I've not written this week - partly due to some pressing needs for time and mostly because I keep one of the news channels on during my work time and after a few hours of talking heads and incredible bullheadedness I go back to my Internet radio and just turn off the TV sound because, in honesty, I've heard all this before. Now we are at the cliff - really right there - and there a lot of people who don't see it yet. I ran into one at the supermarket yesterday....just standing in line and this fella was talking to his wife and complaining about the cost of food in the basket and this was, of course, the result of the stimulus package and the waste-fraud-abuse yada yada. I opined generally that since food and energy weren't part of the "inflation" index and wasn't considered in any government policy and of course my observation wasn't appreciated one whit. He opined in return that it would be prudent for me to mind my own business.
Seeing that he was wound up like an eight day clock I backed off but realized that the entire problem was just right there in that line. This fella didn't get it that food and fuel aren't factored in to inflation and efforts to keep inflation in check (there isn't any otherwise) don't care about your supermarket basket or the gas costs in getting from home to market. He wasn't aware at all that the stimulus package didn't have, as a purpose, the creation of new jobs, but the "stem the tide" of a freight train of unemployment that was on the tracks headed our way. When the banks stopped lending (like they have now), there is no money in the system - dry as Texas as the saying goes - and that one package was like an insufficient life buoy to a drowning man.
The sum of it was this fella was filled up with some information but not a lot of it and the little that he had wasn't the result of an engaged mind trying to figure it out but a passive mind sitting back and taking what comes to him in the intellectual soup line. In turn, he opines in a market line and raises that frail voice to Washington every election cycle and elects based on his understanding of things - and that is where we are; an elected Congress filled with people who got there because the electorate is like this fella in the market line.
So here we are. Some folks running around the halls of government as a result of a fella who has no curiosity or energy to get more information or, even worse, has it handed to him in whatever form it comes and just takes it and says "yessir...thank you master" for whatever gruel came his way.
Looking at that gaggle of geese in congress - well, I might as well look at myself as I am just one party to blame, just like that fella in the line at the market.