In my
opinion the whole mess surfaced on a national level with Ronald Reagan when he
famously spoke his infamous nine words, “Government is not the solution;
government is the problem”. I don’t
believe for a minute those words were original with him, but I must acknowledge
he had some great speech writers. At one
point in our lives, we knew an Oscar-winning cinematographer who told us that a
Director had told him that he loved working with Ronald Reagan. Reagan could memorize his lines, find his
mark and ride a horse.
That being
said, it brought to the national level this hatred of government, and the long
time animosity of the radical right for any part of government that did not
make a profit for them, and they had the perfect foil to express this in Reagan. Thus, war was a good thing because the
military-industrial complex, which Dwight Eisenhower had warned us about, make
big profits from building and selling war machinery, to us, our allies and
probably enemies as well. Social justice
programs such as Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and veterans’ medical
care because they were no longer profitable, or any other government program
that required the wealthy 1%ers to pay taxes, and thus were to be eliminated. Even our national infrastructure was a drag
on their profits, so our roads, bridges, schools, and any government building
or program was anathema. Taxes were the
very worst thing that could happen to them, and if the 99% wanted these things,
they had to pay the taxes for them, or donate to charity to take care of the
poor, elderly, homeless, and mentally ill, etc.
As a result
of this constant anti-government rhetoric, along with anti-union rhetoric, the
government agencies that people rely on the most have had their budgets slashed
beyond belief. It is possible to drive
around potholes, when bridges fall down usually not too many people are killed,
and schools don’t do a good job anyway, so why bother. But emergency response agencies such as fire
departments, ambulance and medical response, and law enforcement had their
budgets slashed as well. I remember an
incident when I was in office when our local bomb squad had come in for
approval of the acquisition of a robot to pick up potential bombs and place
them in the bomb container. One of my
fellow Supervisors voted “no” because she said it was just “more toys for the
boys”. No thought to the fact that this
robot would save both civilian and officer’s lives. Pre-employment screening of personnel hiring
was cut drastically. Training was
slashed because there were no tax dollars to pay for that continuing training. All of the emergency response personnel must
have continual training in order to weed out inappropriate individuals who
slipped through the employment screening, as well as keep the skills required
to respond to violent situations foremost in officer’s automatic responses.
We are now
seeing the result of these short-sighted policies in the surfacing of the
totally nauseating behavior of some law enforcement personnel. If these shootings, chokings and vehicle ramming’s
have indeed been race related, these officers should never have been hired in
the first place. Their prior records should
have been scrutinized in detail, but, alas, there was no funding for that. Apparently there was no funding to scrutinize
the behavior of officers who had already been hired to determine if their
behavior was going over the line when they were found to use excessive force
more than once. Citizens have the right
to be up in arms over these violent actions by law enforcement. But putting the
blame on officers only is avoiding the issue of why these situations are
occurring in the first place. Further,
if one officer takes it upon him or herself to complain about the actions of
another, retaliation of some degree is sure to happen.
No. Let’s place the blame where it ultimately
belongs. On us. Why do I say that? Because so many of us don’t bother to find
out what elected officials really mean when they say that they must cut government
spending, or that government is out of control, and they will fix it. Make them be specific from the local all the
way to the federal levels. When we have
such low turnouts during an election, we get the government we deserve. We need people at the federal level who
understand that tax dollars must be made available to government agencies to
assist them in working economically and efficiently, but properly and
adequately. And we need voters who will
go to the polls and vote people in to office who will raise taxes on wealthy
individuals and corporations, bring tax dollars back from where they are
stashed overseas, and see to it that these dollars are distributed to agencies
that serve the people.
It is not
just the President who makes things happen.
We need to vote in US Congresspeople and Senators who understand that “trickle
down” economics is really unscrupulous.
Instead it ends up with the people being “trickled on”!
Taxes are
the dues we pay to live in a democratic society. To rig tax laws to benefit corporations and
people who do not need to be benefitted is extremely detrimental to a
democratic society, creating what we have now, which is profound income
inequality. It is destroying our nation,
and our souls.
