Beware the Regulators

City councils, county commissioners, school boards and all other governing bodies are always looking for new innovative ways to extract wealth and control their citizens.  Just look South to Austin to see the latest efforts to tax and control its citizens. Austin Regulations

"Unneeded and ill-considered regulation is annoying, costly and damaging, and it fuels corruption. Those in the political class love to regulate. They love the power regulation gives them over their fellow citizens. They love the fact that the threat to regulate causes the potentially affected to make campaign donations, or provide speaking fees or gifts to avoid having the regulation imposed. They love the fact that promising to maintain or “enhance” a regulation causes the beneficiaries (often big business) to keep the payoff money flowing to them. Those who have jobs in regulatory agencies have many incentives to keep the number of regulations ever-growing as a way of obtaining more job security, status and power. In sum, much of the regulatory apparatus is fundamentally corrupt and destructive.

The city of Austin has now decided to try to extort the charter bus industry by demanding that the buses get an expensive permit for “safety reasons” to collect or drop off passengers in Austin. The so-called safety regulations included a demand that a bus could not have more than five different newspapers aboard. The association representing the charter bus industry is now suing the city."

Beware the regulator who acts to improve public safetey!!