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The Law As A Sword and Arena Magic

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

1.         The Law As A Sword - The law is supposed to be a shield, protecting us against aggressors and defrauders.  However, as we have created more and more laws to try to regulate all aspects of people’s behavior, the law has become a sword – something that can be wielded aggressively against people who have not done anything that we would all understand to be objectively wrong.  There are so many laws today, and they have become so complex, that all of us, if we are breathing, are probably violating at least one of them. 

Since we all at least arguably are breaking some law just by innocently going about our everyday business, it is possible for those in power to selectively enforce the laws in order to inflict pain and damage on their enemies or to establish a name for themselves.  When the government goes after someone under these laws, it is not a fair fight, since the government attacker has plenty of taxpayer money with which to wage the attack, while the person being accused has to rely on his own personal assets to defend himself.  Meanwhile, the news media often uses the accusations as a basis for smearing that person’s reputation, and serious damage is done to the person’s pocketbook and reputation even if he or she is able to successfully defend against the legal charges.  When will we realize that this proliferation of complex laws makes us all less secure and more vulnerable to abuse?

2.         Arena Magic – The Louisville Arena Task Force has decided that the good citizens of Louisville and Kentucky should build a basketball arena on the riverfront that will cost over 300 million dollars – at least one hundred million dollars more than would be required to build an arena at its second choice downtown location.  But what’s another hundred million dollars when you are spending other people’s money?! John Schnatter was the only task force member to vote against the proposal, explaining that it does not make economic sense.  He also was the only task force member to pledge substantial money from his own pocket ($5 million) toward building an arena.  If all the people who are clamoring for an arena and believe they will benefit from it will just follow John Schnatter’s example and put up sufficient money to fund the construction, then they can build any kind of arena they want anywhere they want, but they should not be able to stick the good citizens of Louisville and Kentucky with the tab.  The governor and state legislature should be ashamed that they continually drain money from the productive people of Louisville and spread it around to cronies in rural areas, preventing the producers from reinvesting their profits in order to create real economic growth in the state.  They certainly are not going to make themselves popular by giving a small tax rebate in the form of an arena that will magically cause even more tax money to disappear every year.  At least the Falls Fountain could be shut down and removed when it turned out to be a money drain; unfortunately, that can’t be done with an arena.    

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