In 2010, I wrote a quick blog post, Boiling Frogs, that I think is as relevant today as it was then.

This week, I read an opinion piece, D.C. Swamp Deeper Than Ever, in Newsmax that reminded me of the Boiling Frogs tale. It was written by George J. Marlin, a former Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and author of Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st century Tragedy. In my view, Mr. Marlin’s piece is a must read for every American. Please use the link and look at it. This is the ultimate Frog Boiling Scenario which tops my list of significant under-reported stories of our lifetime.

Here are a few of the eye popping statistics from D.C. Swamp Deeper Than Ever:

The U.S. Government directly employs about 2.8 million people. Depending on your source, the USA has approximately 150 Million jobs. That means that just under 2% of all jobs in America are on the Federal payroll – paid with tax dollars. This, of course, does not include State and Local tax funded jobs which are estimated to be almost 20,000,000. It also does not count the jobs contracted out to private companies.

The Department of Defense has almost 700,000 employees and the U.S. Postal Service has about 20,000 fewer: 678,000.

Of the 1.4 Million Federal Employees in the Executive Departments of our government, more than 500,000 of them are paid in excess of $100,000 per year. That is on top of 11 paid holidays, 13 paid sick days, and 20 paid vacation days. That doesn’t even count the substantial pension benefits that average over 50% of the average of their highest three years of salary. The median income for all Americans is closer to $50,000. So we pay our public servants 2-3 times what we get paid ourselves?

Federal employment is growing at a rate of over 3.5% per year, doubling the number of Federal employees about every 20 years.

The source of much of Mr. Marlin’s piece was the Annual Report of Open the Books/American Transparency American Transparency is a very interesting project intended to shed some light on the size and costs of our government. The Chairman of that organization, Thomas W. Smith, wrote: “Whenever human beings gather to accomplish a task, any task, without strong and effective oversight, a natural evolution takes place. Whether it be in business, academia, philanthropy, or government, every activity morphs from the original goal to self-aggrandizement (my emphasis). In government, this process is particularly toxic. There are no profits, let alone a profit motive. No concern with productivity. No incentive to turn off the proverbial lights. No measure of success. No motivation to end counterproductive activities.

Add to this mix the influence of public employee unions. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman were opposed to them for reasons that long ago became apparent. The goal of all unions is self-preservation – just as management’s is to maximize profits. But public employee unions add two other noxious elements to the mix: (1) defending job incompetence and (2) heavy-handed involvement in the electoral process in a search for pliant politicians who can help them achieve their objectives by spending ever more of the public’s money.”

Today, approximately 38% of all Federal employees are represented by a Union.

In my view, our current path to a loss of our freedoms is not the path to Socialism or Communism. It is the takeover of our freedoms by politicians, bureaucrats and unions, bent on gaining power and control. They continue to grow, cancer-like, to subjugate all human activity to their policies, regulations, and control of the political process. Every new administrative rule, every new government form with the ever increasing demands for your private information, and every new code or regulation limiting your freedoms requires ever more bureaucrats to count, file, even to study them.

The growth in depth, breadth, and power of our government significantly limits our freedom and will lead to a state of government regulatory control of our lives. It is time we get serious about cutting government involvement in our lives. Let’s start by barring unions from all forms of government employment.

I wonder how much good has actually come from the mountains of regulations created by our government bureaucrats? It makes me wonder how we have made it this far.