Day after day and year after year, we hear that our immigration system is broken. The two houses of Congress debate the topic and clip the fingernails of the various statutes, but according to experts it remains broken because Congress fails to act. Christiana Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has announced a plan to federalize the U.S. economy around climate change suggesting that the world probably would have to close up shop by 2031 unless climate control legislation were passed and enforced.
Spending for 44 million Medicare recipients cost over $700 billion in 2018. Estimates by various private and government experts forecast that Medicare will go broke by 2026, just seven years from now. If we believe both the forecast of Christiana Ocasio-Cortez and professional actuaries, sharks will be swimming around the 99th floor of New York’s Empire State Building by 2031; unless we create legislation for further funding of Social Security or world flooding. Will Congress act?
Our USPS lost $51.3 billion between 2007 and 2015. Several unions run the 497 thousand employees but Congress has oversight. Apparently there is a misunderstanding about the definition of ‘oversight.’ If Congress never makes change, who will? Hint; government jobs are high pay, high retirement and job security.
Only a few days ago John Dingell (D-MI) died at age 92 after serving in Congress since 1955, a total of more than 59 years of ‘service’ to Michigan and our nation. His life has been praised and extolled for this great service. John ‘inherited’ his father’s House chair upon his father’s death in office in 1955. John, Sr. had served in the House since 1933. Dingell’s successor is his widow who took office in 2015. Is this really the way our federal government is supposed to work? The name Dingell has been associated with representation from Michigan for 86 years. The Dingells may have been stellar legislators but our system is not set up on the system of fiefdoms. During Dingell’s terms as representative, Detroit shrunk from about 1.8 million people to about 677,000 recently; was he complicate in this economic and demographic disaster? Will Congress ever create ‘term limits legislation?’
What’s broken in our country? The answer is that our federal government and other levels of government are all broken. Several issues contribute to this breakdown; we have shifted over our many years from a government of the people, by the people and for the people according to Honest Abe back on November 19th, 1863 to a government of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. This is not ‘modernization,’ it is decadence.
Seems like our patriotism and morals have gone silent and invisible; who would think we would hire a president that when taking office in 2009 did not wear a flag lapel pin, did not salute the flag and felt our national anthem was too ‘bellicose.’ Former President Bill Clinton is a sexual predator and suffered shame but is an admired spokesperson for his party.
We keep hearing that we must create and support equality. Equality among individual citizens is not possible. We are all equal at birth but those who spurn opportunities for education, experience and self-determination will seek and find themselves in prison, on welfare, unemployed or deceased. Our lives are what we make them; government is simply an enabler of success or failure that is usually determined by Environment, Education & Experience (ThreE).
Our educational systems are fractured and broken; we depend on sports to provide revenue for colleges to supply athletes who become professional high earners. Civics, world and national history are not studied by many students while many study political science. Politics is not science but rather a mongrel study of disparate political loyalties and biases. Our entire hierarchy of leaders are fiduciaries of our citizen’s resources but have generated national debt of $22 trillion. Current interest on national debt is about $350 billion; squandered money.
Members of our political parties have lost self-respect and deference toward their constituents by wasted spending, wasted resources and bloated staffs, 7.2 million of whom are dues-paying unaccountable union members. Elected and appointed officials no longer coalesce to solve problems but create new problems with their inability to seek and find solutions to benefit their employers/enablers; the citizens of the USA.