- About the Book

GOVERNMENT CREEP:
What the Government is Doing
That You Don't Know About
by Philip D. Harvey
Published by Loompanics Unlimited.

It should be plain by now that we have too much government. Strip searches, confiscated homes, stolen children, denial of due process, war without end. Sounds like life in a Third World country, doesn't it? But this is our own federal government "for, of, and by the people," invading our personal lives, supposedly for our own good.

Chapters include:

GOVERNMENT CREEP: What the Government Is Doing That You Don't Know About shows how Uncle Sam has now become a dysfunctional parent -- standing guard in our bedrooms to "protect" consenting adults from each other, peering at what we read to see if we're "corrupting" ourselves or someone else, making it impossible to run a small business, incarcerating our children and confiscating our homes under laws that make freedom lovers shudder.

Government Creep will give you the creeps about the increasingly invasive role of government in every aspect of our lives -- our homes, our workplaces, and even our bodies and minds.
-- Nadine Strossen, President
American Civil Liberties Union

Government Creep shockingly illustrates how the drug war and other government overreaching have deprived U.S. citizens of their rights.
-- George Soros, Chairman
Soros Fund Management

Copyright ©2003 by Philip D. Harvey. All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this file as long as the contents have not been changed and this copyright notice is attached. Thank you.

- Excerpt

GOVERNMENT CREEP:
What the Government is Doing
That You Don't Know About

by Philip D. Harvey

INTRODUCTION

The excerpt, below, is about a man who breaks the "low-flow law" by smuggling a full-power toilet from Mexico into the United States. This story is just one of 17 in the book, GOVERNMENT CREEP, that illustrate the small, borderline restrictions of liberty that together have eroded our U.S. Constitutional rights. Harvey documents recent government incursions into private matters, usually at the expense of the public and for the enrichment of a select few.

Philip D. Harvey is president of the adult products firm, Adam & Eve, and the social marketing non-profit, DKT International. His previous books include The Government vs. Erotica, which documented his eight-year, $3 million battle with the U.S. Justice Department, and Let Every Child Be Wanted, an analysis of contraceptive marketing and U.S. foreign policy.

More information about the book, GOVERNMENT CREEP, and author Phil Harvey, follows the excerpt. Enjoy!

Waste Products

by Philip D. Harvey

Paul was going to have to smuggle a toilet in from Mexico. It had been nearly impossible to get a high-flow toilet in the United States since 1999. There were a few available on the black market as a result of careful salvaging from the demolition of older buildings, but now, if you needed a high-flow toilet, smuggling from Canada or Mexico was the best alternative. It wasn't illegal to bring in a foreign toilet for your own use, but no one in the U.S. could sell you one.

There was no question that Paul and Rachel needed a high- flow toilet. The one the kids used was beyond repair and the new low-flow models, mandated by federal law to use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush, wouldn't be sufficient when the camp kids were in the house.

Paul and Rachel ran a day camp for three two-week periods every summer. They had as many as fifteen kids engaged in nature walks and biology lessons, plus splashing around in their wading pool and using their bathroom. These kids used lots of toilet paper. One of their regulars, a rambunctious nine-year-old named Elise, actually brought her own toilet paper with her. Her mother insisted Elise was allergic to the chemicals in most brands.

Paul and Rachel's regular plumber did not want to discuss the details of obtaining a high-flow toilet. It was illegal for the plumber to buy one or sell one and, as far as contractors were concerned, there weren't any exceptions without government permission.

Paul could fill out a long series of forms which might or might not result in official authorization for a larger- tank toilet, but the process was both lengthy and risky. If he was turned down, the subsequent installation of any illegal toilet might come to the attention of the toilet police, perhaps rising to very high levels in Washington.

Paul pleaded with the plumber. Paul told him that his plumbing contractor in New York City had cooperated when he'd had a bidet installed in his apartment there. Bidets had been illegal in Manhattan for decades. But Paul and his first wife, Seana, lived in Manhattan and Seana wanted a bidet. The plumber told him, "Sure, we just have to get the inspection done before the bidet is put in." You can buy bidets in Manhattan -- you just can't install one.

When the work was in progress, Paul stood by as the waste line for the bidet was stuffed with newspaper -- a farcical camouflage of its intended use. The inspectors arrived, looked it all over, presumably took whatever bribe they were entitled to for overlooking the illegal connection, and signed the necessary papers.

At Paul and Rachel's day camp house, there was no such flexibility on the matter of illegal plumbing. High-flow toilets were out and there was no plumber or contractor who was willing to provide one. The Mexican import would take two months. Meanwhile, Rachel called Don's Johns and had a temporary portable latrine set up for the kids on the hillside that led down to the river. The portable johns used a lot of chemicals, which bothered Rachel, but you had to make some compromises.

~ What's Happening Here ~

In 1994, Congress passed a low-flow toilet law, mandating that all new toilets sold in the United States of America operate on 1.6 gallons of water per flush (gpf), compared with the typical 3.5 gpf previously. Even politicians seem a little embarrassed about this. Everyone seems to recognize that it is idiotic for the federal government to be in the business of mandating toilet design. Jokes abound. "Homeowners all across America... are frustrated to tears with this kind of government meddling. So we're going to flush them out," remarked House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Texas) in 1999.

The amount of water "saved" by this pointless law is trivial. All of America could go back to using outhouses tomorrow and it would have little impact on water consumption. The real water waste is in the subsidized irrigation of crops in 19 western states, consuming more than 80 percent of our national water supply. But that doesn't much interest the toilet police, for whom saving water isn't really the point.

Instead, the government, spurred on by a handful of enviro- zealots who find it more satisfying to control other people's lives than to address serious issues of water conservation, is following its normal busybody instincts, forcing us to do its bidding in our bathrooms.

This same law, by the way, mandates low-flow shower heads, so it is getting harder and harder to have a satisfying shower. One response has been the installation of second "body" shower heads, thus confounding the purpose of the law by doubling the (otherwise reduced) flow of water.

Americans prefer to laugh about this kind of petty-seeming paternalism because the inconvenience is increasingly minor. But what conceivable business has the government in our toilets anyway? Is it really so funny that the government is creeping into our bathrooms, into our bathtubs, into our very commodes?

About the Author

When Phil Harvey felt the very heavy hand of government in his own life, he fought back -- for eight long years -- until he won a victory. That experience lies behind this book, which tells stories of government invading the lives of many different kinds of people who are only trying to make a living or to live their dreams.

One of Phil Harvey's previous books, The Government vs. Erotica, is about his own small company's victory over the U.S. Justice Department. Another, Let Every Child be Wanted, provided the first comprehensive examination of contraceptive "social marketing." His articles, columns, and letters have been published in many periodicals, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and his stories and poems have been published by literary magazines.

When he's not writing, Phil heads two companies that he founded: the nonprofit DKT International, a small social marketing organization, and Adam & Eve, a firm selling sexually-oriented adult products.

After graduating from Harvard University and serving a stint in the U.S. Army, Phil traveled to India with the nonprofit aid group, CARE. Observing that the central problem in third world countries might well be family planning, Phil created DKT International to design and run social marketing programs that make contraceptives available overseas. Selling condoms by mail order in the United states was a logical extension, and that evolved to become Adam & Eve.

When the Reagan administration's Justice Department formed an obscenity task force to shut down sexually-oriented businesses and filed criminal obscenity charges against him, Phil Harvey began his eight-year legal battle, spending over $3 million to win his case and clear his name.

Copyright ©2003 by Philip D. Harvey. All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this file as long as the contents have not been changed and this copyright notice is attached. Thank you.