Wishful Thinking and Useless Griping

     Usually in my posts (all two thus far), I will report on some current event, adding my "two cents," and either offer constructive criticism or complain and offer some possibilities of remedying the situation. This post probably will not be too constructive or have too many remedies. This post is just going to be some facts, events, or societal mainstays that I lament, or whose ruining I lament.

     We have recently been reminded, at least in Pennsylvania, that politicians, in my opinion more so than the average man (not to say every single politician, but a majority) are only after two things: their own increasing benefit and a continuing government office. Case and point: the recent action of newly elected Tom Corbett. Many Pennsylvanians, myself included, turned to Mr. Corbett to make drastic budgetary cuts across the board in order to remove us from the opulent spending of our previous governor, and over time bring us back into the black, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, the Governor has not done that. He HAS made dramatic cuts to the budget, but he did not cut, or even try to mention cutting anything from the legislature's salary or benefits or from his own office, which is spending a mere one percent less than Rendell while having about half as many person to pay. Having been the Attorney General of Pennsylvania before taking over as governor, our governor could have impressed all of Pennsylvania by taking a small pay cut, maybe as high as ten percent, and still be taking a pay raise from his former post. Sorrowfully, our governor has...well he didn't disappoint Pennsylvania, but he certainly did not raise our expectation of future politicians.

     In reality, Pennsylvania shouldn't even have a full-time, paid legislature. We should have something more akin to Texas, who give their legislators a small salary and benefits, but not enough to sustain them for their term, which forces them to keep their jobs for at least part of the year. This necessity gives the legislators a better perspective of what their state needs (evidenced by the fact that Texas has enjoyed economic growth while the rest of the country has suffered through a debilitating depression (though they call it a mere recession). Instead, Pennsylvania allows legislators, who are adept at keeping themselves in office, to do nothing but legislate, keeping them apart from the people and their problems, much like the king and aristocrats of old (Wait! Didn't we fight a revolution to free ourselves from that system?).  Alas, I digress...

     The point is: I wish the people, who campaign for our vote to allow them to decide who gets our scarce resources, would act for the common good instead of themselves, stop using smokescreens, such as partisan squabbling and promises that they know they cannot keep in order to distract us into voting for them, forcing the masses to not vote for the best candidate, but for the least evil, and finally put someone else (namely their constituents) ahead of their own selfishness. Also, I wish the citizens of this country were intelligent and wise enough to see through these tricks and put their apathy on hold long enough to take politicians to task. If politicians would lay out what they believe in and want to do clearly without those citizens, who actually care, needing to look up their voting record and hoping that the record shows what their stances on issues are instead of what they ate for breakfast that day, then I would be more than happy to agree with Edmund Burke, when he said "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." Unfortunately, the politicians of today, though they fall over each other in order to agree with this statement and espouse similar sentiments, forget the first half of this paragraph, which says, "it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention," and most importantly, "It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own."


     In a similar vein, I lament the expansion of the powers of the President of the United States of America and the same of the federal government over those of the state. After all, James Madison, who is credited with being the major author of the Constitution said that the federal government has a small number of powers, limited to those enumerated in the Constitution, while the states have a large number of powers, which are only limited to those that come in direct conflict with those given to the federal government by the Constitution. And logically, who would have a better idea of what your needs are: the federal government, which must protect the interests of the entire, incredibly diverse nation, or the state government, which only needs to worry about 1/50 of the country?


     To aid in the remedying of the federal government's expansion (though I know it will never happen), I wish certain Supreme Court ruling could be rescinded/overturned in much the same way that Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. Some of these cases include: Wickard v. Filburn, which changed the Interstate Commerce Clause into a clause that enabled the federal government to legislate anything, in order to achieve anything that it wanted, no matter how distance it was from controlling interstate commerce, Whitman v. American Trucking Association, Inc., which, once and for all, allowed Regulatory Agencies to share in Congress' power to make laws, which the Constitution expressly forbids (I think we need Regulatory Agencies, I just don't think they should be able to make laws without Congress), Korematsu v. U.S., which put security before individual liberty (Ben Franklin had something very true to say about that), and to a lesser, but still important, extent, Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell, which allowed FDR, and future government officials to impede the ability of individuals' contracts.


     These are just a few things that I have contemplated, though not much, if anything can really be done about it. Hopefully it will make you think about things like these a little more. Your contemplations of these may incite action, and that, in the end, is how great works are accomplished.