It’s time for an uncomfortable but urgent conversation about the direction our
government has taken. Although Americans have always disagreed on specific
policies, the vast majority of us were united in the fundamentals:
the Constitution was to be followed, and our elected officials were
in office to serve us, not their own careers. They had the right to
govern, but not rule, because the people, not the government, have sovereignty.
We
agreed that our nation as a whole, and our communities in particular, had basic
needs that required attention before our tax dollars were spent on anything
else. America had to be defended from foreign enemies, and our borders
secured. Our system of justice needed to be maintained and our rights
protected. Locally, government was responsible to protect us from crime
and fire, and to provide basic services such as education, transportation, and
sanitation.
Today, those key essentials are held hostage to numerous issues that are, at
best, of secondary importance, and may not be the jurisdiction of government at
all. Nationally, despite rising threats, our military faces sharp funding cuts.
Support for our current and future technological and economic edge, coming from
agencies like NASA, has been discarded. Funds collected for social security
were tossed into the general fund. Most of the dollars these essentials
should have received are diverted to causes sponsored by political contributors
or interest groups that are vital to some politician’s re-election,
accomplishing nothing for the country. As a result, our taxes are higher than
they should be, discouraging enterprise and keeping unemployment at over 8%.
Our most experienced and dedicated workers in the private and public sectors
are laid off because funds have been diverted to questionable programs staffed
by the politically connected.
Senator Tom Coburn annually compiles lists of wasteful projects that divert
your taxes from necessities to those that merely help incumbents get
re-elected. Some are vast sums for ideas that have failed for decades to
accomplish their goals but are too important as a source of political patronage
to discard. “Over the past 12 months,” Coburn noted, “politicians argued,
debated and lamented about how to reign in the federal government’s out of
control spending. All the while, Washington was on a shopping binge,
spending money that we do not have on things we do not absolutely need.
Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in
2011 to our national debt…”
In addition to nationwide programs that waste funds on an enormous scale,
singular pork barrel projects to help get individual politicians
re-elected accounted for about $6.5 billion of your tax dollars for nonsense
such as bridges to nowhere, “video game preservation,” annual chocolate
festivals, subsidies for pancakes, and other blatant dollars-for-votes
schemes.
Sometimes, those actions border on the clinically deranged, particularly on the
local level. As NYC crime escalates, Mayor Bloomberg concentrates on
telling mothers of newborns not to bottle feed their infants. As the
city’s transportation needs grow, he converts the high line railway to a park,
chops up thoroughfares for bike lanes and pedestrian malls, and makes
irrational statements such as “the streets are for moving people, not cars.”
When will our allegedly “tough” New York media begin to seriously question the
mental stability of the mayor?
Unfortunately, much of our mainstream media seems reluctant to criticize the
arrogant, unethical, or possibly psychotic actions of our current leadership.
Calls for “civility,” a thinly veiled plea to not criticize the worst crop of
elected officials America has ever produced, are frequently heard. Not since
the Great Depression has high unemployment lasted this long. Not since the day
before Pearl Harbor has our nation been so vulnerable. However,
sycophantic TV reporters seem more eager to make excuses than to seriously
probe the Washington missteps that led to this dire state.
Silence, however, in the face of ruinous incompetence and corruption will not
solve the nations’ deepening crises. The utter refusal to put the needs
of Americans before the careers of politicians, on both the national and urban
levels, has brought this nation to the brink of bankruptcy at home and extreme
vulnerability abroad. The people have a right and a duty to respond.
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