I know having an opinion about something you are not completely a part of is laughable in this day and age. On the internet, it’s very easy for me to sit here and pretend I know everything about how government works, how I think it should work, and try to convince you that I am right, even though I am not running for political office nor do I have any real influence over the process. It’s true, unwarranted self-importance is a cornerstone of the internet. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have Tumblr, which I am pretty sure runs entirely on hippie hair grease, the broken dreams of the Occupy movement, and social justice warriors. (Power Word: Privilege)
But you really don’t need to be an ace detective of internet news, a avid listener of talk radio or FOX/CNN/CNBC/etc. to know a few things about how our government should work. It’s all stuff you should have learned in elementary, middle, and high school. It’s all in every course on civics, history, and government. We have three major powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. One makes the laws, one signs the laws, and the other enforces and interprets the laws. Each have checks and balances to ensure that no one power has complete control over the others, or the overall process. Congress, specifically the House and Senate, are Legislative. President Obama is Executive. The Supreme Court is Judicial. The House creates a bill and passes it to the Senate. The Senate either ratifies the bill and sends it to the President, or rejects it and sends it back to the House. The President signs the final bill after it has passed both sides of Congress, either by mutually-accepted vote or amendments to the bill, or by majority vote in cases of non-resolution.
The President does not have direct power to create law in our government.
Again:
The President does not have direct power to create law in our government.
I shouldn’t have to write that twice, but some people seem to be under the impression that when shit goes south on Capitol Hill, President Obama is to blame. He gets blamed because we’ve hyper-focused our media and journalism around our presidents, their campaigns, their attitudes, and their reactions (or inactions) to situations. Take Hurricane Katrina for instance. You will probably hear more people blame then-President Bush than you will hear blame FEMA or anyone else related to government for the slow response. A nasty side-effect of the always-on, always-connected culture is that we now demand our President fix our nation’s problems when he is logistically incapable of doing so. He can do a few things, like Executive Orders, and some emergency powers, but for the most part, he is simply the figurehead at the podium telling you exactly what you want to hear, that the Republicans are to blame for the shutdown of government, despite the Senate rejecting the House-proposed bill, and frankly, not having passed a budget since the start of Obama’s term. A congressional budget is not the time, nor the place, for a political battle, and it is the fault of BOTH parties that government was shutdown, not solely the Republicans.
But really, it’s very less political and more practical that many are judging here. Due to the shutdown, thousands of office aides, civilian contractors, non-essential employees, and others are out of work, not being paid, and probably pretty upset that the people they work for can do this to them over a bill that is so complex and convoluted it’s amazing it passed at all. I suppose it had to be before it could be read though.
No, in the end, we’re held hostage by self-serving politicians whose first, and primary goal, is taking the money that YOU, the taxpayer obediently pay every year, and spending it on their higher-than-average salaries, lavish benefits, and random goodies as being your elected representative. Then comes paying off their corporate lobbyists, special interest groups, and political elite friends who helped them along the way. Whatever is left from that might go to social programs and projects that actually do something for the American people. If you don’t believe these people are not there to make what amounts to free money without strings attached, you are living under a rock. Everyone else in the private sector has to contend with corporations that survive on the capital generated from the products and services they sell. No, Mister President, when Apple screws up a product launch, they feel the effects in the form of negative feedback, product returns, lost revenues from software fixes and extra development time, and bad press for future products. When government screws up, CNN pats you on the back and tells you it is okay and that if you slip them a fiver they’ll convince the American public that it was John Boehner and the Republican’s fault. Your analogies continue to tell me just how clueless you are about everything outside of whatever community you were organizing in Chicago.
But I think the worst part about all of this is that I voted for this clown in 2008. Now, I don’t regret the decision, because like many mistakes we make, we make them because we expected something that did not happen. But trial-and-error, science even, demands that we at least try. I tried the Democrat party out. I didn’t necessarily buy into the hopes and dreams they sold to the largely clueless American public, but I thought that maybe something would change internally among the rank-and-file in government, enough to at least show me that people still care about what happens in this country, that we’re a proud democratic nation that works for what it obtains, and that we’re not Venezuela or other communist/socialist nations that just milk the working class dry to support those who won’t lift a finger to help. I was wrong. Politicians will always be the same. They will always put themselves first over the people. There might be a few exceptions, but there aren’t enough to convince me that politicians are nothing more than the largest organized union in the country whose goal is collective-preservation at all costs, using whatever means necessary. I voted for Gary Johnson in the last election, knowing full well my vote would not elect him president, but it was a message to our two major political parties, and that is that “I’m tired of your shit. Go home and be a family man.”
What we need, is term limits. All elected officials. No more of this career politician bullshit. It was never meant to be in the original framework, and I’m betting had our founding fathers realized this, they would have clamped down on that then. Congress should serve no more than two terms, and then be replaced with someone else. I don’t care if they find other jobs, or run for other offices, but the Barney Franks and the Chris Dodds should never be. Society changes every five years or so, government should change with it. I don’t understand why we limit our highest office, but none of our lower offices despite they having the most political power.
Another is salary and benefit limits. 170,000 is too much money for someone who has more vacation days than I do a year. These folks should never made more than 75,000 a year, or some number that is consistent with what most private-sector senior managers or similar officials make. Combined with term limits, this gives them more of an incentive to return to the private industry if they want to make more money. Public office is for serving the people, not serving yourself. Benefits should be consistent with the job performed. Health care benefits should be purchased from the same regional companies that normal businesses do. No special favors, no special perks. Travel and extra expenses should be paid out of pocket. Serving our government should be a privilege, not a right. There are many other things I am sure that should change, but I believe those would significantly change the way our government operates and make it much more transparent and accountable than President Obama would have you believe.
Again, I am not an expert. I am not probably even right sometimes. But I am a citizen of this country, a taxpayer, and a human being. I don’t think it is unreasonable for me to be upset that adults many times older than me cannot come to a compromise on something like a federal budget because they can’t stop pointing fingers at each other. We teach children to share and compromise, but that seems to go out the window the moment elected officials pursues are threatened by another. These people continue to get paid their lucrative salary while thousands of people are out of work for the duration of the shutdown, people who actually do the work. Where is the outcry? Where are the Occupy Washington protests? Where are the student protests and youth rallies? The hard fact is our government, and media, have polarized the American people to take sides in what amounts to butter bread side-up or side-down, and neither side has realized that it is a futile effort to fight one another, the only winners being the politicians continuing to make a paycheck no matter how far gone the economy or your life is.
Think about that.
Really think about that.
It doesn’t matter what party is who anymore, America has lost its greatness and that reason is apathy. No one even cares anymore, and that is sad.