christinebarry.com

Put the government on a diet …

We need less federal government.

Certainly there are things we should act on as a nation, and these things should be expensive. As a nation we should educate our people in the finest buildings with the latest technology and the best teachers, and this should be free for anyone who wants to attend. As a nation we should find a cure for Aids and cancer and Alzheimer’s. It’s a disgrace that an American hero like Admiral Stockdale can survive torture for 7 years in Vietnam, and then succumb to Alzheimer’s disease at home because the American political climate put the brakes on stem cell research. As a nation, we should defend ourselves from foreign and domestic enemies. We should protect our planet, or at least do no harm. We should go as far into space and as deep into the ocean as we can and peek into every corner to see what’s there. People throughout the world should know that all Americans are equal to one another, whether we are black, white, Native American, Muslim, Jewish, disabled, gay, male, female, poor, wealthy, etc. That’s not all Michiganians, or all Californians, but all Americans. As a nation we should stand up for progress on all of these fronts.

On the other hand, a government that is big enough to fit into the hearts and minds of its people is a government that is too big. The government has no business telling me whether or not I can terminate a pregnancy. The government has no business telling me that I can’t burn a piece of cloth that I bought at K-Mart and that was probably made in China, just because the cloth has stars & stripes and is red white & blue. The government has no business telling me who I can marry or how I’ll die. Our government is bigger than our people. Abortion, flag burning, marriage, etc are outside the scope of federal government. The government needs to get busy finding a way out of Iraq, instead of finding ways to get into my home.

I challenge anyone to watch C-Span for a week when Congress is in session … at the end of the week you will be able to count on one hand the number of things you saw that were actually necessary to run our country. If our Congress only focused on legislation that was necessary, they could be a part time legislature.

I wonder how much it cost the taxpayers to conduct the hearings on religious intolerance at the USAF Academy. I watched those hearings. They were worthless. A little common sense at the USAF and the hearings would never have happened. The Academy should have been able to handle that without Congressional hearings. And isn’t it interesting that hearings like that get taken care of right away, but we have to stage a mini-coup to get Congress to discuss the problems with voting, or we have to meet in a closet to discuss whether or not POTUS lied to start a war.

Our federal government creates legislation to create commissions to study issues that have been brought to their attention by other commissions. Usually these commissions have a minimum budget of $100 million. (that doesn’t take into account the cost of writing the legislation, creating the commission, and then dissolving the committee later) The private and non-profit sectors would be qualified to do some of these things, and they can probably do it cheaper, better, and faster. Our government worships outsourcing; its time they outsource their own work. The only ones who try to make government smaller do so from the standpoint that public services like SS or housing programs have to be cut. They never consider cutting the scope of their own jobs or even the overhead from their own offices.

If we cut housing programs, we make homeless people.

If we cut food programs, we make hungry people.

If we cut social security, we make both.

But if we cut Congressional franking in half, we use email and we save $20 million. We could afford schools and roads and social security without raising taxes, if we just had a more responsible and cooperative (with each other) Congress.

As long as we’re creating legislation, we should pass a law that makes it illegal for Congress to deliberately create an unconstitutional law. Congress passed federal legislation regarding flag desecration and partial birth abortion after the USSC ruled similar state laws unconstitutional. So we taxpayers had to pay for the creation of the law and the resulting court battle so the USSC could rule the federal version unconstitutional. Why? Because these are hot campaign topics. And look at all the energy they put into this “frivolous lawsuit” issue, which was just meant to appease a particular special interest group. Notice how Congress never talks about their frivolous laws.

And by the way, if you ruin someone’s life because you’re too stupid or too lazy to do what you are licensed to do correctly, that’s not frivolous.

We should be putting that energy into the real problems of America, like health care and education. Lack of health care causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. That’s six times the number of people killed on 9/11. The United States is 49th in the world in literacy. We’re a superpower; we should at least be in the top 3.

Why are we holding hearings on religious intolerance? Because our government is a product of our behavior as citizens, and as long as we are easily manipulated by fear and religion and negative personal attacks, our Congress will focus on fear and religion and negative personal attacks. As long as we fail to pay attention to where our money goes, they’ll send it wherever they want … it’s not that they’re bad people, it’s that they’re blind to new solutions and we citizens don’t pay attention. This is not a problem with Democrats or Republicans; it’s a problem with Americans. Americans are so comfortable with our lives, or so cynical about our government, we think our participation isn’t important. Interest groups have power because they understand that participation is important.

I am a big believer in personal and economic liberty, and in many ways I agree with Libertarians that free markets and free minds lead to free people. But I am Democrat because I know that the free market is brutal if it isn’t tempered by a gentle government hand. But it should be gentle, and it should be smaller than the market, and smaller than the people.

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