Monday, May 2

BUSH PUSHES FOR BIGGER FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

So despite campaigning on a promise to return power to the states, the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans are hastening to do just the opposite:

But critics see a powerful assertion of federal authority in those areas and others by a government controlled by one party. While conservatives have traditionally supported states' rights and the decentralization of government, the Bush administration and congressional leadership are moving jurisdiction over laws and regulations back into the federal sphere, according to government scholars and state attorneys general.

The result, attorneys general say, is that some Americans will have less consumer protection and less safe environments -- and states won't be able to do anything about it. ''It's a whole pattern of accumulating power in Washington [through] federal agencies that is more extensive than any administration in the history of this country," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat who has been fighting the Bush administration over California laws involving energy, banking, access to abortion, and air quality.


Conservatives and libertarians should think long and hard about supporting these moves. It is, after all, a conservative article of faith that big government is a curse. Dubya's policies can be seen in no other light than that of a massive federal government devoted to the interests of big business, and that breaks faith with the "small government" adherents who have voted for him in two presidential elections. You've been had, people.

1 Comments:

Blogger Chesapeake Blue said...

On the other hand, I've always been somewhat sympathetic to the State's rights arguments, on a pure political structure/federalism level, but very uncomfortable with the other guys making those arguments (slaveholders, Klansmen, people opposed to wage and hour laws).

So, putting the Repuglicans in the federal gummint lets me breath free - I can now fight for the rights of progressive states. I'm feeling so much less conflicted. Think of it as political Claritin. Thanks George!

9:29 PM  

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