Why can?t the federal government do anything that would help us for real?
Why must our state politicians follow the federal lead?
Why is President Obama absorbed with being elected again when he didn?t accomplish what he should have the first time, other than giving good-sounding speeches?
Why don?t the Tea Party members want to do something real for the country instead of spending all their time on what to cut next?
Why must our politicians go off on tangents hoping to gain wide appeal instead of making real and lasting decisions about the fundamental realities that face us?
They all perturb me at a time when the country is in danger of sinking with its big old boots shoving the edges of the boat down further. I?m about to connect them to my recent study of bank robbing.
You see, I?m stuck here not being able to opinionate about the Marion County jail question election because it will be all over with by the time most of you read this, or choose not to read this. I am writing this before the election happens.
I was at Meade in southwestern Kansas this weekend as the guest speaker for the annual friends of the library banquet, where I was allowed to pontificate about the books I?ve written.
While there, my wife and I visited the Dalton Gang museum. These bank-robbing brothers were gunned down by the irate citizens of Coffeyville in the 1890s while trying to rob two institutions at once.
The Meade connection was due to the Daltons? sister living there in a house with a convenient tunnel built to outlaw housing in the barn. A nice fact I learned is that the Daltons were related to the Younger family, and to Jesse and Frank James. It sure is nice to keep family aptitudes intact.
The Dalton brothers fell onto hard times when they couldn?t find jobs in their professions as lawmen, and therefore took up a life of crime. Don?t worry, Sheriff Craft. If the jail issue failed, they?ll try again.
That?s the point where I first departed from only having a fine weekend to getting steamed up once more about our do-nothing politicians versus our real top issues.
As I see it, the real top issue, bar none, is increasing the energy supply, and losing our dependence on foreign oil.
A lot has been done on energy, given the creativity of our private industry with a little government promotion. But so much could be done in a much larger way.
Development of the wind-turbine farm in southern Marion County and the TransCanada Keystone pipeline across the county this year should have more real benefit to our county than anything done by state government alone, which mostly acted only to make sure no property tax would come to the county from Keystone for 10 years.
Energy program development on a large scale, through government help or without government help, will do more to help this country with real economic growth and higher pay scales than anything else. We need this more than the glib pronouncements about a service economy.
Perhaps Obama, the Tea Party, the Democrats and the Republicans would do better for us by securing themselves in a room throwing paper wads, and only coming out for national defense instead of hanging the rest of us with economic do-nothingness.
Consider that according to the information I could find, 70 percent of U.S. employment is now in service industries.
According to Rutgers Univer?sity, there was a 10 percent drop in U.S. consumer confidence in March, which is the highest recorded, although it has been matched a couple of times in the past.
There were 192,000 jobs created in the economy in February, and a monthly growth of 124,000 jobs is needed just to keep up with new workers entering the work force. Most of the jobs created were at declining pay scales.
Jeepers, you do-nothing politicians who are talking about cutting my Social Security, if those young people had good paying jobs, maybe they could pay for me like I did for others.
Even at a monthly job growth rate of 200,000, the statisticians say it would take until 2016 to get down to 6 percent unemployment.
According to researchers, the current rate of national economic growth is about 2.5 percent with 4 to 6 percent needed for recovery, and compared to 7.7 percent in 1934 and 8 percent in 1935 and 14.1 percent in 1936?those so-called depression years.
This all perturbs me.
Come on you sorry politicians. Let?s go for real energy growth and real opportunity before we all have to look for Dalton cousins again.
