ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.

Not long ago I suggested in this space that our elected members of the State Legislature don’t give a damn about what we think. I stand by my assertion.

The latest example is the fourth consecutive year of rising complaints about excessive noise from fireworks in the wake of our buffoons in Lansing passing a law legalizing these dangerous toys. The reason for passage? Follow the money.

Though horror stories about people maiming or even killing themselves are in a minority, they still are too many. These numbers have grown considerably since the confederacy of dunces enabled too many drunken idiots to abuse the childish privilege and annoy customarily peaceful law-abiding neighbors.

I even saw one friend on Facebook declare that he was pondering answering the noise with some of his own from a 12 gauge shotgun.

“Bad neighbor, bad neighbor… Good thing I don’t have a gun.” — The Asylum Street Spankers

Then I voted in and observed a poll taken by MLive.com in which 59.5% of readers said they’d like to see the fireworks law repealed and only 34% opted for the status quo. It doesn’t matter. The legislators have made their dangerous and stupid law and they’ll defend it because it causes people to buy silly items they don’t need. So, as the late Molly Ivins used to say, “The purpose of gummint is to create a healthy bidness climate.” Not to protect the citizenry and promote the general welfare.

I had to eat my words and step back a little Monday night at the City Council meeting when Police Chief Steve Harper told me there really weren’t any big local problems over the Fourth of July.

Yet I personally witnessed and heard annoying fireworks in my neighborhood in Leighton Township as much as a week before it was legal to set them off. Meanwhile, my dog Bella cowered in the basement.

And what a great way to show respect to our veterans by mimicking the sounds of firefights that cause them a great deal of anxiety!

City Manager Mike Selden said, “We (the city) made it (a local fireworks ordinance) as restrictive as state law allows.”

And City Councilwoman Lisa Banas just blamed most of the trouble on “yahoos who are inebriated past 1 a.m.”

The trouble with this ill-advised and thoughtless money-grabbing state law is that it makes it way too easy for people to secure the noisy and dangerous toys to get back in touch with their childhood shenanigans, especially if they’ve had too much to drink, which many indeed have on such a holiday.

The evidence now is clear that a majority of citizens would like to have the disastrous fireworks law repealed. But it doesn’t matter to a State Legislature that thumbed its nose at state-wide voters’ wishes on the emergency manager law, the medical marijuana law and then headed off at the pass an effort to raise the minimum wage.

It’s the same legislature that handed us a really awful proposal for the roads, which was soundly rejected at the polls in the May 5 special election.

Yet we suckers in Michigan keeping electing these bozos again and again.

Once again, as reported by the cartoon Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”