Let's focus on "The Rent's Too Damn High!" Party candidate for Governor of New York. Or Aqua Buddha. Or Deanna Favre. Or Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg stomping off their own TV show...And, please, let's not forget to worry about The Bad Girls' Club, The Kardashians, The Housewives...(I think I'm going to be sick!)
Where are all of the forums where our illustrious members of the media take these political candidates and grill them on HOW they are going to affect these changes they propose to make? Oh! I forgot. No one wants to watch something like that, because the Housewives are so much more interesting than the bullshit spewing forth from the mouths of the people that hold power over our lives. No ratings in Political debate! Unless, of course, the political ramblings come from some uber-Liberal actor who feels that his opinion is somehow more enlightened than that of some work-a-day Joe from the Midwest because said actor is, well, an actor!
To be fair, the candidates rarely subject themselves to unmoderated debate or questions from unscreened constituents anyway. The system is set up from top to bottom to protect the candidates and office-holders from real interrogation or critique from the people that put them into office. Makes one wonder why we would vote for someone we can't access.
I guess that we vote because we should. Because we are still ALLOWED to vote. However, I find myself, more often than not, voting for what I perceive to be the lesser of two evils. I will vote Party line if in any doubt, and I never vote for a candidate for any office that is running uncontested. And how many times do you get into a voting booth and see candidates you've never heard of running for races you didn't know were contested or were even subject to vote? I get that every time, even though in this age of the internet I can go to the Board of Elections websites and see what is going to be on the ballot. I can go to news sites and follow the candidates. I can dig as much as I choose to in order to find what these people REALLY stand for. You can find out how they vote on issues, which is where their priorities are laid bare.
The problem is that we are busy and we are lazy with whatever free time we have. And who really wants to spend time researching our candidates and office-holders? Who really wants to get out of bed and go to work? No one. But we get out of bed and go to work because we have to. We need to have this same attitude towards our governments from the locality to the Federal level. The people that we do not care to research and take to task are the ones voting for Bills that effect the wage we make, the age we can retire, the amount of money that comes home on our check, how much of that money we will ever have access to, how much of what we are allowed to keep is paid out in sales tax, property tax, embedded tax. These people that we cannot bother to research are determining whether or not we can work for our Health Care or if it will be provided by the Government, funded by more money that will come out of our paychecks.
As to the Health Care...Anyone ever been in a VA hospital? A Public Health Clinic? They are the medical equivalents of The Projects. The Projects are a Government-run program...Anyone clamoring for an apartment in The Projects? No. Anyone ever had to fight the government to get SSI after a career ending injury or illness after having paid into that system all of your working life? Try it sometime. There is a (as of 12 months ago) a 26-month wait to even get a hearing. Just think...Waiting for more than 2 years to get into 'The Projects" to get a mammogram, a prostate exam, a Pap smear, a basic physical, immunizations (all of which will be a requirement before you can be eligible for care if you actually get sick, by the looks of things). And what happens when you do get sick? A cold? The Flu? A car accident? Cancer? Think about this: Your child gets Leukemia. But wait...There is a 26-month backlog in hearings to see if the child does indeed have Leukemia and is eligible for treatment. Say you have the money to pay for his treatment, but you are not allowed to by Federal Law. You can't find a doctor who will treat him for fear of losing his medical license for accepting private payment...
Now, your child might have died no matter what anyone tried to do, but the reality is that your child died waiting in line for the Imperial Federal Government Health Care Service to decide he was worthy of treatment.
But our government would never do that...Right?
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