Here's what we absolutely must do to prevent the minority in America - and by "minority" I mean 'stupid' - from overruling the will of the majority: We must have immutable reform of Congressional redistricting. We must have an all-party panel to sit down and redo or review every Congressional district in the nation, then adjust it according to population, not party. No more gerrymandering. No more shifting district lines to allow a handful of white people to control voting. We must account for the rise of third-parties. We must allow flexibility beyond the current inflexible two-party system we're shackled to now.
One party should not be able to obstruct democracy like it does now. We know that. Why do we keep allowing it? Are we simply afraid of change? Have we lost the will to act that our Founding Fathers had? Because if we have, maybe we need to let the states which want to secede to do so and just call it quits.
Personally, I think we can adapt, but that means that we have to quit kicking the can down the road and ACT.
Showing posts with label congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label congress. Show all posts
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Who's responsible for the US's massive debt? You and I!
Why does the President always get blamed for the economy, but Republicans in Congress get a pass?
To take one statistic that President Obama is often cited for by his critics, long-term unemployment. Those numbers have risen because of things like Baby Boomers leaving the workforce to retire, among other positive signs. The influence of retiring Boomers on the economy and statistics like jobs numbers will continue as the wave of Boomers grows, and peaks. Whoever is President in that period should see that number rise, and that's a positive sign that the economy is strong enough that they feel confident enough to retire rather than stay working.
So when his critics - say everyone at Fock Snooze or the rest of the Conservative talking heads - cite these numbers, they should - but they don't - discuss why the numbers have changed. It's disingenuous to suggest they're something they're not.
As for the rising debt, what other course would he have taken? It's entirely incorrect to use the family budget comparison that people like Paul Ryan employ - families can't print new money as needed nor are family budgets comprised of billions of line items; the complexity difference should suggest that anyone using the comparison really does not understand the complexity of the Federal economy - but that's often cited by budget conservatives as reason to cut the budget.
Neither a family nor a nation can cut its way out of debt. The only hope is to raise income. For the family, that means a new revenue stream - someone else working or someone bringing in more money. But for a government, that means helping citizens make more money so tax revenues will rise proportionately, which in turn are used to pay down the debt.
But, just like FDR used debt to rebuild our economy following the Great Depression, had we not incurred new debt, our economy would have flatlined because in order to make money available to lenders - banks - to lend to businesses to finance new ventures or expansions in order to grow the economy, the US had to borrow it from abroad. At that point, new money can be made available - printed or made electronically utile - for workers who then spend it and it recycles throughout the economy, including a portion of which goes to pay down the debt.
This is also one of the reasons that being tied to a gold standard is like having an albatross around one's neck. If you only have a specific amount in the treasury, you can only print notes or make electronic funds available in that amount. A gold standard note - or even a treasury note for that matter - is a check. A gold standard bill is owned by the government, whereas a treasury note is owned by the central bank. So the more money you must print as both your population and economy grow, the less each note is worth because just like your own checking account, if you have checks and have to split the money in your account evenly between them - just as each $1 note is worth the same as every other - then the notes - or checks - become worth less the more you have to write or print. Simple math. But being able to borrow new money - incur debt - allows the government to add money to the treasury as needed to insure that everyone has money available to them. Yes, wealth still accumulates, but with a gold standard, we would have long ago run into the situation wherein the wealthy would own everything and the poor would own nothing because, eventually, the wealthy would have ended up with ALL of the limited gold-backed notes. The problem of continuing down that road is self-evident. It's not even up for discussion, and that's why even fiscal conservatives only mention it - the few who actually understand it, that is - when the rabble get fired up about it by some radio dittomonger.
No President creates jobs. None. He doesn't own the companies that actually create them. All he can do is to make enough money available that banks feel comfortable enough to lower interest rates - following the Fed's lead - and making massive amounts of money available to investors so that they feel comfortable enough to borrow.
That money has been available for several years now. But what has happened is that multinationals have used the opportunity to move either their headquarters or their operations offshore to increase their bottom lines while putting Americans out of work, and they're doing it on American taxpayers' dimes. Or trillion-dollar notes, as the case actually is. The President can't stop that. Congress must. And both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have refused to allow legislation to pass that will prevent American taxpayers' money from being used abroad.
Add to that that Conservative media like Fock Snooze and others have used the opportunity to fearmonger rather than unite the republic.
The debt has grown because people think that jobs aren't coming back. They are.
The debt has grown because people think that the government - meaning the President because they give the real problem, Republicans in Congress, a pass - isn't doing enough, so it has to continue to borrow money to make more and more of it available - which it is in unprecedented measure - in order to create new jobs. The jobs are there. What's not there is an honest media which will put partisanship aside and tell the truth.
The debt has grown because American corporations have used American taxpayers' money to fund their overseas expansions and tax evasion.
The debt has grown because Americans have been duped into thinking that the economy is too complex for them to understand unless the false equivalence of a family budget is used, and they can't make sense of it because you can't explain a complex system of that order using an example that doesn't fit.
The debt has grown because Americans have been lied to for so long, so deeply, and so broadly that they think that the guilty parties are innocent, and the innocent parties are guilty.
The debt has grown because Americans demand cheap goods from abroad. We want to shop at Walmart and Kmart and Target and dollar stores, and we want cheap goods, and the only way to secure those things is if you have enough money in your account to make your currency worth more than that of the person from whom you're buying things.
The debt has grown because we demand that it grow.
Who's responsible for the debt growing? You and I.
To take one statistic that President Obama is often cited for by his critics, long-term unemployment. Those numbers have risen because of things like Baby Boomers leaving the workforce to retire, among other positive signs. The influence of retiring Boomers on the economy and statistics like jobs numbers will continue as the wave of Boomers grows, and peaks. Whoever is President in that period should see that number rise, and that's a positive sign that the economy is strong enough that they feel confident enough to retire rather than stay working.
So when his critics - say everyone at Fock Snooze or the rest of the Conservative talking heads - cite these numbers, they should - but they don't - discuss why the numbers have changed. It's disingenuous to suggest they're something they're not.
As for the rising debt, what other course would he have taken? It's entirely incorrect to use the family budget comparison that people like Paul Ryan employ - families can't print new money as needed nor are family budgets comprised of billions of line items; the complexity difference should suggest that anyone using the comparison really does not understand the complexity of the Federal economy - but that's often cited by budget conservatives as reason to cut the budget.
Neither a family nor a nation can cut its way out of debt. The only hope is to raise income. For the family, that means a new revenue stream - someone else working or someone bringing in more money. But for a government, that means helping citizens make more money so tax revenues will rise proportionately, which in turn are used to pay down the debt.
But, just like FDR used debt to rebuild our economy following the Great Depression, had we not incurred new debt, our economy would have flatlined because in order to make money available to lenders - banks - to lend to businesses to finance new ventures or expansions in order to grow the economy, the US had to borrow it from abroad. At that point, new money can be made available - printed or made electronically utile - for workers who then spend it and it recycles throughout the economy, including a portion of which goes to pay down the debt.
This is also one of the reasons that being tied to a gold standard is like having an albatross around one's neck. If you only have a specific amount in the treasury, you can only print notes or make electronic funds available in that amount. A gold standard note - or even a treasury note for that matter - is a check. A gold standard bill is owned by the government, whereas a treasury note is owned by the central bank. So the more money you must print as both your population and economy grow, the less each note is worth because just like your own checking account, if you have checks and have to split the money in your account evenly between them - just as each $1 note is worth the same as every other - then the notes - or checks - become worth less the more you have to write or print. Simple math. But being able to borrow new money - incur debt - allows the government to add money to the treasury as needed to insure that everyone has money available to them. Yes, wealth still accumulates, but with a gold standard, we would have long ago run into the situation wherein the wealthy would own everything and the poor would own nothing because, eventually, the wealthy would have ended up with ALL of the limited gold-backed notes. The problem of continuing down that road is self-evident. It's not even up for discussion, and that's why even fiscal conservatives only mention it - the few who actually understand it, that is - when the rabble get fired up about it by some radio dittomonger.
No President creates jobs. None. He doesn't own the companies that actually create them. All he can do is to make enough money available that banks feel comfortable enough to lower interest rates - following the Fed's lead - and making massive amounts of money available to investors so that they feel comfortable enough to borrow.
That money has been available for several years now. But what has happened is that multinationals have used the opportunity to move either their headquarters or their operations offshore to increase their bottom lines while putting Americans out of work, and they're doing it on American taxpayers' dimes. Or trillion-dollar notes, as the case actually is. The President can't stop that. Congress must. And both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have refused to allow legislation to pass that will prevent American taxpayers' money from being used abroad.
Add to that that Conservative media like Fock Snooze and others have used the opportunity to fearmonger rather than unite the republic.
The debt has grown because people think that jobs aren't coming back. They are.
The debt has grown because people think that the government - meaning the President because they give the real problem, Republicans in Congress, a pass - isn't doing enough, so it has to continue to borrow money to make more and more of it available - which it is in unprecedented measure - in order to create new jobs. The jobs are there. What's not there is an honest media which will put partisanship aside and tell the truth.
The debt has grown because American corporations have used American taxpayers' money to fund their overseas expansions and tax evasion.
The debt has grown because Americans have been duped into thinking that the economy is too complex for them to understand unless the false equivalence of a family budget is used, and they can't make sense of it because you can't explain a complex system of that order using an example that doesn't fit.
The debt has grown because Americans have been lied to for so long, so deeply, and so broadly that they think that the guilty parties are innocent, and the innocent parties are guilty.
The debt has grown because Americans demand cheap goods from abroad. We want to shop at Walmart and Kmart and Target and dollar stores, and we want cheap goods, and the only way to secure those things is if you have enough money in your account to make your currency worth more than that of the person from whom you're buying things.
The debt has grown because we demand that it grow.
Who's responsible for the debt growing? You and I.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND POLITICAL REFORM TO PREVENT ANOTHER SUSPENSION OF DEMOCRACY
This post is a copy of the petition I created on Credo, found here:
We the People, in order to prevent one party, one group, or one philosophy from holding our government hostage against the will of the greater populace, ask Congress, as the duly elected representatives of the American people, to enact into law in the Constitution of the United States, the requirement that no individual, no person, no corporation, no group, no entity however entitled or constructed, be allowed to sway the tide of political influence such that it unbalances the scales of democracy as we have recently seen borne out by the Tea Party’s actions, resulting in the government shutdown and the threat of debt default. This cannot be allowed to happen again. These actions have cost the People of the United States billions of dollars, amity among neighbors, and the respect of the world’s financial institutions. These actions were taken by a tiny minority of the wealthiest US citizens, the so-called 1%, against the good governance and common weal regarding all who call themselves Americans. This cannot be allowed to happen again. These actions have jeopardized the good credit ratings of the American people, the default of whose loans, caused by the actions of a few, would have magnified the debt and deficit. These actions were taken by a handful of proxies, elected to Congress by the people of their districts in the mistaken belief that they acted for the good of all, but whose actions served none but the purposes of their wealthy benefactors. This cannot be allowed to happen again. We the People implore our Federal elected officials, the Congress of the United States of America, to cause to be written into the Constitution, such law or laws as needed to prevent the purchase of political power by any body, singular or plural, representing business, labor, government, religion, or other philosophy. To this end, we ask Congress to enshrine in the Constitution an Amendment such that no body, singular or plural, may contribute to any political cause, party, political action committee, or other group whose interests lay in changing the course of American politics, more than the sum of $100 at any time during any election cycle, and that a publicly available list be made accessible for viewing, both physically and online, kept updated, and clearly posted for viewing by one click from an organization's splash page on their website.
Why is this important?
As we've recently seen, wealthy special interests have commandeered the process of governance and wrested control from the majority. This has to stop. Already, during this one shutdown, we will lose an estimated $28B. If we had gone through the debt default, every person in the United States would have to pay more for everything they buy, for loans, for credit, and for general goods, since everything we buy is affected by credit at some point. All because a wealthy few persuaded their Tea Party proxies in Congress to hijack the normal diplomatic route to governance and suspend democracy.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Same Shit...well...Same Shit
Response to yet another excellent ThinkProgress.com article found here
The people ultimately behind sequestration are guilty of hypocrisy, greed, and treason. A republic's economy is wholly unlike a family's budget. A family can cut their way out of debt, but a nation can not. When an economy is depressed and the government cuts its budget, money stops flowing. The problem isn't a lack of money, it's the lack of movement of money. Government should monitor but generally stay out of the way of a healthy economy, but just like a doctor giving you an annual physical then getting out of your way when you're healthy, he must step in and do something when you're sick, and cutting the medications that have kept you healthy isn't the way to do it.
When an economy is sick, it takes the government to make money available at no or low interest in order to get the blood - money in this case - flowing again. Failing to do so would be like a doctor stepping back away from a patient when the patient goes into cardiac arrest and saying, "Hmmm. Maybe it will fix itself". Or likely not.
Sequestration is a failure of our government to take the shock paddles of money flow and zapping the heart of our republic back into health. Like a sick patient, the worse the recession, the longer it takes to get back to healthy, but pulling the plug will kill the patient, just like sequestration will kill our republic.
The BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are breathing down our necks as it is. Now Congress has essentially said, "Come on, guys! You can overtake us! And we're here to help!" Cutting scientific funding is analogous to failure to fuel your car before a long trip. Yep, you'll have more money in your pocket...when you're on the side of the road out of gas watching others who planned ahead go flying past you.
The people ultimately behind sequestration are guilty of hypocrisy, greed, and treason. A republic's economy is wholly unlike a family's budget. A family can cut their way out of debt, but a nation can not. When an economy is depressed and the government cuts its budget, money stops flowing. The problem isn't a lack of money, it's the lack of movement of money. Government should monitor but generally stay out of the way of a healthy economy, but just like a doctor giving you an annual physical then getting out of your way when you're healthy, he must step in and do something when you're sick, and cutting the medications that have kept you healthy isn't the way to do it.
When an economy is sick, it takes the government to make money available at no or low interest in order to get the blood - money in this case - flowing again. Failing to do so would be like a doctor stepping back away from a patient when the patient goes into cardiac arrest and saying, "Hmmm. Maybe it will fix itself". Or likely not.
Sequestration is a failure of our government to take the shock paddles of money flow and zapping the heart of our republic back into health. Like a sick patient, the worse the recession, the longer it takes to get back to healthy, but pulling the plug will kill the patient, just like sequestration will kill our republic.
The BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are breathing down our necks as it is. Now Congress has essentially said, "Come on, guys! You can overtake us! And we're here to help!" Cutting scientific funding is analogous to failure to fuel your car before a long trip. Yep, you'll have more money in your pocket...when you're on the side of the road out of gas watching others who planned ahead go flying past you.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Further proof why we need an 'Initiative, Referendum, and Recall' process nationally
The media has taken to making this seem like it's both sides who can't agree on a budget deal. Let's be clear - it's not. It's one side that won't budge or compromise. It's the Republicans. And the real reason most of them won't is because of the traitor Grover Norquist's treasonous anti-tax pledge.
Senior, old-line conservatives have come forward and called the pledge foul, yet the GOP leadership, too far mired in this morass of their own making, refuse to compromise. Lump Boehner, Cantor and McConnell in with Norquist as traitors.
These people give us a perfect reason to consider the 'Initiative, Referendum and Recall' process so that, in the future, when they try to do something as puerile and pointless as cause the nation to lose its credit rating status or default on debt payments, or simply hijack the political process, they'll find themselves being UN-ELECTED pretty damned fast.
Senior, old-line conservatives have come forward and called the pledge foul, yet the GOP leadership, too far mired in this morass of their own making, refuse to compromise. Lump Boehner, Cantor and McConnell in with Norquist as traitors.
These people give us a perfect reason to consider the 'Initiative, Referendum and Recall' process so that, in the future, when they try to do something as puerile and pointless as cause the nation to lose its credit rating status or default on debt payments, or simply hijack the political process, they'll find themselves being UN-ELECTED pretty damned fast.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Resetting the center for a prosperous middle class
We've allowed the national agenda, and the political center as well, to be pushed so far to the right that an adjustment is overdue. Pursuing pragmatical Progressivism is our only chance to build a middle class sustainably. The lessons of Conservatism are clear for anyone to see and parse and they're lessons of failure. The very nature of Conservatism deals a self-inflicted deathblow, and that's Nature's way of telling us that it's wrongheaded: You can't stop the Arrow of Time from progressing at the rate of 1 second per second. Conserve all you wish, time marches on.
Frankly, we need to ignore the Conservatives as the failures they are. We need a laser-like focus on the future and on a sound path to it. We need to present ideas for debt and deficit reduction that won't crush the weakest among us, but which simultaneously won't hinder the entrepreneurs. President Clinton would make a wonderful budget ally if he could be persuaded to assist since he was able to journey us along that fine line once before.
If our President and his administration can continue the momentum we have, we will break free from this recession, but it also requires Congress to act in concert with him, something Conservatives there have shown a puerile contempt to do.
Four more years, then Hillary. We can do this.
Frankly, we need to ignore the Conservatives as the failures they are. We need a laser-like focus on the future and on a sound path to it. We need to present ideas for debt and deficit reduction that won't crush the weakest among us, but which simultaneously won't hinder the entrepreneurs. President Clinton would make a wonderful budget ally if he could be persuaded to assist since he was able to journey us along that fine line once before.
If our President and his administration can continue the momentum we have, we will break free from this recession, but it also requires Congress to act in concert with him, something Conservatives there have shown a puerile contempt to do.
Four more years, then Hillary. We can do this.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Privatization to its logical extension
The privatization crowd rarely show their math work. They're especially shortchanging when doing the math all the way to the likely conclusion. So let's take a look.
Assume that the entire country (has lost its mind and) has gone ultra-conservative. We privatize EVERYTHING.
Education: Rather than having what amounts to a group discount for education, you have to purchase it on the free market. And since it's been privatized, it has to turn a profit. So, we have to jack up the price of what is factored into your taxes by whatever amount that works out to. For the sake of argument, and to be...conservative...let's say the factor is 2.
Done - 2X
Transportation: The street you live on will be privatized. How will that work? One assumption is that your neighborhood could purchase a grid of streets and do its own maintenance. That means that you will have to pony up your share to help buy them. Again, no single-payer discount, and since fixing potholes requires a crew to go out each time and do that, figure a factor of 2, conservatively.(Fair disclosure: My stepfather worked for a paving company for over a decade and 2X probably isn't even close, more like 5X) (Edit note: Another option for the street you live on is for a private firm to buy it. Imagine having to pay a toll to pull out of your driveway. You'd probably have to pay, say, a month in advance, like you would for some other services. To pull out of your driveway. Having fun yet?)
Done - 2X
Health: What you pay now will make it seem like Walmart has been pricing your care compared to where those costs would go. No single-payer for services now covered by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, other public health plans, means that healthcare prices will skyrocket. Public plans help hold down the price of healthcare by way of competitive pricing between public and private plans. It's hard to make a guess for this, but it would be safe to assume that the byzantine "coding" system of healthcare pricing would remain in effect and probably get even more complicated, We'll be ultra-conservative and call it 2X.
Done - 2X
Security: Now ALL cops are rent-a-cops. Ever see 'Mall Cop'? Ever see the fat security guard at the mall with his face stuffed into a 2083-ounce pop? Those will be your new cops. Some might say that competition will breed better cops, but if that was true, current rent-a-cops wouldn't look like Kevin James.
Done - 2X
National security: Does anyone recall Blackwater? They changed their name to Xe, but it's still the same people doing the same things and charging ten times more than the same jobs done by equally or BETTER qualified people in the active military. Using private contractors to do the same work that military members could be doing is one of the great defense debacles of the Twenty-First Century. (Not only do we pay the contractors, we still pay the military members who are relegated to sitting on the sidelines or doing odd-jobs, so this is an 'in-addition-to' cost, not an 'instead-of' cost.) We pay over 10 times more for a contractor to do the same thing that soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors already do.
Done - 10X
Getting a sense of where this is going? In logical parlance, the term 'slippery slope' is a conditional fallacy, so I'll try to avoid the use of that. But one human trait has never failed us, going back millennia: Greed.
The factors I use above are simply back-of-the-envelope numbers pulled out of thin air, but there WILL be a multiplication factor measured in integers involved in what we pay now versus what we would have to pay if the services our government now provides were to be privatized. And the above is just a handful of the hundreds of services that government provides. Even if you could purchase some of them on an a la carte basis, you'd still end up paying many times more than you do now. If you pay 30% of your check in taxes now, imagine if the across-the-board factor was 3X. That means three times more than you now pay. So let's do some math: 30% X 3 = 90% or 30% of your current income that you now pay in taxes times the across-the-board factor of 3X equals 90% of your income to private firms that provide services that were once provided by government through the use of your tax dollars. The people who want privatization are the very same people, or cronies of the same people, who currently, or would, own the businesses once privatization occurs.
Government isn't perfect, and probably never will be. But it has the ability to purchase common goods and services on a scale that privatization would never be able to.
Think about that when you vote for someone who wants to slash government and hand that work over to the private sector.
Assume that the entire country (has lost its mind and) has gone ultra-conservative. We privatize EVERYTHING.
Education: Rather than having what amounts to a group discount for education, you have to purchase it on the free market. And since it's been privatized, it has to turn a profit. So, we have to jack up the price of what is factored into your taxes by whatever amount that works out to. For the sake of argument, and to be...conservative...let's say the factor is 2.
Done - 2X
Transportation: The street you live on will be privatized. How will that work? One assumption is that your neighborhood could purchase a grid of streets and do its own maintenance. That means that you will have to pony up your share to help buy them. Again, no single-payer discount, and since fixing potholes requires a crew to go out each time and do that, figure a factor of 2, conservatively.(Fair disclosure: My stepfather worked for a paving company for over a decade and 2X probably isn't even close, more like 5X) (Edit note: Another option for the street you live on is for a private firm to buy it. Imagine having to pay a toll to pull out of your driveway. You'd probably have to pay, say, a month in advance, like you would for some other services. To pull out of your driveway. Having fun yet?)
Done - 2X
Health: What you pay now will make it seem like Walmart has been pricing your care compared to where those costs would go. No single-payer for services now covered by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, other public health plans, means that healthcare prices will skyrocket. Public plans help hold down the price of healthcare by way of competitive pricing between public and private plans. It's hard to make a guess for this, but it would be safe to assume that the byzantine "coding" system of healthcare pricing would remain in effect and probably get even more complicated, We'll be ultra-conservative and call it 2X.
Done - 2X
Security: Now ALL cops are rent-a-cops. Ever see 'Mall Cop'? Ever see the fat security guard at the mall with his face stuffed into a 2083-ounce pop? Those will be your new cops. Some might say that competition will breed better cops, but if that was true, current rent-a-cops wouldn't look like Kevin James.
Done - 2X
National security: Does anyone recall Blackwater? They changed their name to Xe, but it's still the same people doing the same things and charging ten times more than the same jobs done by equally or BETTER qualified people in the active military. Using private contractors to do the same work that military members could be doing is one of the great defense debacles of the Twenty-First Century. (Not only do we pay the contractors, we still pay the military members who are relegated to sitting on the sidelines or doing odd-jobs, so this is an 'in-addition-to' cost, not an 'instead-of' cost.) We pay over 10 times more for a contractor to do the same thing that soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors already do.
Done - 10X
Getting a sense of where this is going? In logical parlance, the term 'slippery slope' is a conditional fallacy, so I'll try to avoid the use of that. But one human trait has never failed us, going back millennia: Greed.
The factors I use above are simply back-of-the-envelope numbers pulled out of thin air, but there WILL be a multiplication factor measured in integers involved in what we pay now versus what we would have to pay if the services our government now provides were to be privatized. And the above is just a handful of the hundreds of services that government provides. Even if you could purchase some of them on an a la carte basis, you'd still end up paying many times more than you do now. If you pay 30% of your check in taxes now, imagine if the across-the-board factor was 3X. That means three times more than you now pay. So let's do some math: 30% X 3 = 90% or 30% of your current income that you now pay in taxes times the across-the-board factor of 3X equals 90% of your income to private firms that provide services that were once provided by government through the use of your tax dollars. The people who want privatization are the very same people, or cronies of the same people, who currently, or would, own the businesses once privatization occurs.
Government isn't perfect, and probably never will be. But it has the ability to purchase common goods and services on a scale that privatization would never be able to.
Think about that when you vote for someone who wants to slash government and hand that work over to the private sector.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Reply to comment on ApplePaul's FB page about government being "in charge of stuff"
Both government and business are subject to the laws of human nature. Government can run efficiently, but it takes oversight to keep people focused on their jobs, just like in business. Business needs oversight to prevent issues like the debacle with sub-prime lending, using toxic chemicals in our children's toys, and keeping their effluent out of our waterways. The right course is somewhere in the middle, not on one of the extremes in either direction; in other words, right where most things work best. Government, when run by concerned individuals, not like the current Nay Sayers we have in Congress, has given us a national system of freeways, free education, airports that all can access, and a host of other things that every successful person in this country has taken advantage of on the way to success. It's folly to think that government, properly run, isn't a boon to individual prosperity. The Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Rural Electrification Administration and other projects of the New Deal program helped the United States pull itself out of the morass of the Great Depression...which was caused by the crash of the Stock Market, a PRIVATE endeavor. In our grandparents' or great grandparents' lifetimes, government was trusted to ensure the common weal, because it was the lifeline which saved the nation from economic apocalypse. It seems very short-memoried to claim that government shouldn't be "in charge of so much stuff...", making me wonder, what is it that people are doing that they don't want government to know about?
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