Watching America from your 'cloud' you'd be appalled and thinking you crossed the Delaware on a brutal cold winter day for nothing...The MisManagement that has evolved since you 'retired' from public office is at best a marvel of stumbling ineptitude, to at its worst open corruption...
Through centuries - thousands of years really, 'we' -- the folks who grow food, who make useful tools, appliances and vehicles, who build houses, offices, bridges-etc., who do scientific research, who teach or who heal -- have been conditioned to believe in the value of leadership and that we needed leadership. All that self-appointed hierarchy from the heads of churches to royalty that spread across the globe like a persistent rash -- who lead us [conscripted] from our content lives farming and building and inventing - to war after war after war...Why? Not for 'us', but for themselves. Leadership in most of those [sometimes years] of wars, in the trenches were rare and if they were after victory was declared they became a king, or emperor.
But who fought in all those wars and paid for all those wars with all those taxes--'we', 'us', -- and twenty-three years into the 21st Century 'we' are still...Why? Not for 'us', but for 'them'...Those who make the rules for 'us' but different rules for themselves. This latest government shut down is a prime example. If the government shuts down then 'everyone', I repeat 'everyone' except those in the Congress and the Senate must go without a paycheck! Why? Because 'they' voted that rule for themselves.
Why isn't our modern-day leadership standing shoulder to shoulder with 'us'? There is no true royalty except in an arbitrary 'label' as such. The only place in modern society where a hierarchy functions well is in the military where specific duties and responsibilities must be clear - otherwise we're all peers. The president of the UAW is still drawing his full salary [including benefits & expenses] $4,000+ each week while his union membership must live on $500 each week!
*These song lyrics [Hall & Oates "Rich Girl"] apply; "It's easy to hurt others when you can't feel pain."
If we replace the 'word' leadership with management - the entire responsibility of 21st Century governing and the responsibility of 'us' [We The People living on Main Street] takes a Paradigm Shift.
Yes, we're busy; finishing school, starting careers and businesses, getting married and raising a family - but on our 'to-do' list with those responsibilities IS the supervision of the people we 'hire' to manage, we are 'their' employers, we pay their salary. 1.] national security/military/with bases in key state locations & one policing agency [not 43], 2.] national transportation/air traffic, roads and bridges that cross state lines, 3.] national communication/postal system, 4.] national energy/power grid, 5.] a national healthcare system [like Congress has had since 1959], 6.] basic national education standards... And that's it!
The rest must return to and remain with each state which according to our Constitution are Sovereign - though they don't function that way. From each dollar we earn about 20% goes to DC while 5% goes to your state. If it was the other way around, we'd have a significantly smaller central government which is what the Founders intended.
The first U.S. Government Shutdown that I experienced was when my husband had an overseas contract and we were living on the Greek Island of Cyprus, 1994 to 1996. Our Cypriot friends and associates had never heard of such an event and asked us how a government can stop? We wondered that too... Why is so much so partisan? Why do we have a system that only hears half of the elected voices half the time? We absolutely need both/all.
*As a result of conflicts between Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress over funding for education, the environment, and public health in the 1996 federal budget, the United States federal government shut down from November 14 through November 19, 1995, and from December 16, 1995, to January 6, 1996.
First, Education should never, ever be underfunded. But education gets sacrificed [along with teacher salaries & school maintenance] routinely nearly every single budget year [federal & state] which is why internationally American education ranking went from 6th in the world in 1993 to 17th by 2001 - then down even farther by 2018 to 27th... [Research for that post was depressing & infuriating.] Working Without A Net: EDUCATION IN AMERICA (workingwithnonet.blogspot.com)
AND for some reason [reason seems to be missing] basic mathematics and economics isn't followed by those we vote/hire to 'serve' in public office. Why? Gosh another good question... Since you and I can't spend more than we earn [for very long] without running into serious debt then perhaps bankruptcy - why people in elected office think those finance rules don't apply to the national budget is alarming. A healthy, functioning free enterprise economy, provides jobs -and- funds social programs...But it's not a bottomless bucket and especially when business keeps getting strangled by arbitrary regulations.
For some reason our national debt is subdivided into two segments. There's intergovernmental debt and public debt. Intergovernmental debt is owed by the U.S. government -to- itself, while public debt is owed by the U.S. government to external entities. Those 'external entities' are foreign countries/investors like China and Japan and others. Additional public debt is held by U.S. Banks, foreign banks, the Federal Reserve, states and local governments, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies and savings bonds. [Bonds were sold heavily to support WWI and WWII] But 20 years in Afghanistan [Iraq] only made money for contractors, draining taxes that should have gone to education, social security, Medicare and steadily aging infrastructure. Working Without A Net: INFRASTRUCTURE IN AMERICA (workingwithnonet.blogspot.com)
Awww but there's an election in one year Fellow Travelers.
