Response: People should fear their government

I disagree with Pat Williams in his May 7 op-ed in the Whitefish Pilot and believe today, more than ever we need to fear our government. Williams stated, “From the early 1930s and Franklin D. Roosevelt through every president, people believed that aggressive government made a positive difference in their lives.”

Prove it. I never believed that aggressive government made a positive difference in my life. Truman was vilified for the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and Watergate didn’t make a positive impact on our country. Jimmy Carter was a one-term president because a large number of us didn’t think of his government as positive in our lives. If he struck the word positive from his statement, I might agree, but then I can’t speak for the people.

Williams said “from the New Deal through the New Frontier…. those efforts, astonishing in their boldness and success.” I can’t agree. The New Deal legislation was from 1933 until 1939. After spending billions, we had reduced unemployment to 17 percent, and important parts of the legislation were found unconstitutional.

Many argue the New Deal extended the Depression and that World War II, not the New Deal, ended it. It did leave us with Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). FLSA allows the government to interfere in the free market economy, and in a few years we will know if Social Security is the largest Ponzi scheme ever.

The New Frontier amended the FLSA to give the government more power to regulate wages and labor standards and raised the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour. It created legislation to create more affordable housing and reduce unemployment.

If it was a success, why are these issues still with us? The Great Society gave us Medicare, Medicaid, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Department of Transportation. I am not astonished by the boldness and success of these programs.

Williams stated, “As is now so tragically obvious, our federal government quietly watched as unregulated Wall Street and corrupt money managers ran amuck.” This is Williams’ view of the cause of the current crisis and I believe he is wrong.

This problem is primarily a banking crisis created by our government. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both government-supported enterprises, are at fault. In 1995, government regulators created new rules to determine if banks were meeting CRA standards.

Banks had to show they actually made a requisite number of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. The regulators required the use of “innovative or flexible” lending practices. The effort to reduce mortgage-lending standards was led by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Bad loans and bad mortgages all forced by our government, and when it burst, our current crisis. Not Wall Street, the government that Williams says we shouldn’t fear.

Troubled Asset Relief Program. Not the car industry nationalization program, How much money from this program was spent on troubled assets? The government doesn’t know, they can’t account for the way the money was spent.

They pass a so-called stimulus bill that admittedly no one read. They are hiring and firing officers of private corporations, the government appears to want to run the car and banking industry, and soon the student loan program. The government funds ACORN, which was recently indicted in two additional states for voter fraud. Iran is going nuclear, and North Korea is developing missiles that will reach the U.S., and government is cutting defense spending.

The government is waging war on capital that affects everyone who has a pension or an IRA or who is in the market in any way. Unemployment is at 8.9 percent, and the deficit is projected to be the largest in history, and Congress has hearings on how the NCAA can fix the BCS.

The New Deal, New Frontier and Great Society were all government expansions into our lives, and they all pale in comparison to the current expansion of government. I am truly afraid of our government, and the threat it presents to our way of live. At the end of Williams’ editorial, he was identified as a former congressman, so in his own limited way he contributed to this mess.

John Trundle lives in Whitefish.