Volume 10, Issue 43
This midterm election is an exception in that the people’s authority to direct desired government policy has been debarred.
Instead of taking heed of the public’s will, political leaders are already orchestrating strategies to drive the debate in an effort to control presidential politics in the 2024 cycle. Within two weeks, media news airwaves will be dominated by speculation of who the major political parties’ nominees will be. The people’s business of everyday safety, security, government service, and opportunity will be neglected, if not ignored, in deference to national agendas so despised by citizens today.
It would be one thing if presidential aspirations were just part of the national dialogue. It is another when all things local suffer through absolute lack of primacy. Unfortunately, every citizen will be required to constantly hold political leaders accountable for the intended result of their midterm vote. How is this achievable? It starts with addressing change and accountability at the local level.
Getting inflation under control will require discipline in government spending. During the COVID shutdown, businesses were expected to adjust, reorganize, and manage cutbacks. Individuals, even though subsidized, were mandated to make sacrifices. Why is it that no state government cut back employment, costs, or general administrative budgets?
The federal government incomprehensibly continues to grow in size and cost without requisite ratios of efficiencies in providing services. In other words, it is as if the word productivity does not exist in the federal government vocabulary. By many credible studies, the federal government could cut administrative costs by 25% and no citizen at the local level would receive reduced services or know the difference.
Demanding government structural reform to reduce costs and share, in partnership, sacrifice with the general public should be a national mandated objective, not a foreign unrecognized afterthought.
The United States education system has been falling behind the rest of the industrialized world failing America’s youth. COVID exacerbated existing systemic problems. Recent studies have concluded from the results of proficiency test scores that two-thirds of children in primary education are now behind one to two years of their prescribed level of learning. It is critical that, as a nation, we do not timidly conceal this learning gap for purposes of convenience. Not providing a generation of children a proper education or skill set to compete for jobs and opportunities in the 21st century is child abuse. Such underserved pupils will end up with limited options. It would even be worse government policy to relegate them to government programs of state support. This would be the ultimate act of abandonment.
Homelessness, crime, and border security will only get worse in the short term if national leaders primarily focus on maintaining or gaining power through the Executive branch of government. Coupled with education and unrestricted growth of government, these issues are the immediacies of local impact that are the matter of concern and priority to the American public’s peace of mind.
Americans as citizens should be able to rest in full confidence that, by exercising and committing to their right to vote, they have fulfilled their obligation in giving their counsel for the future course and policy of federal, state, and local governments.
No such respect for the democratic chain of command of authority is apparent.
The world finds itself in a season wherein governments disavow the people’s wisdom and jurisdiction to provide for their own families spiritually and physically as they see fit. There is a cold wind in the air. Totalitarianism is again rising from the ashes of failed experiments replete in history of governments devoted only to their unquenchable thirst for power in lieu of the people’s inalienable rights of authority over their own pursuits of happiness.
Within the next few weeks, new themes will emerge from governments, some threatening, others mellifluous. Both will be designed to distract the public from the issues baneful to the foundations of society. Americans must, when the sun comes up tomorrow, be vigilant in the season…
For this election is a stake in the ground that only citizens, by virtuous commitment, can tether the government to the citizens’ will for policy initiatives at the local level.
Stabilizing society at the local level provides the foundation to stabilize the country.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?