Over-reaching Bureaucracy Goes After Babysitters and Grandmothers

The TODAY Show on Tuesday featured a story you read here last week.  A Michigan woman is threatened with a fine by the Michigan Department of Human Services for letting her neighbors' kids stay at her house before the school bus arrives. 

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The shocking  part is when a State of Michigan employee tells Lisa Snyder to have the kids "get an umbrella" as a solution to the problem.  Meanwhile in Chicago, unsupervised kids go on a rampage.

Then there is this story from Terre Haute Indiana:

Sally Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.

The end result?  Mrs. Harpold was led away in handcuffs by the police!  Her "crime"?  Purchasing more than 3 grams of pseudoephedrine within seven days. It carries a penalty of up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. The law was enacted to stop drug users from making methamphetamines.  Another "well intentioned" law that oversteps its authority and ends up punishing or inconveniences the innocent.

Now Mrs. Harpold has to fight to clear her name all because two people in her family had the audacity to get a cold within a seven day period. The Prosecutor stated that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". What may be even scarier is realizing that there is a database out there that keeps all of your cold medicine purchases on file and flags the authorities when your weekly ration of Vick Formula 44 D has been surpassed.

In the end, all we do know is this: the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the ever expanding bureaucracy.

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