Nothing is Private
Government "aid" is resulting in loss of freedom

OVERWHELMING protest from workers and employers forced OSHA’s recent retreat from its "policy interpretation" to hold employers responsible for health and safety violations in employees’ "work at home" offices. While OSHA’s policy letter has been withdrawn, it may well rise again.

Nearly 20 million Americans telecommute from their homes. The idea of the Federal government wanting to regulate private homes, holding employers responsible for improper lighting, inadequate ventilation or unsafe stairs, sends chilling signals to liberty lovers. This OSHA power grab, while not surprising, continues Federal government assaults on individual freedoms and constitutional rights.

The salient concern here goes beyond a single act of OSHA. The concern is a pattern toward incremental loss of liberty for Americans resulting from overreaching involvement of a control-driven, meddlesome "nanny government."

The Federal government imposes itself regularly into areas which challenge privacy rights, private property ownership and entrepreneurship. When politicians promise legislation to protect our privacy from telemarketers, watch out. Past so-called "privacy acts" resulted in five massive federal databases: medical, financial, education, labor and personal. These databases store all kinds of personal information about every American.

The databases are linked by the individual’s Social Security number despite a law guaranteeing it cannot be used for identification purposes. This datalink could provide the basis for a national ID card, one envisioned by bureaucrats with "biometric identifiers" such as fingerprints, retinal scans and imbedded computer chips containing detailed personal and medical histories. Centralized information equals centralized power and could potentially be used for myriad purposes, such as granting, denying or rationing health care. Recent actions in California demonstrate the perils. First, owners of rifles meeting specified criteria were required to "merely" register the firearms. Next, using the list of registered owners, the guns were declared illegal and are being confiscated.

On other fronts, the FCC has mandated that by 2001, all wireless providers must be able to pinpoint the location of wireless calls. Making cell phone calls will allow your government to track your whereabouts. Also, the FAA has proposed regulations to give government access to personal travel records.

The Bank Secrecy Act sounds like it protects confidentiality of financial records. In reality, it requires banks and credit card companies to maintain, for the government, records of each customer’s payments and deposits. The Financial Privacy Act, allegedly to curtail government intrusion into our private lives, actually expands government access to our financial records. And so it goes.

The 1996 Welfare Reform Act requires all employers to send name, address and Social Security number of every new worker and every promoted worker to a new database – the Directory of New Hires. In a project called Healthy Families America, another plan to collect private information involves sending government "home visitors" into homes of first-time parents. This information will be entered on a nationwide computer tracking system called "Program Information Management System."

These examples demonstrate a prying government, but property rights are also threatened. Drug laws allow government seizure of private property, even in the absence of any charges or convictions. The cavalier taking of private property for national park use or questionable environmental reasons is not uncommon.

Economist F.A. Hayek warned, "What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom." Karl Marx certainly agreed – he advocated abolishing private property ownership.

The government’s zeal to get control of the Internet; its attempt to nationalize health care, thereby controlling a huge chunk of the nation’s economy; its intimidation of tobacco, firearm and other industries by threats of lawsuits; and the prolific use of presidential executive orders bypassing Congress, would amaze our founders.

Current government adventurism into Americans’ lives results in more bureaucracy, more power, more spending and less freedom. The urgent issues of the presidential election are not really education, Social Security or debt. The overriding issues are freedom, liberty and preserving our Constitution.

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