January 15 Government Employees

In yesterday’s post, I was pretty harsh on government employees.  Today I am here to tell you that, like in every demographic, you have your good ones and you have your bad ones.  Fortunately for all of us, I believe that there are more good ones than bad ones.  In fact, I can name several excellent government employees in our local County and City jurisdictions (Nate and Sean—this is a Kudos for you!).  These people are hard-working and are an asset to the community.

But it’s always the bad ones that seem to get the attention, isn’t it?  And from the public’s perspective, it’s those government employees who use their position as one of power, rather than public service, that are the worst.  You don’t generally find that kind of attitude in the private sector (Dell employees are quite accommodating), but government and utility employees are too frequently in the position of acting like God over their small portion of the universe.

As I become more familiar with the U.S. Constitution, it becomes clear that the intent of the  Founding Fathers was to protect the public from the Government.  Looking at the Amendments, it’s clear that the first 9 deal directly on this:

1.       The government can't prohibit practice of any religion, free speech, or the press (to print whatever they want whether it be true or false)

2.       The government won’t infringe on a citizen’s right to bear arms (although I do tend to think that it might be a good idea to establish a limit on how many rounds of ammunition are included in a clip so that if a mass murderer decides to go into a crowd, it limits the number of people that can be shot in one go-round)

3.       The government can’t make private citizens house and feed the army in their own homes (but it says nothing about taxing us to take care of the army in this fashion—which I’m not complaining about merely making an observation)

4.       The government can’t just barge into a citizen’s house to search or seize belongings.  They need a warrant that describes good cause for doing this

5.       No citizen can be held without being charged for a crime and no citizen can be charged twice for the same crime and no citizen can be forced to testify against himself and private property can’t be taken without appropriate compensation

6.       The accused must get a speedy trial rather than sitting in jail for years on end without a trial.

7.       Citizens have the right to a trial by jury (they can’t just be accused and have a government employee decide the verdict)

8.       Excessive bail is not required, nor excessive fines, nor cruel and unusual punishment (although "cruel and unusual" can be subjective)

9.       Just because it isn’t listed in the Amendments, the government can’t declare that they have rights over the citizens.  For example, the government can’t declare that they have the right to control sexual behavior of the citizens (although I know that many good, church-going citizens seem to think they should)

It sounds like in the old days, government employees had a tendency to abuse their positions and so the Founding Fathers put rules in place to prevent this from happening again.