What Do People Expect From Their Government?

It’s not always the same. Take Indonesians, for example, since the latest tsunami may be on our minds, as the death toll rises to 420 and keeps on going. (Bad enough, but minor compared to the huge one in 2004 that killed 230,000 people there.) Since the ‘04 tsunami, the government had promised its people a more extensive and better system for detecting such waves, and the events that cause them. But in more detailed news reports over the weekend it came out that the new system, installed by 2012, was NOT working, and no alarm sounded. Why???  One official blamed “vandalism and budget shortfalls.”

 

So the government of Indonesia, (one of the most earthquake, volcano, and tsunami-prone places on earth,) played fast & loose with its peoples' lives, placing a higher priority on who-knows-what over lives and safety of the people it was sworn to help and defend.

 

(In Kentucky, as elsewhere, “budget shortfalls” - debts and deficits in reality - are the excuses given for just about everything that doesn’t get done, including small items like retirement funding, contractual promises made state workers, who do so much for the rest of us.)

 

What do the American people expect from our government?

 

A lot more than national defense (not the same thing as so-called border security)---mail delivered daily, roads maintained, faulty medicines and food kept off the market, debts (such as Social Security and Medicare) paid on time, after all WE paid into those plans in a contract with our government to get it back later, veterans taken care of properly (I won’t even deign to go into this promise which has been so badly kept for years,) but just the same, we citizens have done our part (or we were fined and jailed), now our government MUST (ethically and legally) do the same.

 

There is NO excuse for ANY reason, at ANY time, for any PERSON or PARTY to shut down our government.

 

(And, BTW, all those “continuing resolution” stopgap measures, temporary funding bills need to remind us that Congress itself used to pass a budget by July 1st., (and when it found it could not,) kicked the can down the road to a new deadline of October 1st., (and for the last few years, found out it can’t do that either.)  Let’s remember these things when the next election comes ‘round.

 

In the meantime: There is NO excuse for ANY reason, at ANY time, for any PERSON OR PARTY, to shut down our government.

 

I'm just sayin'...