Don Enss
Whenever I read about
the failure of any leaders in doing what any individual or group expects, I’m
reminded that it is always easier to be a Monday morning quarterback. It’s a
lot harder when you’re looking at two three-hundred pound defensive ends
bearing down on you and you have to decide whether to stay in the pocket or
scramble for your life.
In an ideal world, political leaders would operate in a vacuum
and they could decide what is the best course for the nation to follow and then
it would be implemented, not that this would be good for the citizenry, but we don’t live in that world. In most elections only a
little more than one-half of the registered voters vote for the candidate who
becomes the winner; in 1992, it was less than one-half. Whether you agree or
disagree with our system, that’s the way it works and it’s not likely that that part
will ever change.
In my opinion, where we
can have the best chance to influence the political process is by working to
reduce the influence of money in politics. When Klein writes about “the oil and
gas industry spent just under $400,000 a day lobbying Congress and government
officials,” that’s obscene. So what can we do?
Here are two links:
https://apps.tn.gov/tncamp-app/public/search.htm/
I’ll show you
how to search for elected officials and candidates in Tennessee and then you
need to share this knowledge with your friends and neighbors and you need to
write letters to your local papers asking who is influencing your elected officials and site specific information to support your question. I’ll connect what you learn on this with
the site below and you may recognize some of the names.
I agree that the best way we can influence the political process is by getting money out. In my opinion as long as money is able to influence policy, the policy is most always going to be slanted towards one side of whatever the issue may be and most likely that slant will be towards where the money is coming from. I believe we would stand a lot better chance at actually bettering society if we got back to the influences on policy being what the people want as a whole and still in turn benefit the country, and not what the major corporations want to benefit them. But then again that is an ideal world viewpoint and like you said, we don't live in that world.And very true, its always easier to be a Monday morning quarterback, hindsight's 20/20
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