Ben remarked,
"I tend to apply Occam's razor and just attribute it to both stupidity and power tripping. Yet, it does show both how far they can push and how much people will stand."
Related to that:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Terry