Bloated and broken
Bloated and broken
The Orange-County Register was not the first to say it, but their essay published today (“Worsening presidencies,” Tribune-Herald, June 14), said it most eloquently: “We may have reached the point where it is inevitable that every president will be judged incompetent sooner or later because the federal government has simply grown so bloated that no one man or woman will ever be able to hold it accountable.”
Is this not something upon which conservatives and liberals can finally (though grudgingly perhaps) agree? Government has gotten so big and intrusive it’s becoming increasingly ineffective, even harmful, and both sides are increasingly becoming unhappy about it.
Search the Internet, for example, any of several stories about unnecessary government regulation of kids’ neighborhood lemonade stands.
Conservatives might want to reverse the slide while progressives might choose to double-down their bet on government. But both sides, I think, could agree we all want our freedom and, also, MORE EFFECTIVE government.
Just look at the lineup of scandal and controversy in the VA, the IRS, the NSA, EPA, FEMA, BLM — the list goes on and on.
Every future president, no matter what their political affiliation, will become humiliated by increasingly shocking scandals within the executive branch because it has become too big to manage effectively. Perhaps this point is something upon which all sides can finally agree and make it the basis of meaningful political compromise and cooperation.
Conservatives want smaller government; progressives want more responsive government. Reducing its size and complexity will help achieve both if it can be better managed!
Now … if only we could get our elected representatives to work together toward this goal instead of focusing on the demonization of the “other side” or on their next re-election campaigns.
You think?
Curtis Beck
Hilo
Few good options
The headline on your June 16 front page photo certainly (but belatedly) asked the right question — for a refreshing change! But as I read further in the article, the biased imperial spin still dominated the “message.”
The crucial question is not whether the White House should support Baghdad with air strikes, or — with perpetual warhawk Sen. John McCain’s opportunistic blame game — sending back U.S. occupation troops to Iraq.
The real debate should have taken place 12 years ago, before the fraudulent American invasion (and untold thousands of Iraqi and American casualties), that there would be no good options after Western invaders stirred up the mother of all hornet’s nests of sectarian violence.
Now that the American bull has run its wild rampage through the proverbial china shop, there are predictably very few pieces of “good options” left for a stable Middle East in the coming months.
Danny H.C. Li
Keaau