If you ever want to know whether the government is honest, fair, and logical, just ask a Native American . . .

Native view of goverment foolishness

But what this Indian didn’t realize when speaking about the foolishness of the government is . .

1. They didn’t sew the blanket. They used highly classified special staples that cost $600K each.
2. They spent 1000 hours in Congressional committee to decide exactly where each staple would go.
3. The Republicans said no at first because they were holding out for special interests who wanted the blanket cut in many places to use more staples and help the corporate empire who fund their campaigns.
4. The Democrats were split with some wanting to save money by using wider staples costing $900K each but using 10% less over all.

And the secret agenda? It would all be decided on at the last minute, so the work would be done after dark, and nobody would notice nothing changed.

Technorati Tags: daylight savings time, foolishness, government, government waste, Native American

In light of all the hubbub going on with right wing protesters who cry out about big government, and government take overs, it would be good if we took a moment remembering the words of Candidate Obama about that very topic during the presidential campaign.

“It’s not whether we have big government, or we have small government. It’s whether or not we have good government. Government that works.”

Now I know we’re all fed up with government bureaucracy, and how it seems when a crisis comes up, the government builds a new department with a whole new set of requirements and regulations, and how even when the crisis passes, the government never backs down. This has created a real mess in the way the country runs, and the taxpayer has to carry the burden of all that wasted effort to keep those agencies functioning with nothing really to do.

But it seems to me, the now President Obama still holds to the concept of good government. He certainly doesn’t seem the sort to waste time, effort or money. And he definitely doesn’t give one the impression that he’s for the “set it and forget it” style of bureaucratic uselessness we’ve seen over the years.

Rather it appears his methods are designed to handle a crisis, see it through, then back off. We see this in how he’s dealt with Wall Street and various other problems. TARP funding is temporary and will not continue once the banks are recovering. The car industry got a boost from government with a bailout and the “cash for clunkers” program, but now they’re relatively on their own.

Regulations need to be put in place to prevent the same problems from occurring again, but this is not “government take over.” It’s government working for the best interests of the people so the people aren’t faced with the same hardships in the future we face now. It’s government protecting the “common wealth” so we can all prosper.

In essence, it’s government doing the job government is suppose to do. To me, that’s good government.

Technorati Tags: bureaucracy, government, government take over, Obama

With all this talk about how the current administration is taking the nation closer to socialism, I got to thinking about the Magna Carta. In it, it states that a significant purpose of government was to protect and defend the common wealth. And as our government is modeled to some extent after that Magna Carta (which is why states refer to themselves as “The Commonwealth of . . .,” it would seem reasonable that a valid government worth its weight should do everything in its power to assure the citizenry of a stable economy.

Perhaps we’re just not used to an administration that actually includes the “common people” as having a vested interest in the “common wealth” of the nation, but I can see the changes President Obama is implementing as an attempt to bring us non-corporate types back into the playing field.

After all, if a nation is prosperous, then the people should at least feel the prosperity. But for too long the “common folk” have been used by the free market corporations like maple syrup producers use a siphon to sap a tree of its riches. The difference is, the syrup producers know they should leave some sap in the tree.

“Common” means everybody, and not just those who have been afforded with enough deregulation to raise prices at will, or wager on future supply and demand until all the money is siphoned out.

There is no endgame in all of this, nor can there be winners as things stand now. When the maple trees run out of sap, they die. When the trees die, the producers go hungry. Someone needs to tell the corporates that you can’t keep a tree healthy by siphoning out all its sap on one hand, and building fancy furniture with it on the other.

We are people, not resources for the corporate machine. Prosperity shouldn’t hurt, and the commonwealth should be just that . . . common.

Technorati Tags: common wealth, commonwealth, government, Magna Carta, Obama, prosperity, socialism