Action plan

Since the election, I have been giving some thought to what I can be doing to further educate myself about our government... how it works, what are it's shortcomings, where we go from here. To that end, I have joined with a friend here who is very well-educated in politics and conservatism, and we are going to be forming a Conservative studies group after the new year, and hopefully will be joined with other like-minded folk who want to become better educated in these areas. I am also looking into sources of information, mainly about our Federal government budget... where our tax dollars are going. I am very interested in what we can do to cut spending, stop waste and corruption, and I keep coming back to the need for vigilance on the part of the voters. This requires better understanding of the government... this means doing our homework. I will be posting links, book titles, and other information here as I find it, in the hopes I can help others to become familiar with our government. I am pretty sure that the government we have today, while it resembles the one originally formed by our founding fathers, is far more complex than the original one, and with complexity comes too much room for inefficiency and corruption. Is there a way to simplify it? Are there better checks, balances, and reporting methods that can be put in place to ensure that our government is doing what it was designed to do? Can we EVER pay down the deficit and get back to living within our means? Fiscally speaking, these are disturbing times... I hope that we can return to a way of life that includes living within our means, both personally and as a nation. Life is so much easier when we are not being crushed under a mountain of debt! I think the coming year(s) will bring much change, and I'm hoping it is positive, not negative change for us all.
One item of conversation lately has been about ear-marks: whether to ban them, call a moritorium on them for a period of time, or leave them as is. The argument against banning them is that they represent a very small percent of our overall federal budget. I agree that banning them won't wipe out our deficit, but principally speaking, we need to return to a fundamental honesty that says we don't go behind each others' backs or sneak things into bills in the middle of the night. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing in the light of day, with full disclosure. Politicians will tell you that things can't get done without deal-making and 'you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours'. I think that way of doing things is what has brought us to the brink of financial ruin, and even though a lot of bills wouldn't get passed without that mind-set, I think we would be better off right now if Congress did less, not more of the same, and maybe did a little soul-searching about how they should conduct the people's business going forward. This may be a little old-fashioned, but I would really like to see this country return to the mind-set that believed that a man's word was his bond, when deals were made with a handshake, and teams of lawyers weren't needed to flood us with hyperbole and double-speak in order to protect everyone's rights! Is that naive? Maybe, but we've tried the other way, and look at the state of the world today! Not the same place our grandparents lived, or our parents! Let's do a little thinking over the next month or so, and see what we want to do about our dilemma... more of the same? Or should we get back to basics, and think about what we really value in life! Then let's remind our elected officials what we put them in office to do... clean house!