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As a result of listening to
recent political debates and reading all the pundits who know stuff we don’t,
you may have gotten the impression that everything in this country is, as
they claim, “broken.” Question: Is it? Answer: You
betcha! Our political system is a joke,
the shambles that is our economy is bordering on Candidates running for
president alternately believe that Paul Revere was out to warn the British,
that poor children should develop the work ethic by becoming janitors in
public schools or that numerous extra-marital affairs will definitely pave
the road to the White House. As the New York Times’ Gail Collins points out
ad nauseam, one candidate drove from Back in Congress, absolutely
nothing of importance is getting done thanks to a House of Representatives
being run by the ultra rightish tea baggers and a Senate still in control of
the Democrats. Within the Senate itself, the stated goal of the minority
party is to eschew compromise for the sake of dumping President Obama in
2012. Thanks to an absurd 60-vote
majority rule, bills dealing with jobs, budgetary balances and the future of
social mandates never see the light of day. Is it broken? You betcha! Lest you think that all this
can be solved by going to the polls and voting the rascals out, think again.
Thanks to what has become nothing short of a partisan power game, the
redistricting process has so diluted the democratic concept of competition
for office that, in many cases, you might as well stay at home on Election Day. As we’ve seen locally,
districts have been gerrymandered without regard for continuity or contiguity
in order to insure as many seats as possible for the party in charge of
redistricting. In As if that weren’t enough,
Republicans on the Board of Supervisors now want to use their final vestiges
of majority tyranny to call up a last-minute bill that would do away with
staggered terms for supes. The result of this might well be to make Icenhour
run three times to secure his seat on the board. Even more damaging is the hit
taken by the election process itself, as voters go to the polls, only to be
confronted by ballots laced with uncontested seats. It’s hard not to “vote
for one,” as the instructions request, when only one is running. Indeed, nearly 75% of the House races in Is it broken? You betcha! Well, you say, what we need is
a better educated public. And that’s fine as long as you’re not counting on
public education to do the job. Thanks to the testing mania now
rampant in the country, what we’re graduating are people who think in terms
of multiple choice. If you don’t give them a list of answers to guess from,
they’re sunk. Few read newspapers, and even
fewer are at all aware of what’s going on politically in this country. Their
knowledge of American history and political science or civics is loathsome.
You’re lucky if they know that we have three branches of government, let
alone how the Senate works. Teachers are blamed for
everything that goes wrong, and, as a result, will now be evaluated on the
basis of how many multiple choice questions their students guess correctly.
That should make them shape up. Is it broken? You betcha! So, yes, everything is broken,
and I see no indication that the fix is in anytime soon. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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