Getting back into things. (Plus a rant)

I haven't been blogging in almost a month. Really, I would have liked to, but how exactly blog about looking for work when you would be leaving multiple jobs at the same time?

Well, backcountry.com ended up offering me a job. It's great, I'm surrounded by smart people. Plus, it's a jump in pay. My main job that I just left was bought last month. You can read sarahbellum's recent thoughts on the matter. Suffice it to say, being a programmer and otherwise curious guy there wasn't much point to me sticking around to do sysadmin, helpdesk, or anything that involves user support.

You might say I've gone to a better place...

For what it's worth, I don't plan on working anywhere that is subject to FDA regulations ever again. It's not that I have any problem with laws that are meant to make people safe.

(I do have some problems with laws that make us more "safe", but that's no my FDA problem.)

No, being a citizen of this fine country I have taken it upon myself to be educated as to its operation. For those of you who may not be from around here, or who never took a civics class here's the breakdown of how laws are made (simplified):

The congress passes bills by voting on them.

The president signs bills into law and manages the departments that do enforcement.

The judicial branch looks at those laws and provides a process for making sure that the laws and their enforcement are within the scope of authority of what the congress and president can do.

Now this system works pretty well. If there is a rule that anyone is bound by there has to have been some unit of government (city, county, state, etc...) that has undergone the due process to make it follow this pattern.

The legislative makes the laws.
The executive enforces the laws.
The judicial determines if the laws are correct/valid.

Well, here we have the FDA. It was created by an act of congress, signed into law by the president, and allowed to continue by the judicial. Everyone dropped the ball.

Why is this a problem?

The congress has the authority to make laws by way of simple majority with the president's signature, or with a 2/3 majority overriding the president.

The congress was not granted authority to delegate its law making authority.

The FDA has a rule making process. The people who make the rules have been placed there by congress, but they are not subject to reelection as are the members of congress. These rules are enforced with the same effectiveness as other laws, but in the case of infractions you are subject to other FDA rules or laws that have been passed by the congress. It's kind of messy.

The biggest problem with this is that if you break an FDA regulation the only remedy is to work with the FDA. There is not a judicial due process in place.

That is to say, when a regulation is broken there is not a judicial line of authority (appeal process) that leads to the supreme court. This precludes regulations from being judged as to their constitutionality.

For what it's worth, I really like our form of government. It would work really great if we used it the way it was designed.

Before we can really be free enough to have a real constitutional government people have to respect the boundaries that are so important to keeping it going. Even worse is that the current iteration we are living under now will have to collapse under its own corruption before it can be replaced by good people who will not support such corruption.

Is my dearest hope that I may one day be worthy to live among people who can abide by a constitutional form of government the way it was meant to be used.