A ship with no rudder!

There’s never been a better call to “throw the bums out” of Washington than the sorry state of what exists now.  We elect these people to go and do the public’s work.  We expect honesty, civility, and diligence from them in getting the business of the government moving and keeping it going.  But what do we get? We get infighting, me-ism, chest thumping, and worst of all party lining. And what result? Nothing—nothing at all gets accomplished.

We have some serious problems. We have debt that is way out of line; we have taxes which are also way out of line; and we have a mass of representatives who are so full of themselves they don’t believe they should be held to the same standard that we, the run of the mill Americans, have to deal with every day.

Take a look at the record, it stands for itself. When President Obama was trying to fit people into his grand scheme of a presidency, he had problems time and again finding a likely candidate who would pass muster. Many hadn’t even paid their taxes! God forbid I don’t pay my taxes; I assure the hounds of government would be at my door, skinning knife in hand, demanding their pound of flesh (perhaps this is a new diet plan?).

But for many of these politicians, paying taxes or obeying pretty much any law, is beneath them. Why should they pay taxes? Isn’t that just like taking money out of one pocket only to put it in another?  For most of my adult life I have labored trying to figure out why someone would pay millions of dollars to get elected to a position that only pays a few hundred thousand or so. Where is the economy in that?

When the founding fathers founded this country the idea of career politicians didn’t exist. They felt that serving in a political office was a duty, and not necessarily a way to make a living. Not so today. Today we have politicians who snuggle into their respective hosts like deer ticks on a mangy mutt. They squat, they bloat, and they suckle whatever comes near enough to sate their insatiable appetites.  But it’s okay, because they are Senator so and so, Congressman such and such, Supreme Court appointee so and so, or whatever position they tend to fill in the hierarchy that is the U.S. government.

Really, it’s pretty darn disgusting. The masses struggle to make ends meet, and the fat cats sit back and get caught up in political diatribe and chest thumping that is tantamount to playing chicken with an Amtrak train. Stop it and get on with business.

It’s appalling that the budget hasn’t been worked out. Compromise is supposed to drive democracy, but no one seems willing to let go of their dogma.

The other day I was watching a show about Baidu, a Chinese IT company that basically markets search engine similar to Google.  Robin Li is president of the company, and the interviewer was talking about gross national product. They started talking about how soon it might be before China’s economy would eclipse our economy. Li didn’t know exactly how to respond, so the interviewer prompted him: “What about in 2020?” Li said that the US would still have the leading economy in 2020.

The interviewer then asked about 2030? Li didn’t really answer the question, but his non answer spoke volumes. If China’s economy didn’t surpass the US economy by 2030, it certainly would at some time near that date.

Along another avenue, the interviewer asked why Li thought that China could go about large projects, like the three river dam and get them to come off without a hitch. Li said it had a lot to do with how the Chinese government worked. If the government recognized the need for a project, say the dam, a bridge, or a large roadway, they simply sat down and made up the plans, funded the project, and built the project. Not so in the US, he said, in the US we spend as much time getting it approved at every level from the NIMBYs to the highest authority, that we often lose sight of the need, and we drive up the cost due to the time lag created by getting everyone to agree that it might be a good idea.

When people pressed Ben Franklin about what kind of government the Continental Congress agreed to back in the late 1790s, he said, “We have given you a Democratic Republic, if you can keep it.” All forms of government have their good points and their bad points. One of the good points about a democratic republic is that it is: “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” But sometimes too many cooks make it difficult to bake a cake.