The perpetual motion legislative machine

Has it ever occurred to you that elected officials must be insane?
Have you wondered why so many kooky ideas are introduced as legislation?

Here are just 3 reason why legislators get caught up with legislation that seems inane or just wrong.

1. the need to be doing SOMETHING

As any libertarian will tell you, most of what legislators do is simply unconstitutional... actions that the legislature has no business messing with in the first place... but there is literally NO control over that, and the actions of legislatures pay no attention whatever to constitutionality.

All that aside, most people who run for public office are looking to stay for a long time, so they need to have "accomplishments" to tout for their reelection campaigns. They introduce legislation because it is virtually "required", lest they be accused of doing nothing. In that environment, doing anything is better than doing nothing. Legislation about state symbols is a good example:

Minnesota has a state Bird (Loon), Butterfly (Monarch), Drink (Milk), Fish (Walleye), Flower (Pink and White Snowy Lady's Slipper), Fruit (Honeycrisp Apple), Grain (Wild Rice), Gemstone (Lake Superior Agate), Mushroom (Morel), Tree (Norway Pine), and Muffin (Blueberry). Oh, mustn't forget the state Photograph. Who could vote against an old man in prayer?



Not that legislating state symbols is easy... we still don't have a state Animal or Mammal, despite at least 8 times trying to name the White-Tailed Deer, 6 times the Eastern Timber Wolf, and a couple of shots with the 13-Lined Ground Squirrel. Many others have been proposed, such as naming the leech as the state Parasite.

In the category of "Are we really paying you to do this stuff?"... a bill that would require retailers to post notices that cocoa bean mulch can be dangerous to pets.

Because global warming is making fish spawn earlier, the legislature will consider a proposal to open the fishing season a week earlier. No, fishermen don't think so, records don't show it, and the DNR didn't ask for it, but somebody thought it must be true.

And... in the category of "We can do this since we don't have to live with the results"... some legislators want beer sold throughout the new Gophers football stadium -- from the cheap seats to the luxury boxes. No, the U doesn't want it.

On a more serious note, this year the DFL (that's Democrats to you foreigners) rammed through a massive tax bill... well, it maybe wasn't massive, because all the numbers were left BLANK.


2. the need to please supporters and contributors

Many pieces of legislation are actually written and pushed by non-legislators... lobbyists for one or more industries or organizations. Here's a good example:

Some of Minnesota's biggest unions and construction companies are pushing a plan to use state loan guarantees and tax breaks to kick-start a building industry that has been staggered by the recession. But... the list of projects involved is a secret, and may not EVER be released to the public.

3. the need to mend what one has already screwed up

Speed limit change will protect suburban kids. Seems that, in their omniscience, legislators restricted speed limits statewide in a way that has kept suburban areas from limiting speeds in new residential areas, so they'll fix it (maybe) with new legislation.

There are all kinds of problems created by the "short-term offender law", which has, for the past 6 years, required counties to house felons who have 180 days or less remaining to serve on their sentences. Hopefully, that will be fixed by still more legislation.

One of the primary reasons for governments being defined by constitutions is to LIMIT what government can stick their noses into... to protect the people from overweening officials who pad their resumes with silly, nuisance, and downright bad legislation. Clearly, having a constitution, and swearing to uphold it, does not even begin to keep legislators from doing any goofy thing they want. But WHY do they do such things? I think it's the same answer given by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street... "Because I CAN".