I have the answer to almost all of our woes. Before any of you shoot it down, please seriously consider it.
The problem with the discourse in America today is the intimacy between the public and private sector. The Democrats will generally point to the private sector and blame our ills on it. They will tell you that it is the greedy health insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and doctors that drive up the costs of healthcare. Some may even admit that the lawyers have something to do with it too. Or they may blame greedy banks and Wall Street firms for this recession.
Republicans will tell you that it is the government and it's overregulation that spoils things.
Here are the facts. It is the private sectors' job to make profits. When they hire lobbyists to corrupt our representatives, they are just doing their job, as distasteful as that may seem. The private sector is fulfilling it's mandate which is to make money, create jobs and fuel our lives. We can only influence them with our dollar. If you disagree with how a company treats its employees, you can chose not to buy from them. The dollar vote is a powerful one.
It is the government's job to protect us. From enemies foreign and domestic and to police the private sector enough to keep it honest and not too much as to stifle it. This is a very difficult job and one that may never get done just right. But it is a job that is doable. It is not government's job to replace the private sector. I didn't vote for my Congressman to run GM or take over my bank or run healthcare. I voted for him to monitor them and create a level playing field for all.
So who, in these roles, has failed us? The private sector has made its money and provided its services. They lent me the money to buy my house. They fixed my leg when it was broken. They provided me the Big Mac and my iphone. The private sector has done its job very well. They have made me things I never knew I needed.They have bought Washington so that they coul dmake things more favorable for themselves. Can you blame them?
The government, whose job it is to monitor all this has failed me. They have let my dollar drop in value every year, while taking more of them. They have let my streets crumble, my brother to die in a foreign land. They have propped up bad banks and allowed lawyers, health ins. companies, and pharmaceuticals to ruin the healthcare system for profit. They have paid millions for useless weapons, and with some of our worst tragedies (Katrina), they have failed to even help us there. They have failed to protect me and failed to be honest with me. These days the government is more an enemy to the people than a friend. I would guess that we fear them more than we don't. Between the ATF, I.R.S., CPS, DOD, NSA, DEA, FBI and all the others. If I get a letter from any of them it can't be good.
Government has become inept and ineffective and that is because it has been corrupted by the private sector. So you see, Democrats and Republicans the problem is not the bride or the groom, it is the marriage. It is the fact that the private sector can buy so much influence in the public sector. It is the fact that most Congresspeople spend a bulk of their time chasing money to get re elected rather than doing what we hired them to do. The idea of actually reading a bill seems laughable to them. Again, when I buy stock in GE I expect them to do anything they can to make money, within the law. When I vote, I expect them to protect me from GE.
If you want to solve our problems, lets's divorce the private from the puvlic sector. Eliminate lobbysists and PACS. Limit how a politician can run and eliminate anyones' need for money. Maybe we should provide 3 hours per night to each candidate on public television. They could talk until they are blue in the face. We would get to know all we need to know about them and then we would be better informed.I am sure there is a way fro a politial candidate to get the message out without private sector money.
I realize that this idea tramples our right to free speech in this regard, but it is a freedom that makes sense to sacrifice to preserve the rest of our freedoms.
Just think that if the government wasn't involved, many more banks would go out of business and we would be left with only the strongest ones. Actually had the government really been doing its job, many of those banks would have been better regulated. Without their lobbyists they would have been fairly regulated. Banking rules would be more fairly designed to level the playing field while being tougher.
Health care costs wouldn't be out of this world if lawyers weren't allowed to write every law. If pharmaceutical companies were really regulated and if health care costs for the 47 million weren't forced to be born by private businesses instead of the government who made the rules.
At this point I'm rambling, but my point is that it is the absolutley the incestuous nature of our current political system that has put us where we are. Instead of giving the government more we should be limiting them, Instead of allowing the big corporations to exercises more power, we should eliminate their stranglehold on our government. In essence the government is the puppet and big business is the puppet master. Let's cut the string.
Let busienss do busienss and demand that government represent us. Allowing the government to further melt into the private sector is the worst mistake we could make. Yes we need reform, but not this kind.
In the end, I voted for my representative and not for the lobbyist that owns him. In the argument of who is better Democrats or Republicans I would have to say Libertarians, because they understand that the government has failed us and big business is doing exactly what it will always do. It is not bad or good, it just is.
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