If they were asked to take a hard and honest look at the problems facing this country in today's world, it is easy for most people to identify the five or six overriding issues that deeply affect the most Americans. I would bet that the following issues would make most people's top ten:
- Two ongoing wars in the Middle East.
- A continuing battle against terrorism.
- Our failing public education system.
- An ongoing battle against the plague of illegal drug usage.
- Escalating health care costs.
- Both Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency.
- Skyrocketing national debt and deficit spending.
- High unemployment.
- The lack of a national and rational strategic energy plan.
- Illegal immigrants and the problems caused by the lack of a national border security capability.
- A continuing battle against terrorism.
- Our failing public education system.
- An ongoing battle against the plague of illegal drug usage.
- Escalating health care costs.
- Both Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency.
- Skyrocketing national debt and deficit spending.
- High unemployment.
- The lack of a national and rational strategic energy plan.
- Illegal immigrants and the problems caused by the lack of a national border security capability.
Wherever you fall on each of these major issues (e.g. against the wars or for the wars, against legalization of drugs or against legalization, etc.), most sane people would agree that if we could focus and solve just this small handful of issues, the real world would be so much better.
However, when you listen to politicians speak, you sometimes wonder what world and reality they are dealing with and living in. Have they fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole from Alice In Wonderland to a world that is different from the ones most Americans inhabit everyday? Could it be that these major problems facing the nation listed above, the same ones that have not been solved by the political class for decades, have not been resolved because the political class lives in a different dimension than us? Consider the following events relative to the American political class that have recently popped out of the rabbit hole of politics:
1) A county politician in Wisconsin, running for a political office, opines in a public forum and on camera that Arizona is definitely not a border state with Mexico.. In all of the maps of the country I have seen throughout my life, Arizona is shown to have a very long common border with Mexico. In this Wisconsin politician's world, that is not the case, making it tough to solve the illegal immigration problem when we are looking at totally different maps.
2) When the Democrats took over both houses of Congress in 2006, the Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi, proclaimed that the Democrats would reign in the outrageous deficit spending habits of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. She vowed that there would be no new Federal government spending unless other areas of the Federal budget were reduced in order to pay for the new government spending, her highly touted "pay as you go" approach to curtailing the size of government. She proudly proclaimed on her website: "While the President's (Bush) budgets have turned surpluses into deficits, the Democrats' budget takes America in a new direction, returning fiscal responsibility to Washington and the right priorities for our nation." Given the fact that Federal government spending has grown significantly and budget deficits have skyrocketed (tripled) since this Democratic Party Congressional takeover and into the first two budgets of the Obama administration, it is apparent that Nancy Pelosi exists in a different universe from us. Most of us would agree that fiscal responsibility does NOT mean tripling the size of the deficit within four short years as it does in Pelosi's mind. However, we would agree with her assertion that the Democrats' budget is taking us in a new direction, the fast track to national bankruptcy.
3) Let's stay with Pelosi for another trip down the rabbit hole because her world is so fascinating and different than ours. The Speaker recently announced that high unemployment is good, and that, in fact, high unemployment is one of the best ways to create jobs. You cannot make this stuff up, check out her press conference on YouTube where she seriously made this claim. Thus, in her world, the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs are created for those in need of a job. In her world, if we can get to 100% unemployment, everyone might have a job created as a result. Obviously, economic theory is different where she exists.
4) In Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson's world, physical laws of nature are suspended. In a recent Congressional hearing, the Congressman expressed his worry that the U.S. island of Guam might tip over in the ocean. Again, you cannot make this stuff up, check the YouTube video of the hearing.
5) The Associated Press reported on July 15, 2010 that Federal prosecutions of illegal immigrants jumped to new high levels in the spring as the "Obama administration continued an aggressive enforcement strategy championed under President George W. Bush." Apparently, in our world, 4,145 cases were referred to Federal prosecutors in March and April. This was the highest number of cases for any two month stretch in the past five years. The article also reported that deportations have also climbed significantly, from 185,944 in 2007 to 387,790 in 2009. So let me get this right: the Federal government is prosecuting and deporting more illegal aliens than ever but has the chutzpah to turn around and sue the state of Arizona for trying to reign in the same large wave of illegal immigrants coming into its state from Mexico? Seems kind of contradictory, at least in our world of reason. Apparently, it makes perfectly good sense in Washington, send home illegal immigrants with one hand and slap the state of Arizona with the other hand for doing the same thing.
6) On July 13, 2010, the Associated Press reported that over 100,000 pieces of children's jewelry had to be recalled from retail shelves because the jewelry contained high levels of cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal if ingested. That's the good news. the bad news is that in the world of government safety regulation (e.g. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission), one does not learn from past mistakes. Several years ago, U.S. government safety organizations failed to realize that there were many, many children's toys being sold in this country that had high levels of lead, another substance that can cause severe damage to a child if ingested. After that recall, it turns out that the same manufacturers replaced lead with cadmium, resulting in another recall earlier this year, a recall that included millions and millions of products. One would have hope that after the lead scare, the safety organizations would have been more on alert about similar type products. No such luck. After we got through the first cadmium scare, we now have another one. In the product safety dimension, learning does not happen, disasters just repeat over and over again.
7) In the surreal world of the American political class, all Republicans are vehemently against homosexuals and Democrats are the only advocates for the gay way of life. However, in our reality, this is not the case. An Associated Press report from July 13, 2010, reported that a Republican gay rights group, Log Cabin Republicans, is suing the administration in Federal court over the refusal of the Obama administration to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" military doctrine on gays serving in the armed forces. This will set up the surreal situation where a Democratic administration will be using taxpayer funds to defend a policy, a policy it also wants to see repealed, against a group that is traditionally been painted as anti-gay. Got that, makes no sense to me either.
8) And finally, lets leave this post with some Orwellian and otherworldly snippets from President Obama. George Orwell in his novel, 1984, was very precise when he showed how by manipulating how you say things, e.g. war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc., you can make the unreal become real. In President Obama's world, getting our military out of Iraq means staying in Iraq, closing the Guantanamo Bay prison means leaving it open, not hiring lobbyists to serve in his administration means hiring lobbyists to serve in his administration, significantly reducing earmarks means increasing earmarks, being fully engaged in helping the Gulf Coast residents survive the BP oil spill means taking two vacations, playing seven rounds of golf, participating in several athletic photo ops with various teams, and taking at least two trips to California to campaign for other Democrats, and not raising taxes for anyone earning under $250,000 a year means raising the taxes for those same people's kids and grandkids by allowing unprecedented government spending and national debt increases, increases that every American, present and future, will eventually have to pay.
The sad thing is that the political class lives in their own world, a world where the pay is very good, the benefits are great, you can almost never get fired since you have rigged the election process, and you don't have to care what your constituents think and the issues they face. You also do not have to solve real problems like the war on drugs, failing public education, wide open borders, etc. even though these problems have plagued the nation for decades. That is why imposing term limits on all Federally elected politicians is becoming more and more critical, forcing them out of their worlds and other dimensions after one term, hopefully replaced by regular people that are grounded in this world and the major issues listed above. It is time to bury the rabbit hole once a fall all, stop wasting taxes and start tackling real issues and problems.
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" is now available athttp://www.loathemygovernment.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our daily dialog on freedom in American can be followed athttp://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com. Article Source: |  |
