I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Kill You

In the wake of Edward Snowden's disclosures about the National Security Administration spying on American citizens and press revelations of police-caused fatalities, suspicion of the government is no longer a monopoly of the political right. A recent Gallup poll found that 49 percent of Americans ag [...]
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In the wake of Edward Snowden's disclosures about the National Security Administration spying on American citizens and press revelations of police-caused fatalities, suspicion of the government is no longer a monopoly of the political right. A recent Gallup poll found that 49 percent of Americans agreed that the government posed "an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens." I'm From the Government and I'm Here to Kill You taps into this new awareness by recounting in narrative, easily readable form the stories of selected great and fatal government debacles--and of how the bureaucrats responsible escaped all accountability. The book begins with the 1947 Texas City explosion, where the government produced thousands of tons of bomb-grade ammonium nitrate and decided it would make good fertilizer. The resulting detonations killed six hundred Americans, yet the courts held the government was immune from lawsuits. Next, I'm From the Government will outline the negligence that distributed nuclear fallout across the West, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the Waco raid and siege that killed six agents and nearly a hundred civilians, the failure of Operation Fast and Furious, the militarization of police that has led to the deaths of innocent civilians, and the Veterans' Administration scandal that saw vets dying while waiting for doctors' appointments. With federal civilian employment approaching three million persons, we can no longer tolerate a legal regime that immunizes their negligence and rewards their agencies for dangerous practices. I'm From the Government will end by proposing reforms that will protect the public from such disasters in the future.