# 110
“Hiatus — an odd term…”
IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
May 3, 2012
Well, readers have been victims of hiatus. Like most of us, the best-laid plans, so they say, often go awry. I can’t count the times that I’ve put my domestic chores aside to sit down and write a column, but over the past two weeks I’ve done the opposite. To further complicate matters, I spent ten days out of state on family business. Ah, well. Life calls! The “to do” list is nearly exhausted, as am I. Apologies are moot, so I will chastise myself and I vow not to allow this to recur unless faced with a dire emergency.
Suffice it to say, prevailing thought among the movers and shakers has not reappeared in my absence, so the column title remains valid: “In Defense of Common Sense.”
Spring is, traditionally, the time that scholarship applications fly into the offices of high school counselors around the nation. Career choices loom over the latest generation of soon-to-be-graduates and parents’ stomachs churn with that old sinking feeling at the prospect of paying for college.
Often cited statistics vary a bit from state to state, but according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, it costs less to college educate than to incarcerate a person. It probably hasn’t escaped you, but one of the highest growing enterprises in the nation is that of penal facilities.
It is incredibly sad to pass by what was once known as Bunker Hill Air Force Base near Peru. Now a combination business and prison site, it offers employment opportunities, but nothing in comparison to the zenith of the facility as home to the refueling unit of the Strategic Air Command.
Daily, more lives are taken and more injuries incurred on our streets than in a war zone. Few talk about it. I suppose that we are so immune to the constant list of crimes described on the radio and TV broadcasts that we hardly pay attention.
Drugs are at the heart of many crime sprees and fueling a habit is very expensive. The so-called “War on Drugs” is as an abysmal failure as the social bomb known as “The War on Poverty”. There are more people living in poverty today than when this governmental program launched in the 1960s.
It all boils down to the fish theory. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.
Bigger is touted to be better, but it is a hollow claim. Whenever there are too many cooks around a pot, the result is not palatable. Schools belong at the local level. Parents know what their children need. Whenever the federal government gets into any sector of private lives, the boon is to administrative salaries and not to results.
Many of us were flummoxed by the “No Child Left Behind” legislation that moved through Congress in the previous administration. The real bold step would have been to close down the Department of Education. When a national government “educates” you have real reason to worry.
Ask any local school board member how much he or she can really decide in terms of school direction and curricula. Very little. Mandates from the state rule and there is little “wiggle room” for those closest to the students.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to extrapolate that educational big stick to health care, either. When an Ethics Committee can decide if you or a loved one “deserves” a high level of medical care, beware!
As we move through the primary process and select slates of candidates at the local, county, state and national levels, keep in mind that the closest the governmental unit the more responsive. That is the beauty of a federal system. States have clout and can react to constituent needs far more smoothly and efficiently than national bureaucrats.
Patience is the byword. A change in administration is sorely needed, but don’t be anguished if the wheels of progress move slowly. It takes less time to incur debt than to repay it, and the current president has wracked up more debt in three and a half years than ALL previous presidents combined!
It would be one thing if all the debt was backed by solid currency, but ours is not. What we owe debt is a result of the “fed” authorizing money from a printing press and/or bonds sold to the Chinese and other foreign governments. Our leverage is nil. Wake up and smell. It’s not coffee, folks, it’s trouble and not in River City. It’s in every city or hometown across America, no matter how large or small.
The only growing sector of jobs is in government and those jobs don’t put out a product. They put out paper and regulations — just what we need, eh? Those jobs pay more than private sector jobs, too. Sobering? You bet.
It’s time we cut the corporate tax rate to encourage companies to return. Remember the Neil Diamond song “Coming to America?” Someone needs to play it for the U.S. Senate. It has gone without submitting a budget for years. It tables every piece of meaningful budget legislation that comes from The U.S. House of Representatives.
How does it make you feel when determined people draft bills that have clout and they are buried in a pile of paper on the Majority Leader’s desk? If your household went without a budget and spent twice what it took in, you’d be faced with losing everything. Not so with the government. It simply lifts the debt limit and goes on its merry way and spends with abandon.
Abandon is a good word for it. The current administration has abandoned every tenet of good stewardship and heaped a debt on generations unborn. So much for that lost ball slogan “Hope and Change”. The leadership in the White House is one syllable short. The word is not hope, but hopeless. And change? That’s for November to decide.
You can’t continue to operate on borrowed funds. Sooner or later you must pay The Piper and he doesn’t live in Hamlin. He lives in Beijing. Think about it.