It’s NOT the shutdown

I heard an NPR story over the weekend about how the government ‘shutdown’ was going to hurt fishermen in Alaska.  Here is a link to a Bloomberg article that lists businesses that are being affected by the refusal of Democrats to protect American citizens (of course they don’t put that spin on the impasse).  There are an increasing number of similar articles and stories all over the Internet.  They are missing the point.

These stories highlight the nightmare of how much the federal government controls our lives.

The reason fishermen are having problems?  One problem, according to the NPR story, is that “The boats couldn’t get their catch-monitoring plan – that’s a data gathering system that ensures compliance with fishing regulations – approved.”  The Bloomberg story has more of the same – airlines can’t get permission to add new planes or even start training pilots, brewers can’t get their labels approved, the IRS won’t verify income, a pipeline company can’t get the required environmental analyses, oil companies can’t obtain “permits authorizing seismic surveys to help locate oil under the Atlantic Ocean” – and the absurd list goes on.

This is a golden opportunity for conservatives to spread the message of government intrusion.  But Republicans, who frequently have trouble with messaging, will probably be too busy worrying about their next election to recognize the teachable opportunity.

Will you help spread the word?  The media is trying to make Americans feel pain over the shutdown, so it is easy to find sky-is-falling stories all over the web.  Locate one (or more) of these stories that allow comments and point out the real reason the businesses are feeling the shutdown.  Neither you or I can change the federal behemoth by ourselves, but each day we should at least do something that leads in that direction.  Someday, Lord willing, the message will start to take hold.