Our Threatened Freedom

Is Law Enforcement Always Here? (04:18)

R.J. Rushdoony

Transcript:

R.J. Rushdoony: 00:02 Is Law Enforcement always good? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on Our Threatened Freedom. Sometimes, we taxpayers get a break. In 1980, Donald Lambro, in Fat City, How Washington Wastes Your Taxes, listed 100 federal agencies which have been wasting our money. This list, he made clear, was not complete. The main function of these agencies is to spend money and to provide bureaucratic jobs. The good news is that one of these, created in 1968, died on April 15, 1982, after spending nearly eight billion dollars of our money.

R.J. Rushdoony: 00:45 This agency was the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Like all such agencies, this one was given a good name. One designed to make criticism difficult. After all who is against good law enforcement or education or wars against poverty and so on. Usually, however, the better sounding the cause is, the worse the agency and its work. [inaudible 00:01:10] under a Nobel name.

R.J. Rushdoony: 01:14 This was true of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. For example, over half a million dollars were spent on a program to promote physical fitness among police officers. One of the ideas, this project came up with, was as Lambro reported it, a desire to develop Dick Tracy type wristwatch, so that police officers could obtain a quick reading of their blood pressure, temperature and pulse while on the go. With this is kind of gadget, maybe an officer in hot pursuit, that asked to be relieved on the ground, that his blood pressure and pulse rate had gone up. Another project, funded at $27,000 was a study to determine why convicts want to escape from prison. You and I could have given the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration a bargain basement opinion on that and saved the federal government some money. The point is however, when an agency thinks up subjects like that, it means that it is straining to find ways to spend the appropriated money, and to reward some sociologists with a grant of money.

R.J. Rushdoony: 02:27 Another study was financed to find out why people move out of neighborhoods, where the crime rate is high. People who take pay for producing, such so-called studies, must now and then I have some twinges of conscience, I hope, about what they are doing. Streetwalkers are at least honest about what they are. Lambro said of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, in 1980, “There are a number of things with this program, not the least of which is that it has had a difficult time spending its money.” All kinds of silly subjects were studied in the name of Law Enforcement, delinquency programs and other such noble sounding causes. Perhaps Congress killed the agency because it ran out of excuses for spending.

R.J. Rushdoony: 03:23 Well, Lambro tells us that there are at least 99 more such bureaus, that he can document as useless and wasteful. Maybe, Congress even created some new ones to replace this one. One thing is sure, Washington is spending more money than in 1980 when Lambro wrote, the jobless rate in Washington DC, the lowest probably in the United States, is certainly not made up of Civil Service People. Meanwhile, it is good news, that in this year of our Lord, one useless agency is dead. We can hope that many more will be finished off next year, before taxes finish off the rest of us. This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on Our Threatened Freedom.