New York State Government Political Insanity

Just a short post today but a great example of the political class not having their priorities right. This case is AT the state political class level, specifically the New York state legislature. Keep in mind that the New York state unemployment rate has almost doubled in less than two years, going from 4.9% in March, 2008 to 9.3% in February, 2010. Also keep in mind that the state government in New York has faced and continues to face massive budget shortfalls the past two years, requiring hard budget decisions to be made to keep the state budget balanced.

Given that background, consider the cause that state Senator Eric Adams has undertaken. He is upset that some people wear their pants so low that you can see their underwear. He has taken $2,000 from his campaign fund and used it to erect to billboards that trumpet his "Stop The Sag" campaign to get people to pull up their pants. While he does not plan to introduce formal legislation that would make low pants wearing illegal, he does want to educate people so that they will realize that it sets a low self image of themselves and offends other people. He has taken the time, and probably some time and resources of his staff, to produce a YouTube video to get his message out: "You can raise your level of respect if you raise your pants."

As with the Federal wing of the political class, this bit of insanity fully illustrates that politicians today are either:

• unaware of what the truly important problems are
• unable to fix the truly important problems so they fixate on trivial issues
• both of the above

Come on, in this time of fellow citizens groping for jobs and the state groping to survive financially, this cannot be the best use of the Senator's time and resources. None of his efforts in this area will improve the lives of more than a tiny, tiny handful of citizens. In a top fifty list of what voters want to get done, do we really think that low hanging pants would 1) even make the list and 2) if it made the list would it break the top 40. Would not the $2,000 have been better spent providing some new books to stressed out schools, providing food to a food bank for the unemployed, providing job skills training, etc.

Same goes on at the national level. The Federal deficit is exploding, public schools are failing, the war on drugs has been lost, we are fighting two wars overseas, Social Security and Medicare are going bankrupt, etc. and what are our DC politicians working on? One Congresswoman has her staff working on legislation to moderate the sound of TV commercials. The Senate debated the merits of forcing a different football playoff system for Division One football. Another Congressman and his staff are working on legislation that would ban erectile dysfunction commercials on TV. The ship of state is sinking and politicians at all levels are scrambling to rearrange the deck chairs. My only hope is that some politicians in the House of Representatives or Senate does not get wind of the the New York Senator is doing or we could get saddled with a national pull your pants up legislative effort.



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