stillfugue

It is a blast to be the compliance expert in government regulations.
Everybody loves you, and they see you as the great protector,
especially if the regulators are visiting next week.
They love your knowledge and they count on you to save them.
Often the regulators are brand new and have no clue.
It’s not brilliant, but you merely need to ask them to show you the rule.
Because you are confident you know the rules,
and you see eyes evade as their imagination cooks up new ones.
When they can’t find the rule that they have made up,
they say it is “industry standard” and they don’t need a citation.
They desperately aim to fulfill their mission of making you wrong.
They are always right unless you know their boss’s boss, and you usually don’t
because each time they send a new batch of regulators.
It is terrible irony as you train the regulators during each interrogation.
When the regulators are wrong, they are right and you pay big fines.
This is how they engorge themselves – They fine you big when you’re wrong,
and they fine you just as big when you’re right.
You cannot challenge the regulators in court and be heard by an impartial party –
You could in a free society. You could in a society of laws.
We are being trashed by the power of regulators  and legislators.
Legislators keep writing more and more laws which require
more and more regulations which require
more and more rules which require
more and more interpretive Q & A’s which
no one understands,
No one but I after hundreds and hundreds of hours of study each year.
Legislators don’t get rid of the old bad laws.
Regulators don’t get rid of the old bad rules.
No, that would be difficult work – It would require thought.
No, we get bad law on top of bad law on top of broken regulation
on top of bad regulation on top of bad rule on top of amended rule.
Laws become more and more twisted, asinine, convoluted,
so complex that lawyers can never be brilliant enough to understand them.
Regulators get to grow and keep growing.
Soon, there will be more regulators than victims.
With less businesses to fine,
taxes will rise to replenish the lard of the regulators
who are being taxed to pay themselves to regulate
any business which might survive this blizzard.
Surviving businesses will be the fierce lawyers
who bash swords with the regulators.
Who will pay all of the lawyers?

I submitted this one for Jingle’s Poetry Potluck – This week’s theme was Rules, Regulations, and Laws