Home of Today's Common Sense

In the business world our shining star would be promoted to ever higher positions with ever newer challenges or expand the business and organize others. In public management where mediocrity is praised our star might be discouraged or “promoted” to a job that doesn’t threaten the boss. Occasionally, our star will continue upward, not as frequently as would be best but more often than might be expected. I can think of a number of stars that genuinely have risen in the U.S. Customs Service that I worked in.

In the political world our star builds a constituency and moves up the hierarchy of political service possibly becoming President. Other stars find a niche with which they are comfortable and do a great job. Others evolve into political bosses or move into party politics and develop their constituency with influence pedaling. These are the folks that I refer to as rulers because they choose to administer the affairs of government to expand personal power and influence so as to benefit those who can do for them; and say, “yes sir!”

These folks are not basically bad, they are heroes for answering the call to service and for a time have performed a great service to the community. Then as the management skills develop and the personal influence and power grows our star, instead of seeking a new challenge focuses on increasing his personal prestige and power. The result is that more and more of what appear to be benefits are showered on the people, which he now sees as less than himself. This largess serves to lessen their choices and make them more dependent on our now tarnished star who has become a full-fledged political boss or an in fact ruler. Frequently however, this political boss is a group, referred to as a political machine, each member feeding from each other.

At local levels of government and public organizations the machine is more easily to observe! We have all seen the perennial club or association president who is always there and always has the final decision; perhaps the PTA president that always does more than anyone else because apathy has set in with others in the membership. Sometimes this is good because the group gets the job done far better than if everyone were expected to contribute equally. In that case it is likely that nothing would get done.

When things go wrong it doesn’t happen all at once, there are incremental changes that increase the scope and power of government and our representatives that can be seen if one just looks.

We have seen many examples that have the appearance of power grabbing such as the debacle involved in the County leasing Island property to a developer over the objections of so many residents. Also consider, The University of Texas seizing our community college just to secure taxing authority to use in the funding the accumulation of more power. Though it has a positive by product it takes away more of the individual powers from each of us and then forces us to pay for it in taxes

Just as the forgoing examples stick out as a potential for good people to be swayed to “The Dark Side”, there are others that begin with the very best of intentions, until the concepts are adapted to government control. As an illustration, just think about the impact of the expansion of the historic district to West Brownsville. Perhaps even consider the concept of the power of the “Heritage Review Committee” deciding on restrictions of construction, renovation, and property use and charging $50 to seek a review of a decision. Then consider the recent arrest of certain public officials who are charged with enforcing such rules.

We live in a city where in my opinion there are not enough police officers to enforce the all the laws our representatives keep passing and the city wants to grab more power.

Every election we all have the opportunity to reconsider what kind of government we really want. Many of us have always voted solely for whoever the party tells them is good for them as though we have not the ability to decide, even more don’t vote and in doing so just add their vote to the status quo.

Even though I work for the success of my party, I will evaluate all the candidates, mine and those of other parties. I will vote for the individual that I believe will do the best for the community during that particular term. I do not consider whether I think the candidate is electable, I vote to best address the issues.

One of the ideas the Libertarians have that has an extraordinary amount of merit, it whenever there is an election there is always a choice, and that one can be “None of the above”. If “none of the above” wins the election is restarted with some new choices.

Though I can see some advantages to supporting a “party machine” (especially if I was king of the machine) it really lessens the liberties we have and our overall freedom. Listen for politicians that tell you that you are disadvantaged and incompetent to accomplish things for yourself and then promise to fix all your problems with a little government money that they propose to control. That government money is extorted from you under penalty of prison or loss of property, in the form of the property, sales and income taxes. If there weren’t so many expensive programs to make the politicians look better you could actually pay your astronomical electric bills, tuition for your kids because you are a hard working legal resident of the U.S. and make just a little too much to qualify for the benefits, or your mortgage. To see the other leaders that are part of the feeding machine just look at the very expensive full page political for those who have signed up to spend your money the way the machine says.

We need more choices and freedoms not less.

We, the community, need to rethink what the job of government really is and determine if it has gone too far.