“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” — James Madison
“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” — Grover Norquist
ACHTUNG: This is not a fair and balanced story. It is an editorial by the editor.
I’ve been saying for a long time that two most important purposes of government are to solve problems and be a fair referee. Many find this amusing because government these days doesn’t do either.
And there’s a reason. Government has been hijacked, not by Donald Trump, not even by Ronald Reagan, but many years ago by money. Over these years, we have passively sat idle while the rich, corporate and business interests have bought and paid for our government leaders at the state and federal levels.
When real government becomes weak and beholden, the power goes to those who have vast quantities of money while the majority of people are everyday working stiffs who struggle to get by, live paycheck to paycheck. And too many common folks are too busy or too intellectually lazy to pay attention and figure who’s been zooming them.
Because of the immense power of marketing and advertising, the rich and powerful keep things the way they are. As comedian George Carlin told us, they spend their money to get what they want. They have become our owners.
The first quote at the beginning of this editorial was from former President James Madison, who earned the nickname, “The Father of our Constitution” because he wrote much of it. He maintained that if we all were good, moral people, we wouldn’t need government to solve problems and be a fair referee.
But we should know by now there are many who don’t feel they have enough and want more, and they’ll pay our politicians to get what want. And they’ll get it because, as Bob Dylan once said, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
Our political system, as broadcaster Bill Moyers has asserted, has become legalized bribery. We do not live in a democracy nor a republic, we live in a plutocracy, government by the rich and for the rich, or an oligarchy, or government by the powerful few.
And our political representatives? As Carlin said, they’re put there to give us the illusion that we have representative government of the people, by the people and for the people. The game is rigged, and we collectively are lazy or dumb enough to keep electing these same bozos, who do nothing to solve our problems, but everything to serve their rich corporate masters and funders. They do a lot of it through fear mongering and exploiting our weaknesses.
It’s taken a long time, more than 200 years, but what our Founding Fathers did with the constitution and the Bill Of Rights essentially has been undone, despite peoples’ movements on behalf of civil rights in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Please note these movements were not led by politicians.
Ronald Reagan was a master at channeling peoples’ anger toward government failures and championing the private sector as having the solutions to our problems.
Now comes the budget proposed by President Donald Trump that includes massive increases for defense and the military-industrial complex (take that, President Eisenhouwer!) and massive cuts to such “unnecessary” items such as the arts, Meals on Wheels, education, the environment (including this nation’s largest source of fresh water, the Great Lakes), health care and free school lunches for needy children.
Trump and his allies seem to believe it’s government’s role to kill our enemies, feed the war machine more than feed our children or try to keep them healthy.
The second quote above this piece is from a couple of decades ago by Republican Party operative Grover Norquist, who extended the Reagan Doctrine and now has helped fuel the latest cynical attack on solving problems and being a fair referee.
I’ve been depressed personally since the election of Donald Trump and the re-election of most of the same old gang in Washington and Lansing. What I’ve seen of our political system in my lifetime is entropic, the gradual decline into disorder.
There is no need to wonder why we have a modern American society with the largest disparity between rich and poor in our history. What will be its costs?
Agreed with the first half of the editorial. The second half predisposes that the federal government should be the answer to all problems. The federal government is the least effective level of government and has the most overhead. The federals eat up almost 25% in overhead; the states, counties and locals much less.
The social programs you mentioned can be accomplished at state and local levels cheaper and more efficiently. It is a false premise to say that if a program is not accomplished at the federal level, it cannot be done. Not just the bureaucrats in Washington can feed hungry children or old folks; it can be done better and cheaper at the lower levels. Give less funding to the governments in Dorr, Wayland Hopkins and Martin than the feds spend, and they will do a better job of feeding the needy.
Please remember that for every dollar we send to the federal bureaucrats, they eat up nearly a quarter of it in overhead. Even if they “share” a dollar with the states or local governments only three quarters of it are left. Tossing dollars at a problem is not always the answer. Always consider government works best at the lowest level unless the goal is cradle to grave (even beyond the grave, taxing the dead) government control of our lives.
Senator James F. Byrnes, stated on the floor of the Senate in 1933: “The nearest earthly approach to immortality is a bureau of the federal government.”
The new Republican budget includes huge tax breaks for the richest Americans.
So are you saying there should be huge tax breaks for those that pay no taxes instead of the “rich”?
The “rich” to a Democrat is anyone making more than them. The government steals more than 1/2 of what I earn in federal, state, local taxes every year and it still isn’t enough for the them. That’s how the government works – punish the producers and give to the “poor”. Well, I’m sick and tired of the poor sucking off the largess of government and not getting off their rear ends and earning for themselves. The government makes it too easy for them to remain on Uncle Sam’s gravy train. The train is about to come to a halt. Then what?
Time to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee and get to work. Then you can get your pay stolen from you – join the club.
The rich in this case are those earning over $250,000.00 per year, also referred to as the top 1%. That’s the rich I was referring too. I’ve done well in our capitalist economy, as Army Bob suggested in a recent jab at me because I went to Bonaire and stayed in a nice condo for four weeks. I’m a Democrat. I worked for what I have, and didn’t get my million from Daddy “to get me started”, as our President did. If I release my taxes, you would see I paid at the top one year. I suppose I will hereby pledge to release my taxes “when I decided to run for office”, as Donald Trump said he would. If I do make that promise, I will keep it. I invested, early, and well. Times were tight for quite a few years, but now I’m reaping what I sowed. By the way, Trump likes to Trumpet tariffs: does that strike you as a good idea, Free Market Man?
Mr. Basura, you are wrong again. The rich to a Democrat is anyone earning more than them. They are the most jealous of those that actually work and earn in the private sector, not the public. The most recent declaration of most Democrats in federal government is anyone earning over $125,000 is rich. To anyone in New York or San Francisco, that’s called minimum wage.