23 February 2010By Paul Craig Roberts
Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane
into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of
the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on
"their" government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast
majority of Americans are convinced that "their"
government is totally unresponsive to them, their
concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only
21 percent of the American population agrees that the
U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and
that 21 percent is comprised of the political class
itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap
between the American population and the politicians
who rule them "may be as big today as the gap between
the colonies and England during the 18th century."
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like
Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters,
helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas,
Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack
was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had
gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an
office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS.
This deliberate plan and the written explanation he
left behind segregate him from deranged people who
randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want
to call Stack a terrorist. "Terrorist" is a term the
government reserves for Muslims who do not like what
Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government
does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and
emotions as Muslims who can’t take it any longer and
strap on a suicide vest.
"Violence," Stack wrote, "not only is the answer, it
is the only answer." Stack concluded that nothing
short of violence will get the attention of a
government that has turned its back on the American
people.
Anger is building up. People are beginning to do
unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house
rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local
TV station conducted an online survey and found that
79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins’ action.
Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s
bailout of the investment banks whose reckless
misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings
for the second time in eight years. Now a former head
of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to
pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him
by creating a "deficit commission."
The "deficit commission" will be used to gut Social
Security, just as the private insurance health plan is
paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.
It could not be more clear that government represents
the interest groups that finance the election
campaigns.
Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power
should be curtailed in behalf of state and local
governments that are "closer to the people." But of
course state and local governments are also controlled
by interest groups.
Consider Florida, for example. In 2004 the storm surge
from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the
Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in
Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes
and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave
other homes vulnerable to the next storm.
People wanted to armor their homes with some form of
sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two
houses on the West end hired engineers who constructed
a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled
with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The
sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of
white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It
was a perfect solution, and an expensive one—$250,000.
Just East of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section
of beachfront road and left three houses built on
pilings sitting on the beach. Last year government
with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away
beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent
houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel
panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six
to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground.
Hundreds of truckloads of sand were brought in to
cover the unsightly sea wall.
It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose
sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the
beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents
and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach
ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.
The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still
there. But the intelligent approach taken by the
private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I
write heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open
the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away.
The homes will be left standing on the edge and will
be undermined by the next hurricane.
Why did this happen? The official reason given by
Florida’s Department of Environmental Policy is that
the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only
DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the
homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent permit, out goes
the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive
sea wall.
This is the way government "works" for ordinary
citizens. For the vast majority of people, government
exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great
pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The
DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now
elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.
The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of
citizens is that the agency is powerless against
developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the
Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting
rivers, or from building in front of the coastal
setback line. As the state politicians protect
developers from the DEP, the only people against whom
the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented
citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at
powerless citizens.
In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are
numerous examples of developers getting what they
want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the
beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line
for construction moves inland. Back when the real
estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s
irresponsibly low interest rate policy, small beach
front lots were going for one million dollars. In the
midst of this frenzy, a well-connected developer
bought a beachfront lot for $30,000.
The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat
land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as
the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned
in front of the setback line. The developer got the
lot for the low price, because no one had been able to
get a building permit for years.
But the developer got a permit. According to the head
of the neighborhood association at the time, the
developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction
was another part of the state and who was a former
employee of the developer, and was issued a permit.
Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom
the house sat unsold for years. The community, which
had opposed the project, concluded that the developer
just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the
law.
Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the
East end of Inlet Beach another well connected
developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise
Walton County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes
held in place with native vegetation in order to build
20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a
permit for the construction of a 15-foot high man-made
sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little
protection.
According to information sent to me, nine of the
houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction
Control line. Apparently this was a result of the
developer being represented by a former county
attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the
developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood
plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps.
Since 1996 there have been a number of hurricanes,
such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has
moved inward.
When state and local governments allow developers to
set aside the rules governing flood-plain development,
they create insurance losses that drive up the
insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The
disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a
breach through which storm surge can damage nearby
properties. Instead of protecting people, government
is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project
on others.
Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the
American population came to the realization that
government does not represent them. Government
represents moneyed interests for whom it bends the
rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a
legally privileged class.
In contrast, as at the West end of Inlet Beach,
ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.
This is what we call "freedom and democracy."
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