The Silly Season Politics As Usual

The silly season for politicians really never ends it just becomes more prevalent and obvious during the election campaigns.

Both presidential candidates want to appear tough on crime even though most crime is a local or state problem that should be dealt with locally or by the states. So what to do?

Now the burning of churches is a serious matter. The burning of nursing homes, doctors offices, apartment buildings etc. don’t have the public attention at present.

So Clinton can show that he feels their pain he flies off to visit burned churches and promises the full resources of the federal government in the form of the BTAF to deal with this local problem.

So the politicians can pander for votes they make this a federal offense with double the length of the sentence but not for all these other burnings of equal seriousness.

They put the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms in charge when there is absolutely no connection between church burning and these three items or ANY evidence that this is other than a local problem.

Then we provide federal low interest loans for rebuilding of these local churches which now involves the federal government in subsidizing churches all for the sake of pandering for the Christian vote.

I feel your pain Clinton has weekly meeting with his campaign strategists to come up with the slogan of the week and attempt to preempt more Republican issues. Dole is doing the same thing but with considerable clumsiness.

Out of these sessions comes feel good earth shattering pronouncements like calling for a new emergency number to supplement 911, preachments against smoking, risqué movies and TV fair, teenage sex, uniforms for school children.

And of course the family issues basket would not be complete without coming out against the rise in illegitimacy ignoring the fact that it was Washington and it’s ill conceived welfare programs that created the problems in the first place.

Then to add to the silliness we have local people send tax money to Washington which takes it’s bureaucratic cut and send some of the money back to the localities, with strings attached, to hire local policemen. And all this so Washington politicians can demonstrate all the good things they are doing for us local boobs.

What can be sillier than to send money to Washington to spend $30,000 per head for "volunteers?" to do good things in local communities to provide less than $10,000 dollars per head for educational credits. Why not just give these "volunteers?" educational loans or grants so they can be spending productive time getting their education and paying taxes sooner, rather than wasting their time in mostly wasteful make work projects. The politicians try to put a patriotic sugar coating on this bureaucratic waste by calling it Americorps. Our politicians are corrupting our language calling paid help "volunteers", wasteful spending "investment" and quotas "affirmative action" to mention just a few of the distortions of meaning to further a political agenda.

They have been doing the same thing on hundreds of welfare programs for years. Collect local money, send it to Washington where the federal bureaucracy takes a hefty cut then send part of the money back to the local community with lots of rules and regulations attached to dispense largesse to the local poor, indolent and welfare cheats. Why not just let the states and local communities keep ALL the money and take care of their unfortunates themselves without the middle man and all the attendant waste and corruption? Oh no! The Washington politicians need this money to pass out to buy votes? This why we have welfare for the poor, the low paid, corporations, the elderly, mothers, families, farmers, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, women, students, children, cities, states and even countries like Israel that are supported by larger voter blocks. Welfare ad infinitum!

They want all our votes so they have to give us all something. They take 40 cents of every dollar and then give us some of it back to buy our vote. And what is serious is that it works!

And then they like to expound on how they are guiding the government to a balanced budget by 2002. What Barnum and Bailey showmanship. Pure hokum, hyperbole and obfuscation. They exaggerate the projected income and put most of the serious reductions in spending off till after the year 2000 safely after the next couple of elections.

And they talk of simplifying and cutting taxes at election time but then after the election increase taxes and create a 7,000 page tax code loaded with special exemptions and tax benefits for political support from hundreds of voter blocks.

When is the public going to wake up to the fact that we are being conned and the price is too high taxes and a corrupt government? Anyone that has been in Washington more than a few years is corrupted by the system. We need to get rid of all the professional pols and get back to a citizen legislature.