Every time a cop unjustifiably1 kills someone, you can count on a statist talking head to explain that he was a bad apple. They never seem to grasp that the whole expression is “One bad apple spoils the barrel;” the idea being that isolated instances of bad behaviour can become endemic if not prevented or immediately excised. Even that expression misleads in this context, because police violence isn’t primarily caused by isolated bad actors, but instead is the product of a system which encourages violent responses to a large amount of harmless behaviour and then protects the perpetrators of the violence from scrutiny. Plus systemic racism.
At this point, not only is the whole barrel ruined, but the idea that we should store apples in barrels seems increasingly hard to justify.
Likewise, some federal agencies are terrible. We should close them and we’d be better of if we did. To be frank, there are larger issues with the federal government that need addressing, but that’s hard and it wouldn’t make a tidy list, and lists are great.
But we can start by getting rid of the bad apples. I’ll update this periodically and start to add links to blog posts on each.
Here are the Bad Apples:
- Dep’t of Ed
- FDA
- EPA
- FCC
- SEC
- Dep’t of Commerce
- Federal Reserve
- BATFA
- DEA
- FTC
Footnotes
1. Not “unjustifiably” in the legal sense, in which police are trained to shoot at any movement they perceive to be threatening because it’s better that innocent people die than the people we pay and ostensibly respect to put themselves in harm’s way get surprised by an unexpected wallet; “unjustifiably” in the sense that normal people use it, like “That cop unjustifiably shot a child in a park.” Or “That cop unjustifiably choked a man to death for selling cigarettes.” Or “That cop unjustifiably shot that man for politely announcing that he was exercising his Second Amendment rights.”