Fighting Off the Federal Government

I HAVE A FRIEND, ABOUT MY AGE, who inherited an oil and mineral mining company. His father had decided to sell the business, but my buddy talked him out of it, and he's glad he did, considering the current price of oil and minerals. He tells me that there has never been a time in his life of nearly sixty years during which his family's lawyers weren't in court, arguing with the government. Decade after decade, year after year, day after day, lawsuit after lawsuit, never a let up, never a dull moment, courtesy the United States government. I told him that I had to admit, in all honesty, that all that sounds pretty damned exciting, and that I had nothing in my life to match it. He said that every year the government extorts several million dollars from his business, but that the business, after all that, still does all right. That filled me with a great sense of relief. My buddy isn't going hungry! We the American people certainly mustn't allow our own government to totally stifle the corporate free enterprise the golden goose of which layeth our global american golden egg, eh? No, we mustn't. Sometimes its the Environmental Protection Agency. Sometimes its the Department of the Interior. Other times its some rogue U.S. government department or agency which nobody has ever heard of, operating in complete secrecy. But its always somebody, some bureacratic gang of lawyers, filing one toxic waste clean up law suit after another. And to think, my friend's company divested itself of its mineral holdings decades ago, and is now involved only in oil. No wonder the price of oil is so high. Well, in any event, its good to know that we the American people can have faith that our fed gov is performing its watch dog function in stellar bulldoggish fashion. On the other hand, it kind of makes you want to curl up in your own bed with a good book, and communicate only with sign language.