Mounting Evidence of a Broken Government

Things continue to get worse in Washington. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that next year's elections will make any difference.

After wasting most of the past year in endless investigations of the President and continuous attempts to de-fund and undermine the Iraq war, the Democrats have finally gotten something done. It's hard to decide which is more discouraging - the fact they've passed some of their socialist legislation, or the fact that Republicans and the President have helped them do so.

All you folks out there who voted the bums out in 2006, handing control of congress to the Dems: What were you upset about? Sure, many thought the Iraq war was a mess. But most of you were frustrated at the lack of action to stop illegal immigration. Angry about irresponsible pork-barrel spending. Frustrated by the failure of elected representatives to care even minimally about the true needs of their constituents.

So how did that go?

Well, despite all the efforts of the Democrat congress, Iraq's turned around and is winding down on its own. But that's the only good news.

What has our government done about illegal immigration? Nada. In fact, they just slipped into their latest spending bill a significant backtrack on the famous border fence that still isn't being built.

What about pork-barrel spending? Think Dems are more responsible than the GOP? If you thought they would be, the joke's on you! The latest spending bill has as much or more pork in it than the worst of the GOP's bills. It's just that the earmarks in this one are designed to help their newest Democrats bring enough bacon back to their districts to entrench them for next year's re-election. Our's is included: Baron Hill won his seat back from Republican Mike Sodrel, and has been rewarded by millions in special funding for his district awarded by his party to help him keep his seat next year.

Then there's the Energy Bill. What an obscene, patently obvious sop to Democrat special interests that travesty represents! How does mandating 35 miles per gallon from the auto industry help energy or the environment? NOT AT ALL! It simply creates artificial shortages in the market for trucks, vans, and suv's. What gives any government the right to tell anyone what they can drive? This government does so by telling the auto makers what they can sell.

Add to that the Bali conference on "Climate Change". Notice they aren't calling it "Global Warming" anymore, because the science on that isn't as settled as Al Gore would have us believe. Is anything the conference is doing going to improve the climate of earth, give us more clean air or clean water, eliminate droughts and blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes? There's another big joke being played on the ignorant populace. NOT AT ALL!

What Bali's really all about is globalism, socialism, and taking the USA down a notch or two. These guys want us to give them the right to tax us! That's right, they want to tax American Citizens for our wicked and unfair consumption of much more than our share of the earth's resources, and give the money to, well, them! Just forget about the earth and climate and the environment - the whole thing is a scheme by people in the UN to get rich off taxing Americans for their use of energy.

It's so frustrating, all the more so that there's so little I can do about it. Common sense has been co-opted by special interests, whose main special interest is in getting rich. And in return for making them rich, they offer our politicians the kick-backs they need to keep their misleading campaign ad machines running so they can stay in office and continue serving their wealthy minders.

Want a good energy policy? Lease ANWR to the highest bidder to extract the oil there. Open the continental shelf to exploration. Build nuclear power plants. Encourage an increase in refinery capacity. Stop the madness on ethanol - an inefficient fuel made from food is about the dumbest thing I think we can do. Go ahead and continue development of alternative energy technologies - sponsor contests, give tax incentives, and all that to encourage inventors to find ways to power cars with hydrogen and generate electricity with wind and solar. But stop acting as if those alternatives are already fully viable, because they are far from that!

I want them all gone. Senators Lugar and Bayh need to go. Congressman Hill needs to go. But they need to be replaced with sensible people who cannot be bought, and that's the hard part.