Another New Year.
Should I have used an exclamation point? Shouted out the calendrical truth?
When each new year brings the same old nonsense, an exclamation point seems a bit like overkill. British novelist E.M. Forster famously said that democracy was worth “two cheers, not three.” Does a new year deserve at best half an exclamation?
After all, there will be many repetitions in 2013 of what we saw in 2012.
Incumbent politicians will just “happen” to throw up hurdles, making initiative measures harder to put on the ballot as well as more difficult to pass. They will also continue to support “campaign finance” regulations that will “just happen” to make incumbents more likely to get re-elected.
And of course they will continue to heap scorn on, and oppose any way they can, term limits.
Further, their tendency to avoid properly dealing with unsustainable government worker pension programs set to unravel in too many states and localities, will still continue, up until (and past?) the last possible moment for reform.
Similarly, the national debt will grow. Politicians will still get away with calling slight reductions in expected spending increases “spending cuts,” even when spending continues to soar.
But hey: at some point the politic avoidance of responsibility will evaporate when the economy these fools are driving hits the proverbial wall.
Before that happens, it sure would be to our advantage to take over our own government, wresting power away from politicians and creating real measures of accountability. We’ll need democratic tools like initiative and referendum.
Three cheers for citizens who take the initiative . . . and a few unashamed exclamation points!!
This is Common Sense! I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “It’s a New Democracy!”
The entertaining thought is as to whether, after the politicians have run the economy in to the ground with their policies, and done nothing to address the problem of bureaucrats who have promised public servants like firefighters and policemen a well-deserved but unfunded pension, whether those same national level politicians will be allowed to keep their own ill-gotten gains and retirements.
Not saying we need a Jocobin-style separation, but it is realistic to think that they should not be lolling in the lap of luxury to which they have become accustomed, but instead might be welcoming folks to Walmart, like they have consigned many of their constituents to do in the economic structure that they have created.
“Three cheers for citizens who take the initiative . . . and a few unashamed exclamation points!!” Three cheers and EVEN BREAK OUT IN CAPS for citizens who defeat local public transportation projects no one wants!! (:
Connect-talk-act-get the tools of freedom. GAs in all wards would be a good beginning.