Don't get your information on government from false GOP claims

Get it right from the source - the data base that holds all regulations and tracks them. Know what you’re talking about when a GOP/TeaNut tries to sell you the latest viral crap that Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin have blurted out.

Go to Regulations.gov

You can voice your opinions and concerns about all government regulations when they are up for consideration by committee or vote.

This is the right way to ‘take back your government’ - by getting a damn clue, doing your homework and using the resources that your tax dollars have paid for.

Free your summer vacation from hideous government and regulation

It’s about time the rational people starting fighting back. Hey, boys and girls, send this to all your Libertarian friends today!

Who needs big government?

I freaking love this. It rocks.

Please send this to all your friends and neighbors planning to vote for Sharon Angle.

Friday Fish Wrap: April 16, 2010

I’ve been reading Timothy Egan’s ‘The Worst Hard Time’ - which is all about the Great Depression viewed from the sooty blackness of the Dust Bowl. We all have occasion to think we’ve got it rough, but the days around the Oklahoma panhandle during the mid-1930’s gave rough a whole new meaning.

Those people were the real survivors, and not the self-important, wanna-be celebrities on a ‘reality’ show.

But I got thinking about work. Today was a bit of a back breaker, and I came home really tired. But, it was satisfying tired. We did good things and we did it well - as a team all dedicated to making something work.

Work is rejuvenating, no matter what kind of work it is. Even better, it sometimes pays the bills.

I’ve had all manner of jobs down through the years, and I thought they were all valuable - whether it was  making the ads for the chain drug store in Fulton, Missouri (paid position), or being the national spokesperson for a high-profile and history-making news story (unpaid position). I did my best and it was good.

Where is this leading? That everybody should be working.

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Making the case for needing government

I don’t know about you, but I’m thoroughly sick of the tired Tea Bag/Conservative/Libertarian whining about there being far too much government in our lives. They would have you believe that free markets solve everything.

Yup, like lowering the cost of health care.

Whether you believe in Hobbes’ or Locke’s view of government and why it came into being, they both thought it was necessary. Locke’s was the philosophy that Jeffersonian ‘Democracy’ (large D intentional) was founded upon:

The national government is a dangerous necessity to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; it should be watched closely and circumscribed in its powers. Most Anti-Federalists from 1787-88 joined the Jeffersonians.  

This very fact, when held up to the current Tea Party rants against the government that their beloved ‘Founders’ believed was so necessary, puzzles me greatly.

That so many Americans, who have benefited so handsomely over the decades and generations, from this government by the people and for the people, could wish it away rather than fix it baffles me.

So, I went around the internet looking for reasons that government is good.

This is going to be one of my themes in the coming months on this blog.

A case of needing govenment, and perhaps more government, certainly not less.

Here I go again, flying in the face of ‘conventional’ wisdom - if you are of the ‘conservative’ persuation - and challenging assumptions.

We all go about our daily grind, bitching about the taxes we pay, and forgetting how much we get in return - that we take for granted - on a daily basis from that awful, intrusive government.

Here is an interesting excerpt from a website I’m intrigued with - Government is Good:

Ask yourself this question: “What has government done for me lately?”

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Local government occasionally gets it right

Saturday morning, we had the Outback filled to the brim with television sets, computer monitors and various electronic equipment, as we pulled out of the driveway on the way to our second try to get rid of it responsibly at an electronics recycling event. The last one hadn’t gone so well.

Earlier this winter, there was a similar event and it closed down almost before it could get started due to some really poor planning. Who could have foreseen, with the change over to digital television, that folks would want to get rid of the old CRT clunker?

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