While not being a keeper of farm animals, I am familiar with an idiom about a carrot and stick. It alludes to enticing a stubborn mule to move while dangling a carrot on a string attached to a stick. This arrangement is said to have worked because of reward and punishment used as persuasive measures.
In the early 1960’s, someone with an idea to save lives captured the imagination of the federal guvment politicians with an invention termed “seat belts.” These straps with a buckle were “sold” as a safety standard to save lives in automobile crashes. They were going to protect travelers from flying out of vehicles keeping passengers alive in the event of a wreck.
Mandated to be installed in all new vehicles henceforth, seat belts were greeted with mixed results. They were seen as overstepping by the federal guvment to summarily control peoples’ lives, at which time we were assured they were there if you voluntarily wanted to use them. Amen.
After a few years, statistics showed seat belts were not the magic bullet for which the authorities has hoped. Finding that although they worked at restraining vehicle riders, survivors often wound up with severe spinal injuries resulting in lifetimes confined to beds or wheelchairs. Improvement was needed.
The addition of a shoulder/chest-crossing strap was deemed the perfect solution to solve any and all unforeseen problems seat belts brought to the party. Another mandate was issued to auto manufacturers as means to guaranteed safety.
Unfortunately, there was still room for improvement as although passenger restraints in a spider-like web of harnesses appeared to secure people inside cars and trucks, more and more survivors had now realized neck injuries with which to suffer – often in perpetuity.
Enter: the air bag. Introduced as a sure-fire way to prevent neck injuries in head-on collisions, air bags were just what the doctor ordered. But here’s the rub: people needed to wear and use all – ALL – the safety restraints in order for them to work and work properly. How could the guvment assure everyone would use these safety measures?
Glad you asked.
You see, after seat belts were made mandatory accessories in cars, purchasers paid extra for the benefit of having them even though they might never use them. Think: cigarette lighters and ashtrays which were standard equipment in all automobiles until just a few years ago when the overreaching guvment outlawed smoking in cars due to possible damage to small child passengers.
But somewhere along the way, a federal guvment official thought it would be prudent to reach back into the Federal Department of Idioms and resuscitate the time-proven Carrot and Stick swindle.
Remember when I mentioned how the newly introduced seat belts would never be mandatory? They lied. Yep. The federal guvment lied to Americans because, under penalty of law, passengers on America’s roads were now supposed to use all restraints in order to avoid financial punishment.
In any case, America being America found that more rural states – along with counties therein rebelling against any restriction of “freedom” fought back to declare they would not, NOT, obey draconian rules about protecting people who didn’t want to be protected. Period. Double period.
This is where politicians excel: extorting money from loyal American taxpayers. Although normally dimwitted, taxpayers don’t usually see the harm in compliance with laws and regulations that are offered as beneficial to everyone, as long as everyone is subject to the regulations, evenly.
Those individual rebellious states who refused to participate in this seemingly illegal grift of extracting hard-earned cash from working-class wallets suddenly found themselves at a crossroads. They could comply and all would end well, or they could snub their noses at Uncle Sam and have precious federal highway funding severed – guillotine-like – as punishment for not playing well with others.
Of course, the ultimate solution was to swallow their pride and accept the carrot rather than the business end of the stick.
It didn’t take long to realize that although the medicine was bitter, it was better than financial suicide. And all fifty-states decided to participate with a smile.
Which leads us to the several year-old elephant in the room: illegal immigration.
Realizing from whence manna comes, state politicians, including gubenors, felt it prudent to offer open doors to any and all refugees in the form of new voters as well as new federal funding to pay for all the carrot and stick goodies offered to the “newcomers.”
Declaring themselves “Sanctuary States” as fast as greased lightning, these non-conformist rebellious states created Depression Era-like bread lines with extended hands at the steps of Congress. But it took five-years to arrive at our current juncture where money is the driving force of most legislation and statutes.
Amidst a severe drought in federal funding, while facing the threat of terroristic-leaning, anti-American activities, all the while funding the absolute mayhem former President “Plugs” Biden let into or country, the obvious choice from where the states could get mo’ money was the federal guvment.
This is where, as a MAGA voter, and Trump loyalist, I part ways with “The Donald” on the way he is handling the invasion of our once sovereign nation by unvetted, nonconformist foreigners, many of whom have no intention of assimilating into our society.
With President Trump sending guvment entities in the form of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plus U.S. Marshals into varying cities to round up the most dangerous of those criminal trespassers for deportation, it was quickly learned the Democratic guvment types and their staunch voters refused to comply with applying the infamous “Rule of Law.”
Gubenors, egotistical mayors, Congressclowns, arrogant Senators, judges at all levels, along with local counsels all gave President Trump the proverbial big middle finger when he asked for cooperation with steering America back on track to a safer, saner place for everyone to enjoy.
Of course, President Trump is much too busy to read this humble blog. But his staff may not be. In which case, please pass this thought on to El Jefé.
It might be time for resurrecting the ol’ carrot and stick trick and cut off all federal funding to any and all jurisdictions not complying with our federal law enforcement personnel in identifying and rounding up the lawbreakers in our midst.
The use of money as an incentive has usually worked and worked well. It is time to employ the same tactics used with safety devices in vehicles to correct the mayhem currently encouraged in our nation today.
And finally, please pass my regards on to President Trump. Thanks!
