Oh, where to start. As we go to print, we are literally weeks away from the elections, and my pea brain is ready to explode. Once again, the campaign is in the gutter, and the airwaves and media outlets love the revenue irrespective of the content, which, in my opinion, makes them more than just a part of the problem.
The all-knowing Congress passed campaign spending control legislation, and although it helped somewhat, I’m not sure it didn’t make the process worse. The advertising by the PACs, supposedly independent of the candidates, just makes it easier to spread untruths and lies as the candidates deny responsibility while, at the same time, relishing in the ill-gotten gains. A case in point is the much-viewed former steelworker ad that inferred that Mitt Romney was responsible for his wife not having health insurance and her eventual death. Fact checks proved his wife had her own health insurance when his company closed and, in fact, she died six years later, but the timeline was intentionally hidden, as were the facts.
Is this what our society has evolved into? Can truthfulness ever again be what gets a candidate elected, or are we destined to disregard the character and morals of our elected officials even before they get into office? Do politicians, their aides, advisers, et al consider the total population as ignorant or only those of the other party? You know where that probably puts you and me.
Then, I find that I cannot dismiss or ignore our present leader’s comment, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen. You didn’t get there on your own.” This from a man who was off the teleprompter and talking from his heart, who was never involved in a business, never had to make a payroll or pay taxes at all costs and make those never-ending, gut-wrenching decisions that make businesspeople successful.
Personally, I can’t remember when an utterance from a politician has offended me more. It is an incredible injustice to the hundreds of thousands of people not only today, but also historically, who have built businesses from scratch irrespective of any infrastructure, with little money, countless hours of work, tremendous personal sacrifices, incredible determination and, above all, a dream. The only thing government gave them was one hurdle after another in the form of rules, regulations and taxes. But they succeeded, nonetheless, because of their fortitude, and today we have the greatest society and economy on the face of the earth.
Unfortunately, that success has also allowed government programs, entitlements and the national debt to expand to the point that they are a giant dead weight around the neck of every citizen. I pray that it will not end with the insurmountable problems of Spain, Portugal and Greece, but moves by Executive Order that suspend the requirement that welfare recipients be working or in training to receive aid, or the loading of the National Labor
Relations Board with pro-union members, scares me to death. I understand there is a need for such edicts by the chief executive, but such obvious pandering seems unconscionable to me.
And then there’s the continuing problem with unemployment and the economy. Admittedly, I’m intellectually deficient, but I just don’t understand the difference between being out of work and
being unemployed. If you are out of work, you are unemployed, but government doesn’t count out-of-work people as unemployed since they are not looking for work, and it would be unfair to the
unemployed if they did. No one knows if the unemployed even care. Nevertheless, the number is 8.2 percent unemployed and 16 percent out of work. So the easiest way to bring down unemployment would be to either increase the number of people who get jobs or stop people from looking for jobs. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? If so, you could be a politician.
The bottom line is that we have a choice come November 6. Remember: “Bad politicians are sent
to Washington by good people who don’t vote.” –William E. Simon
Ciao baby,
Don Frendberg