The American People Need to Demand Accountability of Government Officials

Read the news on almost any given day and you're likely to encounter at least one item that demonstrates poor planning, poor decision making, or outright incompetence in some governmental agency. In recent news, we've learned that a great amount of the illegal marijuana crops grown in the United States are actually grown in our national parks. We've also learned that the Bureau of Land Management is contemplating euthanizing 30,000 wild horses in their care because the population of wild horses will break the Bureau's $1 billion annual budget.

Before we react to the information in these articles, we need to take a few moments to dissect how and why the situations have occurred in the first place. In this era of instant information, each of us can become so overloaded with info that there is little time for more than a knee-jerk reaction to what we read/hear. I believe this plays right into the plans of our elected officials and those in government jobs.

Instead of each of us--all of us--taking a step back and asking "How did this situation come to be in the first place?" we react to what we've read, hoping that a quick or easy solution will manifest itself and we can move on to something else.

Think about it: If you went to your boss and reported that a situation under your control had gone awry, would your boss simply shake his/her head and readily agree to increase your budget? I doubt it. There would be lots of explaining to do about how you let the situation become what it was, and depending on the severity of the situation, your job may be in jeopardy. That is common sense. But all of that goes out the window when it is governmental agencies who fail to plan and/or act in the best interest of the American citizens by doing their jobs competently.

How is it that we have a federal immigration department, and yet more than 12 million illegal immigrants live within our borders? How can we believe that a government that can't control our borders can then keep us safe from terrorists? The federal government has long waged its "war on drugs," yet on property within that same government's control there are crops of marijuana?

Until we as citizens demand accountability of our elected officials and those working government agencies, these type of things, and more, will continue, draining the taxpayer coffers for inefficient and sometimes blatant incompetency. This type of behavior would not be tolerated in our private sector jobs; it should not be tolerated in government.

Iraq Not the Only Battle We Are Losing

America has many wars declared, but most of them are wars declared right here at home. There is the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war on prostitution, the war on illiteracy--and probably more than I've named here. Most of these "wars" have seen little positive action and certainly not enough to say that even important battles have been won.

These "wars" are often declared by elected officials to grab headlines and the actions taken in the name of ridding society of the "evils" result in someone making money and many result in further crowding our prisons. America is the land of freedom, yet we have more people incarcerated percentage-wise than any country in the world.

Common sense would dictate that the war on drug use will have a success rate no better than that of prohibition. All prohibition served to do was to give organized crime a stronger foothold in America; the drug trade is no different. There has to be a better answer than the current way we deal with drug use. Legalizing drugs wouldn't mean we endorse their use; it would mean we accept the reality of the situation and have decided not to make laws on moral issues. How refreshing would that be?

Legalizing drug use would give the government an additional revenue source thereby eliminating the need for the creation of more taxes. Legalizing drug use would take some of the power away from organized crime and would certainly reduce crime in the streets, thereby aiding another war--that of the war on crime.

No politician wants to take a public stand on the real common sense solutions for our internal wars; it might jeopardize his/her career. But the adage "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten" is as true for the wars in America as it is applied to our personal lives.

So, what's in it for the powers that be to maintain the status quo? This is a question we need to ask ourselves rather than turning our heads away from the reality of the situation. In many ways, Americans have become like the ostrich, sticking our heads in the ground to avoid the things that frighten or upset us. But that isn't the attitude that got our country its independence or its position of greatness in the world. It is, however, the attitude that guarantees elected officials and big business will continue to put their values and profits ahead of all else. If we don't get our heads out of the ground, we won't be able to see our freedoms slipping away, one by one.