I wondered if I might have an old postcard featuring any of the State Capitols and yes, I do..... this beautiful vintage image of the State of Washington's Capitol in Olympia (not to be confused with the National Capitol in Washington D.C.).
Results of the elections across the United States just seven days away will determine in part who makes the laws under the domes of fifty state capitol buildings. The governors and law makers there will staff their offices and the staff will dive into research on key and bogus issues. Legislators and staff will have untold numbers of meetings to discuss their findings and strategies on how to progress on or sit on given issues. Some will bury facts that voters should be made privy to; they will decide that we don't get to decide. Most will not bury facts but will share them through the filter of politics; they cannot help themselves.
The best of them will put personal biases aside, and, having hired a diverse enough staff to assure they are receiving broad information in order to be fully and deeply briefed, and having asked hard questions and sought opinions from constituents and experts alike, will seek out the best of them on the "other" side of the aisle -- and that minority of combined thinkers, compromisers, risk-takers, and truth-tellers will outshine all the others bustling and hustling under the state capitol dome.
Take the microcosm of the functioning of a single state capitol, multiply and multiply and multiply that and you have the governmental maze of the Capitol in Washington D.C. It is heady stuff.....all spinning in action and mired in inaction, and informing the early 21st Century. Do not be so overwhelmed or so disappointed or so apathetic that you would forfeit your right to vote. Cast your vote. And please help re-elect and elect the best of them.
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17 comments:
Well, I definitely won't forfeit my right to vote. Coming up soon! Thanks for the reminder!
I am definitely voting. Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer are both getting my vote.
Diane T~ Even sooner here in Oregon, where we have vote-by-mail. Mine has gone out, and according to our local paper 15% of the people in our county have already voted. That percentage seems low, so I hope it will swell in the days up to and including Election Day. :)
La Belette Rouge~ Great! Your vote is exactly what mine would be if I were in CA! (I still have my Brown for President t-shirt...no kidding!)
Inspiring writing Lydia (am back on line btw - thanks for your email)
The more i work for different companies the more i believe that even the "best of us" can only point us in a direction of what they vaguely hope will be the right one - there's so many other factors at play and history has shown us time and again there will be rises and falls
I tend to think that paying politician's only encourages them - if they really believe in representing the people then they should keep day jobs when not in office (as members of parties here do) and the only pay they should get in office is free board and lodging for the duration.
It's hard for the likes of Gordon Brown and David Cameron and people like the Bush family to have even the merest inkling of how their decisions will affect people - if their livelihoods were at risk as well then maybe we wouldn't have had the bank crisis and be looking forward to 30 years of recessession.
OK rant over - loved the postcard and loved your passion here.
OH - and a good example: a couple of years ago you might remember the Matrix-Churchill scandal. The upshot was that a UK firm (Matrix Churchill) was selling parts to Saddam Hussein that he intended to turn into a super weapon. Matrix-Churchill ended up going bankrupt as a result of the scandal and a lot of people lost their job, but it turned out that the papers agreeing the sale had (in his junior minister days) gone through the hands of then Prime Minister John Major.
Not a single Conservative politician lost their job over the scandal - Major's response to being asked if he had approved the sales was along the lines of "the documents may have passed through my hands - i don;t remember"
Ohhhh, I love the postcard :)
We vote by mail and have already voted. Just waiting to read the results Nov 3rd. with my fingers crossed that the good ones we have will be re-elected & the new good ones will out the bad ones!
Pixies~ I am glad you are back online...you were very brave. :)
What you said about paying politicians sounds much like what my husband has been saying lately, stemming from an ultra-affluent candidate for governor griping about Oregon waitresses getting tips when we have the highest minimum wage in the U.S. Let that jerk try to live like the majority of Americans (obviously, he did not get my vote).
I always love it when you share some UK history, because I really don't know much about it - - so thanks for this information.
Looking to the Stars~ Thank you for using the word "re-elected" because I thought of that last night as I was going to sleep and realized that I should edit my wording in the last sentence...so that has been taken care of!
I did not realize that Colorado also votes by mail. I guess I am used to it now, still seeing the pros and cons...
Diane T~ If you happen to return here I wanted you to know that I tried to visit your blog, but there is no link to it or a website there on your Blogger profile page.
Arizona votes by mail and I sent my ballot in the day after I got it. I had been studying the initiatives and was prepared. This time the rest was easy. I would not vote for a single Republican now if he/she walked on water so I just checked all Democrat candidates..
Darlene~ Oregon also, but I didn't make it quite the following day. Re: your other sentences: ditto. ditto. ditto. ;)
btw - if you pop over to my blog there's a new post about my new cat - i know you like cats...
I attended a woman only demonstration for Neil Abercrombie, the Democratic candidate for Governor and was surprised at how much it meant to me to be there in solidarity with other women.
I am voting today.
Pixies~ Great new look to your blog, and, of course, great new cat!
Hattie~ That sounds so inspiring and invigorating. I hope he wins!
The first time I voted was in a neighbor's garage. When I lived in San Antonio. we used these huge voting machines with levers. There was even a lever for a straight party vote.
seriously...if you dont vote, you lose your voice...if we want to keep it we got to use it...
K~ What an amazing place to vote, first time or any time! I am surprised that a garage would be considered as an official polling place. And a lever for straight party voting to boot...wow!
The first time I voted was at the University of Nevada, Reno, gymnasium. I sure don't remember ever using levers so it must have been a marker-type ballot. I voted for George McGovern for President and walked out feeling like my life had just changed.
Brian Miller~ I could not agree with you more, and simply do not understand people who don't vote (my husband's ex-wife, what a twit, was one of them).
The "paying politicians" point relays into what is bankrupting so many states: the excessive pay and benefits that go to public employee unions. These unions aren't sticking it to corporate fatcats: they are sticking it to us, and instead of causing factories to close, they harm public services and poor people are the ones that suffer the most from it.
It's a major problem, and I hope each state with a governor race remembers that the priority of state governments should be serving the public, not padding the hefty wallets of government workers.
For example, a minor change in the pension system would save the State of Michigan a billion dollars.
dmarks~ You offer an interesting twist to the discussion on "paying politicians." I won't speak for Don't Feed the Pixies, but I was speaking of elected officials, i.e., those who have been hired by the votes of the people. It would be interesting to see if these millionaire/billionaire candidates would actually want the job if they were paid minimum wage.
Where unions need to certainly adjust to these times I do not fault them for their efforts on behalf of common public employees. I worked for the state of Oregon from 1989 to 2000, not always in positions in agencies that even had union representation, and I have less than $80,000 waiting for me in my pension packet. I still have insurance through the state because my husband is in mid-management there, but we just had a $20,000 "pick-up" in his life insurance cut out completely effective in 2011. This cutback is being called a "minor change in the pension system," but I don't think that $20,000 per each state employee is enough to solve the budget mess here. Also, my husband is not represented by the union and can be let go at whim. He has a CPA and is working as a public servant by choice, but could have earned much more in private industry (when there were jobs in the private sector, that is). Do not lump all public employees under the umbrella of your fair or unfair union banner because not all public employees' jobs are protected by union contracts.
My heart goes out to individual public employees who have become the scapegoat for all the ills of our society. They are all taxpayers and in most cases work for less than their counterparts in private industry. The benefits that so many fault them for have helped them to maintain middle class standards of living. When many of these workers lose their jobs in continuing staff cutbacks in the coming year (my husband's may be among them) some will begin that slide downward out of the middle class to join the poor that you mentioned are suffering the most. And that is a good trend?
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