“Can We Please Be Quiet, Please?”

[This is another version of the item previously posted on 12 June 2010]

I Wonder What America Might Look Like, if we elected our officials and then stood back and let them work. And then when election time came around, we listened to what they had to say for themselves, and we looked at what we could see of what they had actually done, and we voted accordingly.

Instead, We Stand Around Everywhere, constantly getting in their business, constantly speaking out our opinions as if  all of our opinions (based on our limited perspectives on each issue) could possibly be as sound as the professionally informed positions of those whom we have elected precisely for this purpose.

If Every Single Moment of an Official’s Life represents a photo op and an assessment moment, is it any wonder that our politicians spend more of their time posing for the cameras, and preparing their defense statements, instead of actually doing the jobs that we have elected them to do?

No Wonder Our America and its government can get so little done. Call it the persistent moment of:
 

 “Smile! Say, ‘Cheese!’”

How Terribly, Badly, Awfully can the Bush administration and the Obama administration and next administrations all do in tackling the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Gulf oil spew, the unemployment figures, the financial re-regulation, climate-control issues, etc.?

Compared to Our Under-informed Opinions from the sidelines, I mean.

With So Many Different Opinions of Our Own, how can we all possibly be so right, and all of our politicians be so wrong?

Maybe It’s Time We Took a Few Steps Back, sat down, shut up and watched the show. Instead of a few days of a news event before we start all the shouting, how about if we actually gave our government a chance to work?

How about Encouraging Government to provide some solutions, instead of always yelling at government for all the problems?

If I Were a Writer of Fiction, I might call this a novel concept.

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!

Let’s Stop Saying “Cheese!” to Politicians:

Does Anybody Else Remember a time when Americans elected Representatives and Senators to go to Washington, study the way the Nation works, and then hammer out the best solutions for moving America forward?

Now We Citizens Are All Experts. And if the people in Washington can’t fix things now, or even quicker than we can think up new bright ideas about it, we’re ready to throw the bums out, and vote in a new set of bums......who will have the same lack of success as the last bunch.

Our System of Representative Democracy was designed to slow down the process and give Congress and the President room in which to work. But that’s not good enough for us. No, we all know better. And we know that all of the information we get from MSNBC and FoxNews and all the blogs is better information than what the so-called “experts” we send to Washington can possibly know.

No Wonder America Wanders around in circles, with a Left or Right foot nailed to the floor, while we ship our jobs and our capital overseas, our incomes plummet, our coastlines are ruined, and noone can afford the health care that will be denied when we need it, anyway.

Go Ahead: Complain about the President and Congress. Sure, you can do better. So can all the folks lining up in the Tea Party and the Coffee Party, to get elected and to do better. Yeah, Sarah Palin! Yeah, Scott Brown! Yeah, Alvin Greene!

It’s Easy to See Why Government 
Doesn’t Seem to Work for Us Anymore:

If We Want Our Government to actually get things done—instead of always playing to the nearest camera—we, the people, need to quit hollering “Cheese!” so much, and let the best politicians we have do the best work for us that they can do.

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!

BP Does Not Deserve to Die....

.....Merely for Playing by the Rules of Misguided America’s “Free-Market Capitalism”

Not “Greed,” but America’s Deluded Misunderstanding of “free-market Capitalism” is the culprit in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: in the rest of the developed world, oil companies are required to drill the auxiliary well with the primary one, before pumping begins. Thus, this disaster, if it occurred in the North Sea, could be shut down immediately.

But Our Ideological View of Capitalism says that the oil companies are the best stewards of their interests, and thus can be trusted to avoid these disasters.

The Flaw in That Argument is the “Hockey Helmet Conundrum”: If Shell and ConocoPhillips do not bear the cost of auxiliary wells—and the regulators do not require it—then BP can not bear the cost and remain competitive with the others.

Capitalism Is the Friend of our system of government and economics. But the misguided, misapplication of some of its tenets is the folly destroying our economy:

The Purpose of Regulation is not to inhibit or to punish individual competitors. It serves to level the competitive playing field, while protecting the assets of all.

And That (In the Nutshell) is the short answer on how the anti-capitalist illiteracy of the Left, and the ignorant-capitalist ideology of the Right, are bit by bit shipping the abundance of American capital overseas.

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!