Many people think the government always has to have the newest and bestest. Let me tell you, they are probably thinking of the feds. Maybe things are different on the wrong side of the Mississippi, but that's not the way it is at the county level in the southwest.I snapped this picture the other day as an example of tools still in use - a microfiche reader and a wooden handled, hand cranked microfilm winder. Note that this was as I passed through the computer mapping department. These aren't old bits of office equipment gathering dust in some corner or surplus that could not be sold off. This is normal, everyday stuff. The microfiche is so important that every office has a reader, sometimes, two, and this is only one of three in our area. When I started working for the county (just passed my sixth year anniversary) I thought they were joking when they started a description of a process with, "Go to the microfiche..." Nope, not kidding.
Anyway, when you hear about another trillion thrown to Wall Street bankers or about how much money may be sunk into a black budget or about a Speaker of the House wanting her own passenger jet liner and then wonder why your roads are bad and your schools can't afford books, think of this picture. Your tax dollars are being sent outside of your area to fund pet projects run out of Washington, D.C. We pay too much in taxes, and we aren't allowed to keep enough where we live.
So, we'll continue to muddle along, hampered by politicians - left and right - whose main concern is peddling to special interest groups. THAT is something the local and federal levels have in common. We'll continue to be denied the use of a calculator with a square root button or pens that don't clump because the budget is too tight. Elected officials will pontificate about non-existent problems with the environment or about giving the vote to illegal aliens, the new don't ask/don't tell demographic. And as I search for the number to the one place that just might know what a microfiche reader is and be able to repair it, I'll wonder how we got here.
How we got here is by trusting big money media, by dumbing down our education to the point where it's just not funny anymore, by abdicating our adult responsibility to the government, and by voting for the lesser of two evils... Survivor and American Idol have not helped. I really don't think the government should have, or at least usually needs, the newest and bestest, but there is an expectation to be efficient and to stay with the times. We can't do that when the government making the important decisions is on the other side of the country instead of at city hall, county chambers, and the state capital.Do I have an answer? Nothing that will ever catch on: be informed and vote out anyone who believes in big government and who doesn't have a ten year track record of actually defending the Constitution.
I'm done voting for the lesser of two evils. Party lines mean little to me anymore. I'll vote for who is the small government conservative. Period. Throwing my vote away? I no longer think so. Evil is evil. If you get the lesser of two evils, you still get evil. It's time to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the few good politicians out there. They may never rise above all that is stacked against them, but they certainly won't if no one is ever willing to break free from the status quo money machine and it's christened candidates.
