When Government Gets In Government’s Way

Friday, October 3, 2025

Yesterday I encountered what has to be the most California story ever.  Read on and learn why.

Here it is:

In May, America was gripped by a viral video in which a helicopter airlifted a poisoned [ed: snake bite] US Border Patrol agent into the middle of a small California town….The twist: The federal agent was a dog.

There is, however, an effective way to prevent these rattlesnake attacks: A specialized training course that teaches dogs to recognize the sight, sound and scent of a venomous rattlesnake and instinctively stay away….It’s a life-saving service — one that Northern California entrepreneur Jake Molieri has built his small business, SnakeOut Inc., to provide….One would think the state of California would celebrate a creative businessman who helps protect the public and their pets….Instead, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has wrapped Molieri in a coil of regulations that is choking the life out of his enterprise….According to the CDFW, Molieri is forbidden from charging money for his classes if he uses native rattlesnakes.

Essentially, one branch of the California government is preventing other multiple government agencies from getting a service that would aid their personnel and save them money.  Yep, California is getting in California’s way.  Given that I made a living untying knots like this in California, I have a potential solution and have reached out to Mr. Molieri with my idea.  Only time will tell now.  But the irony.  Any solution to this problem will cost more money and thus one arm of government is forcing another to spend more, costing all taxpayers more.  It is an insidious cycle and goes a long way to explaining why taxes in California are so high.

Which brings me to this Matt Bai op-ed in The Washington Post:

If you’re the party of government — the party that has enacted every major social program of the past 100 years, while leading a staggering expansion of the administrative state — what do you do at this moment? I suppose you could cast yourself as the reflexive defender of the bureaucracy, although I’d argue that’s a political trap from which there is no escape. You could make the case for a more thoughtful version of government reform — although you might actually have to come up with one first.

But what you can’t do, it seems to me, is validate the Trumpian argument. Because as much as you insist that the shutdown is about delivering health insurance to ordinary Americans, that gets lost in the noise. All anyone is likely to take away from this fiasco — especially if it drags on for weeks or even months and life otherwise goes on pretty much as usual — is that a paralyzed Congress can’t function, government is hopelessly unreliable and federal programs are mostly expendable. In other words: that Trump is right to want to smash all of it to pieces.

Yep – Democrats are getting in Democrats way with this shutdown.

It seems to me that way too many in government have lost sight of the purpose of government – they now see their jobs purely in terms of personal aggrandizement (money, fame?) or in wielding power simply for the sake of the wielding – not in service of some greater good.

Government is not an end.  It is a means to a better nation.  Or at least it is supposed to be.