Stregulation

I’m coining a new word — Stregulation. As bad as burdensome taxes, Stregulation — job killing, freedom robing, nanny-state strangulation through regulation — must be addressed.

It is easy to rail against taxes, they’re highly visible and the effect is immediate. Take a look at your pay stub. There they are — Taxes. Buy some gas and look at the fine print on the pump — Taxes. Buy a new yacht (mine is so much fun at bath time) — Taxes. You know they’re all around, you see them all the time. The TEA Party (which, remember, stands for Taxed Enough Already) points them out rightly and quite effectively. But taxes are only part of our burden.

Maybe we need a REA Party — Regulated Enough Already — to point out how we are being stregulated.

Stregulation impacts us all in two primary ways, the economic burden and restricting our liberties. I’ll take a look at both, but first let me say this: Not all regulations are bad regulations. I also understand that this can be a very blurry line that reasonable people will wish to draw in different places. But that place shouldn’t be so tightly around our necks, as it often is today, that it stregulates us.

In the most recent Florida legislative session our lawmakers, unsuccessfully, tried to loosen the grip of stregulation. The group getting most of the attention were the interior designers. Yes, Florida says that you have to be licensed to be an interior designer. Perhaps I should sue under the ADA due to the fact that I am hue blind and have less fashion sense than Phyllis Diller and Snooki combined.

Their argument is that only a licensed and regulated interior designer has the knowledge to keep you safe from flammable wall coverings, toxic building materials, and public toilets with a center line too close to the wall. Why, without a regulated interior designer, architects and contractors would be hanging drapes made out of oil soaked rags! Oh, the humanity.

The same bill would have also deregulated dance instruction, landscape architects, and art studios. Thanks to stregulations we are all safe from zen gardens with dangerous feng shui, art studios that display, oh I don’t know, art, and places that teach people to dance like me.

Stregulation comes in many shapes and sizes. The EPA is stregulation writ large. An entire host of stregulations make it nearly impossible to start and grow a business. Innovation, instead of being an economic driver and source of items that make our lives better, is evil and must be stopped!

Other things are smaller, but every bit as intrusive into how we can live our lives and what we can do with our property and things we own. How far have we fallen as a nation when the government can tell us what kind of light bulbs we can use?

I’m not going to list every example. I cant, I have to work, sleep, and play WoW every now and then. But over time I will be posting stories and thoughts about stregulations that are killing businesses, innovation, and freedom. Your suggestions are welcomed and encouraged.

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