Our government: Stuck on Stupid!
By Doug Hagin (05/11/06)
Imagine for a moment that you had to get a new roof on your home. You would, unless you owned a roofing company, call a one to repair your roof. Now imagine that the company you ended up hiring left the job halfway finished. Imagine that upon halfway completing what they were hired to do, the roofing company proceeded to charge you more than the price they originally quoted you. What would you, Mr. Average American do?
Well, after a considerable amount of swearing, you would likely refuse to pay, maybe demand the company do the job they agreed to do, and if they refused, you would threaten to sue them. You would likely then hire another company to do the work you needed. You would, in other words, change your approach to fixing your roof.
What if, instead of altering your strategy, you just went ahead and paid the roofing company? Despite the fact that they had not done what they promised to do, and were paid to do, you just pulled out your checkbook and paid whatever they demanded. What would happen then?
Well, your wife would call you an idiot and start looking for a divorce attorney, your kids would refuse to admit they knew you, your neighbors would laugh at you, your in-laws would shake their heads in disgust and your dog would probably bite you! In addition, guess what? You would deserve such treatment, for being an idiot!
Now the point is this, if you, the average American would never stand for such inanity from any company, why do we average Americans stand for the same treatment from our government.
Think of it. Our government hears our outrage over rising gas prices, and tells us they are going to do something about it! “Good!!” We Americans exclaim, yet our government, having promised us a job well done, does nothing that will actually alleviate high gas prices.
Do they cut the federal and state taxes, which add tremendously to what we pay at the pump? No! Do they immediately allow drilling in Alaska, and off both US coasts? NO! Do they ease some useless restrictions and open more refineries? No! In fact, all they do is point their fingers and try to pass the blame to greedy big oil companies. They talk about price controls, windfall profits taxes, or laws that would force the oil companies to invest in exploring alternative energy sources.
In other words, they only seriously consider actions that will not only not reduce gas prices, but will increase them! Why do we put up with this incompetence? Well, truth is, many of us are too willing to look away from economic reality, and just blame those greedy oil companies for raising their gas prices. Never mind that the oil companies do not set the price of a barrel of oil. It is easier to just blame oil companies instead of expecting our government to cut gas taxes and drill for the damned oil we have in our own country!
What of our failing education system? How long have politicians promised more money, more funding, more tax dollars, more of OUR money, to help improve the public education system? How many times have they increased funding? How much of OUR money have they thrown at the problems? Is the problem any better? NO! So why do we continue to re-elect the morons who obviously cannot fix the problems? If more money were the solution, the problems would have been fixed long ago.
How about border security? We Americans are just about fed up with our lax birder security and our government’s abject refusal to get serious about enforcing our laws. Yet, what solutions are our government talking about to “fix the border problem”? All types of different guest worker programs are being talked up. Some of them make some sense, some of them are nothing more than amnesty, but it is a given that any of them, without serious enforcement, will never ever work!
Here we go again, we are listening to our government present us with this new law and that new law. All of these new laws are going to be meaningless if the same level of non-enforcement accompanies them, which accompany our current laws. Again, if that roofing company, which never fixed your roof to begin with, offered you a new roof would you trust them. Of course not! So why do expect the same government that refuses to enforce today’s border and immigration laws to enforce new ones?
It does not take too many brain cells to figure out that increased enforcement will help secure our border more effectively. Build a wall, hire more border patrol agents, stop the insane practice of catch and release, tell Mexico’s corrupt government to do their part and work to make their country better instead of encouraging their people to come here illegally, and enforce the laws on the books! Meanwhile, if we can improve our laws fine, but laws without enforcement have never and will never work!
So what can we average Americans do? Well look, we have a power above that of our political leaders. They work for US! We vote them into office, and trust me they are very sensitive to not being re-elected. So, write, e-mail, telephone, text message, send smoke signals, do whatever you have to do to impress upon our representatives that we are not expecting them to start getting it right, we are demanding that they start getting it right!
America’s borders are porous, our education system is well below where it should be, and we are not even trying to use OUR resources to fix our energy issues! If our representatives cannot, or will not get it right, then it is our job to get new representatives that will. If we do not then we deserve to have our children pretend they do not know us and for our dogs to bite us!
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