2019 Fall October 20 Sunday

#Purple_Days_and_Golden_Nights

#My_Journey_19

#Fall_of_19

67 degrees this morning, 17% humidity 

Beautiful day yesterday, high around 81, plus the low humidity

Interesting day yesterday.  Did several tours , etc., and a wonderful show. 

Tomorrow (Oct. 21) will mark my first day at my “career” job with the Ciy of Liberal, Kansas 45 years ago.  Can’t say I would have been able to even come close to predicting  what would happen the next 45 years!  I certainly met a lot of very nice people and a few not so nice, but the nice people far exceeded the others.

There were cultural and regional differences in people and certainly procedures and laws, but I enjoyed working with the people at all of the areas I worked.  

Looking back, there are a lot of actions I am proud of, and some I wished I could redo, but I hope I always learned from my mistakes. 

I also was able to see the change in the type of person who ran for local office (and also County, State and federal).  This was a “general” trend, certainly does not reflect on even the majority of elected officials I met, but the trend was still there.

The trend changed from “I want to help the community” to “single interest” people who ran due to a grudge, self-interest or just ran as an “anti” rather than a positive platform.  

Big money, even in local government, trying to buy politicians really increased. 

Sometimes these people tended to grab the agenda and overrun the goals, agenda an actions of the persons who just wanted to improve the general community.

In any event, the “single interest” elected officials were usually able to confuse the issues enough so that frequently little got done.  

In my opinion, the trend substantially hurt the ability of local government to serve all residents effectively.  

Only a few times have I seen a real idiot elected, but unfortunately  it happens.

The “term limits “ of the State governments have substantially hurt the effectiveness of State Legislatures. Generally the “term limited  have a short-term thinking span, not long-term, since they are oriented to either getting what they can out of the government in the short term or are so oriented to a single [or several issue) that they don’t have the long term interest of the state in mind.

I am sure term-limits appear to make sense to many people, but they don’t. 

As I noted yesterday, if the “money” could be taken out of politics, especially the huge corporate “pay for play” “donations” and the obscene “non-profits” who are simply lobbyists for special causes that damage ordinary citizens, it would be much easier for voters to hold elected officials accountable. 

That’s it for now, Sunday, October 20, 2019.

#Resist