By Paul Gable
Now into our second week of a federal government shutdown with a possible default on federal government debts looming just around the corner, it’s time to admit what we have in Washington doesn’t work.
A total of $5.2 billion was spent on the 2012 elections for President and Congress. We’d have been better off burning $100 bills in the front yard.
What was the first thing many in Congress did when they got to Washington in January 2013? Start raising money for re-election in 2014!
I’ll bet there’s not a total of 10 senators and representatives who can give an intelligent talk on the difference between a democracy and a representative democratic republic.
Most of what we have now on Capitol Hill don’t even understand the concept of governing.
We used to elect representatives to run the country. Now it seems we elect them to get cute sound bites on television and You Tube to use in their re-election campaigns.
Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats for the stalemate in Washington. What neither side gets is the people in the heartland are blaming them both, equally.
But, the real blame rests with the voters. Congress struggles to get 10% approval in voter polls. Yet, over 90% of incumbents who ran for re-election in 2012 won.
It’s time for the voters to make up their minds that, if a candidate has an “i” (for incumbent) behind their names, vote for the other candidate.
What we have doesn’t work. Even if we have a mostly freshman Congress, to go along with a new president, it can’t get any worse and may even get better. We might get some people in office interested in governing rather than being perpetual candidates.
This is certainly not the first time we have had this type of polarization in Washington. The most extreme example ran from 1832 – 1860 and resulted in a civil war.
Hopefully, we don’t have to go that far again to fix the problem.
Gene, that was cute. However, I have been active in the Whithers Swash and other Southend neighborhoods for many years. We have 23 meetings and I can not be at all of them all the time. I had another meeting that evening concerning hiring some people to do some work for me. I also was not at the Dunes meeting either. We are very involved in dealing with crime by adding more police, going after dilapidated properties, and organizing, IDing Homeless and streamlining charity organizations that work with the homeless. Long term we believe these will help alleviate the issues with crime. Randal Wallace
Hey Randal, if you have been active in that neighborhood for so long, seems like you would know how to spell their name. Sad, twelve years on the governing council and you don’t know the name of the area where the town began. W-I-T-H-E-R-S. Just like Withers Preserve in Market Common. Oh, that is right, Withers Preserve is on the South end too, my bad.
That is pathetically petty comment. You ever heard of auto-correct. I stand on my 12 year record and the overwhelming support of the people who live in that neighborhood.
Pathetically petty…… I like that. Kind of sums up how the city views that end of town. You will win, I will even vote for you. What are the alternatives? But just for the record, I am guessing that you can easily spell ‘Pine Lakes’ & ‘Dunes’ without the need for spell check.
Sometimes when you write from a phone the system will correct words and if you are like me and can not type and watch the screen you miss it. We are building strong neighborhood watch programs, going after dilapidated structures, making sure people will call the police and stream lining our charities system to ID clients and get them assistance so we know who is here, who needs help and who is committing crime. All of that together will help. We are also working on adding police positions and working with the 15 solicitors office to go after drugs. A comprehensive approach.