Sailing to Oblivion: June 20, 2017

Odd thing is, there is not a city council in this country that could pass a law the way our United States Senate is doing. Why? One wonders.

Why would we hold local politicians to a higher standard than national ones? Local ones may make decisions that affect us more directly, “where the rubber meets the road,” and all that. But they lack the power, as individual bodies of government, to destroy the economy, the world, or our planet. The ones in Washington can accomplish all those things, and now seem hell-bent on doing just that, and doing it in secret. Why? One wonders. As a social-media post asked recently, “Why is everything not enough?”

Further, my experience with city governments, and it is an exhaustive one, demonstrates that the leaders most often seem to be trying to build something, solve a problem, or make ends meet. They, in the vast majority of cases, attempt to look after us.

But we watch them, the women and men who run our cities, just the same. We make the operate in the sunlight. We make their methods transparent. We make their records public and available to the press. We hold them accountable. We do, in a surprising number of cases, kick them out it they don't do right. More often than not, they behave accordingly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our senators did the same? Perhaps they would if we started selecting them by performance and not by party.

That is the question I ponder after reading the news of June 6, 2017.

Just wondering.