how I was paid. Could you imagine the number of canvass bags that I would have needed?

Then there is the issue of cleanliness of the reusable bags.  Recent studies have shown they are often full of harmful bacteria. Fruits vegetables and meat leave residue. You should wash and bleach every bag after every use.  source

 That means we are using more water and dumping more chemicals into the waste water system and using more electricity.  Oh, and the vast majority of power is generated by coal and natural gas in this country. Compare that to the .005 seconds it takes to manufacture the 20 or so bags I consume at the grocery.

We Americans need to get a better understanding of the role of Government.  It is not to regulate our every action, but to put into place the barest bones of governmental structure.

*Ms Vandenburgh is a Representative from Lake County Indiana -- Chicago South (AKA Da Region), with similar politics. Read her bio here.  She has never had a job where she was not paid by the taxpayers.  I will save you some time. She is in favor of more taxation, more Government intrusion, less freedom.  Yes, she is a Democrat.