I’ve made no secret of the fact that just last September marked the 40th year I’ve worked for the United States Government, first as a GI in Europe, then as civilian employee at FDA, under the Department of Health and Human Services. I’ve worked with people as diverse as Vietnam Vets, entomologists, lawyers, contract specialists (who spend millions of your tax dollars), real estate specialists, IT personnel with a huge diversity of specialities, drug manufacturing inspectors, retired military personnel of several different services, and people with many other talents. Some of them were functionaries who worked at the same drudgery day after day and complained constantly - others were some of the smartest people I’ve ever known. Almost all of them, complainers or not, showed up regularly, worked to the best of their ability and many of them could have quit Federal Service and gone to work outside of government service for more money than they made inside. Some of them a considerable amount more. The one thing they all pretty much had in common was a willingness to work in service to the United States and its people with the understanding and the knowledge that their work made a difference.
I know of very few who could point to a Federal salary which led to wealth and fame. It just doesn’t work that way.
I’ve never seen any evidence that any of us were involved in a conspiracy to take your guns, infect huge numbers of Americans with deadly diseases or detain millions of you in concentration camps. All I’ve seen is normal Americans engaged in careers that benefited the US and her people tremendously.
Yet, there is a persistent group of people whose purpose in their political lives is to convince as many of you as possible that your government is engaged in a large number of nefarious plots and conspiracies to kill, imprison, enslave, and generally wreak havoc on, in particular, white Americans. Their plot revolves around another point, contradictory to the first, that the very same government is so inept and clumsy that it cannot perform the simplest of basic governmental functions without completely making hash of the effort.
The right wing would have you think that the situation is so dire the only way to solve the problem is to make the government as small as possible so it can be conveniently drowned in a nearby bathtub. Without water, preferably, so as to make the entire operation as cheap as can be.
As the Right Wing Saint Ronnie put it, “The government isn’t the solution to the problem, the government IS the problem!”
Bullshit. That’s just plain, unadulterated bullshit. Pure, unrefined and complete.
We do not live in a country which is governed by the military. The Supreme Leader of this country doesn’t exist. There is no “Feuhrer” and no “Dear Leader”. The government of this land is controlled, as described by the preamble of the document that establishes the framework of our government, by We, the People. It is, as established and empowered by that document, a Representative Democracy, or as otherwise described, a Republic.
The Representatives, as elected by Us, are empowered by our collective Voice. Their power and ability to act is only delegated to them through the collective actions of The People through regularly held elections. The Government is headed, in the Executive Branch, by a President, elected by the People every four years, and has the power to sign legislation into Law after it is duly passed by both the House and Senate.
This is the part of the government which is guided and informed by The People - or a majority of them. That’s where the democracy comes in. Popularly known as government By Majority.
But, the Founders knew that Power corrupts. They knew that a majority could be convinced that the Constitution was wrong and needed to be circumvented, because, well, GOD! Theocracy in Europe has a long history (in fact, throughout world history, not just Europe). Many of them had personally experienced what that meant, and the recent history of religious war in Europe was well known to all of them.
Few of them wanted that repeated here!
So, they came up with a third Branch of government, and tasked it with the crucial job of protecting both the Constitution and the minority of people who disagreed with the Majority! The judiciary has the power to nullify laws (otherwise duly passed and signed in a procedurally correct manner) which are not allowed under the Constitution. So, even if the Majority hates some ethnic group and wants to discriminate against them legally, the courts have the ability to nullify those laws based on the Constitution’s Equal Protection clauses. If the majority wants to give a particular religious group some advantage under the law, those laws too, can be nullified under the auspices of the First Amendment.
That is NOT judicial activism. That is NOT judicial “legislation”. That’s the courts doing their fucking job.
Look, the preamble of the Constitution says very clearly that the government is established by We, the People to “…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”.
It is that General Welfare clause that encompasses much of the government’s power. The Supreme Court has interpreted that clause very generously, and the fact is, that interpretation has actually worked out pretty well.
There is a reason that people have, for over two hundred years, virtually broken down the gates getting in here, and lots of them still experience tremendous hardships to do that, legally or not, in order to experience those “Blessings of Liberty”. The reason is that our government provides for us pretty well compared to others around the world. We enjoy a peaceful existence and a freedom from violence that many other countries envy tremendously.
Our frontier traditions have instilled in us the urge to care for those whom misfortune has struck, and as the country has grown in population, we have decided that the most effective way to pool our efforts is through the government.
That is an advantage over private charity, and there is one reason why.
Control.
We cannot control, as a society, the uses private charities put our money to. There are some legal restraints, yes, but by and large, private charities can legally put that money to whatever use they please. Much of the time, what pleases them is to enrich themselves.
But when we give that money to the government and establish programs to distribute it or use it for caring for people who have specific problems, that money WILL be spent for that purpose. There is, legally, no choice. If at some point, we decide to repurpose that effort, through Congress and the President, that gets done just the way we want.
Control. If the government is doing it, EVERYBODY gets a say in how that money is spent.
If private charity is doing it, who knows where it will go? Only the people who run that charity have the authority to make that decision.
Which is why the Right Wing wants you to give to private charity. Because the rich folks run them, and get rich doing that, and the Right Wing gets to decide much of where it goes, and to whom it goes. A lot of that is based on religious charities.
They do not have the control and cannot benefit from that money if it is funneled through government programs.
So, you get the Right Wing meme that government is corrupt (which they have proven by joining it and corrupting it), inept (which they have proven by joining it and MAKING it inept), and cannot solve the country’s problems (which they have proven by joining it and making sure it cannot solve those problems.
Fuck these people and their false values! Their every effort is to convince you and the rest of America that private enterprise is more effective than government, and that American Values are somehow based on GOD.
Both ideas are wrong, bankrupt and just plain unAmerican.
Vote Blue! Vote Democratic this November! Throw the bums out and lets take our government back!
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