Another Day, Another Five Political Class Disappointments

Today's post is a hodge podge of recent events whose only commonality is the continued disappointments that the political class creates for the American citizen and taxpayer. With all of the major issues facing the country today, our politicians continually come up short in solving those issues, usually getting themselves hung up on petty issues or their own vanity and ego:

1. The biggest disappointment comes from a USA Today article written by Fredreka Schouten that appeared in the August 16, 2919 issue of USA Today. Ms. Schouten reviewed the current state of ethics in the United States Congress this year. Besides the high profile cases of Charles Rangel (possibly going on trial in the House this fall based on over a dozen charges) and Maxine Walters, so far this year an independent Congressional watchdog, the Office of Congressional Ethics, has begun 44 ethics inquiries, up from just 24 through the same time last year, an 83% increase. From these 44 cases, the Office Of Congressional Ethics has recommended that 13 cases of ethics violations be taken forward to the House ethics committee. Speaker Of The House, Nancy Pelosi takes the increased investigations as a good sign which indicates, in her mind, that the process is now catching more ethics violators. The disappointment on my part is that there are so many cases to begin with (44 investigations are over 10% of the House membership) and I am not as thrilled as Ms. Pelosi is: while we may be catching more violators now, the bigger success story would be that there were no ethics violators to begin with.
2. Speaking of Ms. Pelosi, a few days ago she decided to weigh in on the potential of building a Muslim mosque very close to the World Trade Center location. Most reputable opinion polls show that by more than a two to one ratio, the majority of Americans oppose the building of the mosque so close to Ground Zero and would prefer that it be moved further away, if only a few blocks. Rather than celebrate Americans' freedom of speech in this matter, Pelosi actually called for a government investigation of those opposed to the current mosque location. This is consistent with her previous rant where she accused those citizens having honest and legitimate opposing views against Obama Care of being being un-American. How disappointing that a leading political figure in this country does not respect the rights of Americans to have differing views, actually threatening to call in the full weight of the Federal government to question those that might differ from her opinion.
3. An article by Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune was summarized in the August 20, 2010 issue of The Week magazine. Mr. Chapman wrote about the amount of waste that the political class has squandered in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: 1) we as a nation just went over the TRILLION dollar mark as far as cost to the American taxpayer, 2) this is just the cash flow we have spent, it does not include the interest on the amount of borrowed money we used to finance these two wars and the amount of veteran and medical costs we will incur for decades to come and 3) does not include the 34,000 plus members of our armed forces that have been killed or wounded in both countries. The article quotes numbers from a study from scholars Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes that estimates the total cost of the wars will eventually reach $8 TRILLION. What a disappointment that our leaders can waste so much money and lives for outcomes that are still in doubt and which will never pay back the actual cost.
4. Two articles in that same issue of The Week magazine discussed the vacation that Michelle Obama recently took to Spain with her daughters and some of her daughter's friends. Kirsten Powers from the New York Post summed up my disappointment with the trip when she wrote that it was ill advised, given the dire economic straits many regular American find themselves in. With unemployment high, savings low, job security tenuous, the first lady took herself to a foreign country where, according to Ms. Powers, "are images of Michelle swanning around the Costa del Sol in her one shouldered- Jean Paul Gaultier top." Now, the first family has every right to take a vacation, including their current one in Martha's Vineyard in New England. but would not it have been better if the first lady had "swanned" down in the Gulf Of Mexico area and brought some much needed attention and good publicity to that ravaged area? Consider a view from the second article in that issue of The Week where an editorial in the newspaper El Mundo wrote "what a boost to Spain's tourism industry" her visit to Spain was. El Munod writes that Ms. Obama visited numerous cultural sites besides meeting with the royal family of Spain. How disappointing that the vacation could not have helped her fellow Americans, not the Spanish tourism industry.
5. And finally, a small disappointment but one that is symbolic of how we have allowed the government to get so large that its millions of rules and regulations have taken us over the edge of sanity in many areas. Not to be outdone by the Oregon public health official who shut down a seven year old's lemonade stand for not having a restaurant permit, the Federal government is ordering a North Carolina county to spend $1.1 million to bring its new courthouse in line with the American With Disabilities Act. Apparently, an inspector found that the bathroom mirrors are one inch too high and that the toilet bowls are 18 inches from the wall, not the required 19 inches. Now, I am a full supporter of the ADA, all Americans should have the same access and rights. But come on, the county had received no complaints about the one inch discrepancies and could they not have been allowed to retrofit just some of the mirrors and toilets to save some money? Would not that $1.1 million been better spent on education, reducing a state budget deficit, fixing a highway, etc.? As a country, I am disappointed that we continue to waste limited taxpayer money on non-essential projects, whether it is a one inch discrepancy or a multi million earmark.

There it is, unrelated, diverse events that result in a unified feeling of disappointment with the American political class. We cannot survive much longer as long as our politicians are willing to waste our money, deny us our right to have a differing opinion, and continue to act like the elitists that they thin they are. That is why November is so important, let's find a way to dump the incumbents and end the string of disappointments that they all seem to incur.

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http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/