COMMON SENSE AMERICA

Recently, in a response to one of my articles, a reader offered the comment, “Oh Wayne, don’t forget we need a good dose of common sense as well.” In truth, his comment was spot on not just for that situation but for so many others here in America today.

There was a time back in what some might call the ‘dark ages’ of this country when common sense was an applied factor from the voting booth all the way up through the legislative process. That has been replaced with apathy and ignorance at the voter level and by greed and manipulation at the legislative level. The question arises, ‘how long can America continue to function without using common sense?’ Based on our situation today, I would have to argue that it cannot be too much longer.

Have you noticed that most every decision that is made today about the functionality and welfare of America is made under a state of emergency or abject failure? We really don’t have time to examine a bill or proposal anymore. Hell, our legislators don’t even have time to read it before they vote for it. Yet our leadership persists in pointing out how our existing system is failing so miserably while holding up a proposal that no one knows anything significant about and pointing to it as the answer to our prayers and a step which we must take immediately or forever perish into the fires of hell. So, in the urgency of the moment, we rush headlong into the unknown. Based on the way I was raised, this has not relationship whatsoever to applying common sense. It’s more like jumping off of a high rise building and then mulling over your alternatives on the way down.

We have been lulled into apathy in America for too long. It is too easy now days to accept the fact that we have an elected official looking out for the welfare of the state or country and we should leave him or her to that work while we play the guitar on the MTV. For far too long the American public has remained disengaged living under the false assumption that government was looking out for our welfare. Maybe there was a time when that was the case but somewhere along the way, things changed and one does not have to look around with very much awareness to realize that we have been duped for far too long.

The healthcare bill had to be passed with great urgency to shore up our crumbling system of Medicare. Apparently, the urgency to pass the legislation was the only “urgent” part as it is okay to wait two or three years to implement it. Then, when it is implemented, we are already hearing that it will drive up healthcare costs by as much as 12% in the first year. I seem to remember that the rate of cost increases associated with Medicare were very similar on an annual basis and that program has long since been declared ineffective by our political leaders.

In truth, this urgency that was created has now moved us from a situation in which the taxpayers were picking up the tab for the Medicare bill and the government was acting as the accounting agency to a system in which the government will be basically running healthcare in America. At present, the government runs the VA hospital system in America. Check around a bit and see how long you have to look before you find out how poorly the government is performing in that respect. Where is the common sense?

Now Cap & Trade takes on the same urgency we saw with healthcare. Most of the public really does not understand the effect or the depth of the effect that this legislation will have on their lives. They conclude that it is simply a piece of legislation designed to motivate large companies to look for alternatives to fossil fuel operations. They overlook the fact that, in many cases, the electricity flowing into their houses is produced with fossil fuels mainly because that is the most economical method in that given geography. Yes, there might be alternatives but the price of electricity production in that area will be significantly elevated.

Almost every consumable other than our food contains some form of fossil fuel products. When we begin to tax industry of the basis of ‘carbon footprint’, their use of these fossil fuels become the basis for measuring that footprint and the basis for the fees they must pay for doing it. Those costs eventually end up in the lap of the consumer in the form of higher prices. Yet, our elected officials want to sell it to the public as simply an ‘environmentally-friendly’ effort. Who wouldn’t be for that? Where’s the common sense here?

The issue of illegal immigration is in the news every day throughout the country. There are some in our country who believe that we cannot survive economical without the illegal immigrant and they point to things such as agricultural crop work, etc. which is often performed by immigrants…traditionally legal ones with green cards, I might add. In fact, that sector of the immigrant population which performs all the agricultural crop harvest and processing in America only amounts to around 2% of the immigrant population in America. Now, on the basis of our paralyzed government’s inability to effectively close down our southern border to illegal trafficking, we are estimated to have between 12 million and 20 million illegal immigrants in this country.

Government legislative proposals are already beginning to hint at the ‘state of urgency’ we have in addressing this issue. Comprehensive reform is the order of the day yet there is not substantive discussion as to how we secure our southern border or all of our borders for that matter. The proposal is the urgency for reform, the urgency to address the illegal state of these individuals and possibly instantaneously grant them all amnesty and full citizenship in the United States of America. Where is the urgency with securing our border with regard to illegal people trafficking, drugs, and potential terrorists? The current regime does not want to answer that question until we address the issue of reform. Where is the common sense here? What is driving the agenda?

America needs to get in a rush to further dilute its own apathetic culture so the politicians in elected office will not have to work so hard to stay there and line their pockets with our money. We need to rush to grant immediate citizenship to a group of people who could care less as to whether they are citizens or not as long as they can partake of the milk and honey of America. We need to rush out and legalize these ‘citizens’ while we spit in the face of every immigrant who has come to this country legally and worked their butt off to become a citizen of a place they dearly love and want to be a part of in every way. We need to hurry and do something in this area but the security of our border can wait. I don’t know about you, but I can’t find any common sense in this perspective.

We have an economy basically stalled in the doldrums somewhere between ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t care’. We have business people waiting to hear what the impact of government run healthcare will be on their businesses. We have business owners hanging in limbo as to where they will be in terms of their taxes after January 1 of 2011. That said, we have a Congress that is going to adjourn with this issue left on the table hanging in limbo because there is no ‘perceived’ sense of urgency on the part of the party in power to address it. In their minds, it apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with the stalled economy. Keep in mind these are the same people who could rationalize that there was a ‘sense of urgency’ to get the economy going and to create jobs. The point we missed is that they were thinking of the government creating the jobs and not the private sector. Oh my goodness, what happened to the common sense?

Our newly elected President came into office with the mantra that it was absolutely urgent that Congress appropriate and approve $800+ billion dollars for stimulus spending in order to get our economy back on track, create jobs, and hold the unemployment levels below 9%. There was no time for talk. We had to act and act quickly without rationale or consideration. Almost two years later, our unemployment rate has risen to over 9.5% and the economy remains in limbo mainly because the private sector remains hanging in the balance over the various unknown impacts of taxes and healthcare legislation.

The stimulus money is all but unaccounted for even though over $500 billion dollars has gone somewhere. And for all the urgency with getting this large bill passed, approximately $300 billion dollars of the money is languishing in the coffers and seems to be untouchable as we pass more and more legislation to create more and more emergency spending all in the name of saving something that does not seem to be able to carry its own weight or justification. Essentially, our elected officials are using taxpayer money to buy votes. Where is the common sense?

The Obama Administration cites the urgency in the public’s need to have patience and let their programs run the course before we measure the result or expect them. At the same time, the administration continues to identify ‘emergency spending needs’ that continue to load the national debt levels to record highs…all in the name of urgency. There is concern expressed for improving the economy, for creating jobs and reducing unemployment yet those items which would seem to have a stabilizing effect continue to go unaddressed.

Certainly, we have to give programs time to work but we also have to be cognizant of our situation. At this point, our national debt is beginning to move beyond the critical point of percentage ratio of Gross Domestic Product at which most economists believe the financial health of the country becomes very unstable. In essence, our debt to GDP ratio is approaching a 1 to 1 relationship. If there is indeed an urgency here, it should be on reducing that ratio as quickly as possible and moving to a more stable economic plateau. That cannot be accomplished with a government that insists spending our way out of recession and expanding social welfare programs. Where is the common sense here?

Common sense should tell you and me that everything is not and should not be an emergency. Emergencies exist because of accidents or unanticipated situations. If our elected officials are doing their job properly, both should be minimized just as they are in the private sector. If it is not, then we have the wrong people in charge, and someone should get fired.

If we have to make decisions before we can weigh the facts, then steps are being missed somewhere. Urgency, especially in the political sector, is simply a tool that is designed to keep the public and other prying eyes from spending too much time in deliberation or consideration of the proposal. Urgency is a curtain behind which hides the truth of the matter. Urgency is the slight of hand that keeps us from seeing where the magician put the card. Urgency and distraction are our enemies. Common sense should tell us that. When the basis for anything is driven by urgency and distraction, alarms should go off everywhere and common sense should whisper in our ear, “look a bit closer my friend.”

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