WHY THOSE WHO GOVERN US MUST BE REPLACED: Calloused & Abrasive Insensitivity To The Needs Of The People

FEMA in its continuing saga of inactions, mistakes, and total ineptness now adds one more blunder to its legacy. It started in the hours preceding Katrina when everyone involved underestimated what was about to happen, grew as countless hours passed in the hurricane’s wake while FEMA seemingly did nothing, and it was compounded when, after the disaster finally ticked off enough Americans that government was forced to act, FEMA herded victims into temporary housing…trailers filled with formaldehyde. Three years down the road and FEMA, under fire for the formaldehyde, is now telling remaining residents to get out. Many are otherwise homeless and destitute, but FEMA says that’s not their problem and no assistance is in the offing. Oh, and by the way, FEMA perpetrated one more calloused and malignant deed: it offered its vacant, formaldehyde-filled trailers to America’s Indian Tribes…”for free, just come and get them. Many are brand new and never occupied.”

There are approximately 600,000 to 750,000 homeless people in the United States. For the most part, the people are not productive members of society; they need health and mental care, clothing, basic job skills, food, and other forms of assistance. Yet, our government virtually ignores the issue and leaves it up to religious and charitable organizations to address this blemish on our society. Yet, in the same breath, our government does not hesitate to castigate other countries that face the same problems; we even send them money and aid to help them, while leaving our own to suffer the myriad of physical risks associated with “living on the streets.”

Almost 3,000,000 Native Americans live in the United States. From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans was ravaged by European colonization. The government offered as much as $200 for an Indian scalp. Many hundreds were literally rounded up and shot. Epidemic diseases such as small pox were brought from abroad and wiped out thousands. Trapping for furs destroyed Native American hunting grounds. Countless Indians ended up being enslaved while the rest were herded onto desolate reservations and left to fend for themselves. Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, termination policies of the 1950s and 1960s have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and physical health. Contemporary health problems suffered disproportionately include alcoholism, drug addiction, heart disease, diabetes, and suicide. The government insists that Indians give up their languages and, in the same breath, says that Spanish is our “second language,” requiring school books and government forms to be printed in both English and Spanish, but not Navajo or Paiute. Our government goes on to spend more per individual on health care for prisoners serving time in jail than it does for Native Americans who live in substandard conditions.

If you are from another country and you want to come to American and become a citizen of this country, you must be 18, you must have lived here legally for at least five years, you must speak and understand English, you must be of good moral character and you must know the basic history of the United States. Or, you can pretend to be a Mexican, cross the border illegally, and we must learn to speak Spanish while we give you free medical care, food, shelter and money and, if we deny you as an illegal alien any of those things, we are going to go to jail and that is all you need to know about U.S. history.

In traveling through Wyoming, one sees excess natural gas being burned off near oil fields. In rural California and other parts of America, it cost $300 to fill a propane tank in 2006 and $585 to fill it in 2008. The reason for the increase is “supply and demand.” The Federal government allows that the prices of automotive fuels is probably going up due to “supply and demand.” It then blames the price increase on the Chinese and the oil cartel. All of the time that the prices at the pump are increasing, the four major oil companies left in the country are recording hoards and hoards of billions of dollars in increasing profits. Congress and the President continue to shrug their shoulders and tell us that there is nothing they can do about it. A few of them have the audacity to suggest that the country could do without the 18 cent per gallon fuel tax that is used to support highway and bridge construction and repair, never bothering to recognize that a national transportation study confirms that our nation’s bridges are in a sad state of disrepair already; many are downright unsafe.

These are but a few of the many hundred of examples of a government that has lost touch with reality. And, this dementia seems to permeate Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court to some extent, and all of the layers of government beneath them all.

But, I would suggest to you that forming a new government under a new constitution is not even remotely the answer. The solution is replacement of those who fill the jobs in government, from the halls of Congress through the ranks of the Cabinet and all of the way through top management posts at every level of our government. And this can only be accomplished when we Americans will gather the courage to turn off our computers and television sets long enough to spend an hour or two a week to become more proactive in understanding and managing our government.

We need to pinpoint the demented, those who rule without reason or sensitivity, those who are not patriotic Americans, those who have created our educational disasters, and those who believe that we owe something to other nations before we owe anything to our own people. Then, we need to get rid of them. They are the ones who have brought us to this point in our history where we who are American have no right to complain or to voice our opinions unless we do it in Spanish and unless we live in “Mexifornia.” They are the ones who turn the backs on the needs of our people while extending the hands of “brotherly love” to the citizens of other countries who would just as soon see us drop off the face of the earth. Those are the ones who would give and give aid and comfort to terrorists and sit in their camps and commit acts of sedition while there is yet so much to be done here, at home.

Yet, they are in office, or they hold positions of authority in our government because we have allowed them to. WE ARE TO BLAME. But, there is still time to turn back and away from this ugly path we are on, and we can start in November by removing incumbents and replacing them with new blood, new vision, and new hope.

The path to a better future and to better government runs right through our living rooms. We can no longer sweep it under the carpet and pretend that it does not exist.