Suppose I were a career thief who finally got caught red-handed, was tried and found guilty. At my sentencing hearing, the judge gives me a serious tongue-lashing:

"Naughty, naughty! You are ordered by this court to refrain from stealing again."

Would I be likely to stop stealing? I doubt it. I'm far more likely to modify my modus operandi somewhat to at least avoid getting detected in the same way as before... and then go back to work stealing. The downside of having gotten caught just isn't sufficient to make me change.

Amazingly, that court action is usually what happens when government gets caught doing something that is clearly wrong... a verbal lecture and an order to cease and desist... and it has as much effect on government as it would on me as a thief... no more effect than a little education that will help avoid getting caught or convicted again.

The reason government growth is unstoppable is that it is almost never held accountable, regardless of how grievous its actions have been, and those actions can be grievous almost beyond belief.

First, it's important to understand some of the reasons why government agencies and bureaus take illegal actions.

1. Just plain individual employee nastiness. Government employees are people too - some are good and some aren't. Many have the power to make life miserable for others, and that power can be corrupting. Government workers are unionized and well protected. They can't be summarily fired like most of us, regardless of their actions. Government employees are often in the position of enforcing rules, laws, and policies that are hurtful and extremely unpleasant, and they are the only "face" we can confront. It's not surprising that they often get frustrated or angry and use their power to inflict deliberate and unfair damage.

2. Government agencies are political. Regardless of size or makeup, politics eventually becomes part of the decision-making process, and politics has a twisting effect on everything under its purview. Actions at even the lowest levels reflect upward on those in charge, until they affect someone whose political career may be jeopardized. The goals and incentives of the agency become corrupted toward political gain and away from whatever the intended goals might have been. Where the goal may have been, for example, to improve the environment, the politicized goal may become to levy ever increasing fines... numbers that will look good on someone's political resume. As that becomes clear to those who work in the agency, those employees with political ambitions will look for more and even extreme ways to increase their "numbers". Some of those actions to please superiors may not even be sought or approved by them, but can be just misguided attempts to curry political favor. The power of government agents, though, can make those misguided actions into lethal weapons against citizens.

3. Government agencies are essentially unrestrained. While private corporations, no matter how large and powerful, ultimately have to satisfy their stockholders, clients or customers, or lose them, government agencies, once created, quickly become autonomous and even financially independent via the ability to levy fines. The IRS, for example, has been used as a threat even against Congressmen who were trying to challenge it. Because agencies are accountable in only vague ways, they have the ability to channel resources to protect themselves. When challenged, they can stall, obscure, threaten, disseminate false media information, and generally bankrupt any opponents before ever being called to account.

One of the tools of government agencies and employees is sovereign immunity -  "the doctrine that the government, state or federal, is immune to lawsuit unless it give its consent". It's an anachronistic carryover from English law under which "the King can do no wrong" and cannot therefore be sued. For a nation that was founded by rejecting monarchy and royal privilege, sovereign immunity is an absurdity. Government agencies can be sued, but it's a Herculean task that few are successful at completing.

When a suit against a government entity does take place, we come back to where I began...the worst that is likely to happen, regardless of how outrageous the agency's actions have been, is that they will receive that tongue-lashing and an order not to do it again, which they will most likely just ignore.

Because government agencies are able to act without restraint and without penalty, we've had results such as disastrous wars justified with lies, deadly police actions like Waco and Ruby Ridge, toxic studies using citizens as unknowing test subjects, environmental pollution that no private company could ever get by with, and a lot more, some of which we may never even know about. Worse, we have government that has no reason to cut its citizens any slack, to exercise much restraint, or to ever admit wrongdoing, much less say they're sorry for the damage they cause.

Unrestrained, irresponsible, unrepentant, and more or less eternal. Sounds a lot like a totalitarian regime, doesn't it?