David

Karki

Read David's bio and previous columns here

May 26, 2008

The Enemy Is In the Mirror

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

So said a character once in Walt Kelly's comic strip “Pogo.” Truer words could not have been spoken in relation to our current circumstances. The answers to our problems are actually quite simple, but those in power simply refuse to implement them or allow anyone else to do so. They stand as a roadblock, then have the gall to disingenuously complain about those very same symptoms, which they have caused and whose treatment they prevent.

Gasoline is upwards of $4 a gallon due to the high price of crude oil. The chronically compromised supply lines cause prices to wildly increase any time that last umbilical cord of petroleum is threatened – be it from hurricanes in the gulf, political instability in the Middle East or two rapidly growing countries in India and China drastically increasing demand.

The way to stabilize the market and bring prices down is simple and obvious – get more. We have plenty under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the Gulf of Mexico (which China is accessing in Cuban waters), off both ocean coasts and even in western North Dakota. Just get these resources and build the refinery infrastructure to process it, and the rest takes care of itself. We'll have flexibility to handle other supply-line disruptions, leverage to use with OPEC and so on.

But what does Congress do instead? Puts all of our domestic supplies off limits at the behest of the enviro-wacko lobby, prevents any refinery construction so that an aging system operates at no less than 97 percent of capacity, passes silly blend requirements that forces this heavily-burdened system to produce 30 or so different mixes and then yanks oil company executives before committees so they can pompously grandstand for TV cameras and re-direct the blame onto them.

The same thing goes for electricity. The grid is already burdened, and hybrid cars stand to increase demand a good deal more if put into widespread use. So naturally, Congress refuses to build any new nuclear power plants (and a few states have flat-out banned them with moratoriums) to modernize or replace aging ones and to handle the demand they have personally put upon it.

Or how about illegal immigration? Most folks know from simple common sense that the first thing you do to prevent illegal entry is shut and lock the door. But Congress not only won't secure the Mexican border with a solid barrier, they demagogue anyone who suggests doing so as racist. So again, they cause the problem, stand in the way of the solution and direct the blame elsewhere.

I could go on and on, but I trust the point is clear. For all these 535 phony liars will do this fall to convince you they have the answer if only you'll re-elect them, the real answer is to throw all the bums out. As Ronald Reagan so presciently said in his First Inaugural Address: “Government isn't the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

But this big, bad government didn't just spring up overnight – we put them there. And we keep putting them back there every two, four or six years and at a 95 percent rate no matter how rotten they are. Do we honestly think that every other representative or senator but our own is the problem? That if only all those other people would stop voting in crooks and idiots, we'd be just fine? Trust me – if you're reading this, your guy is the problem and needs to go. And as I write this, my guy is the problem and needs to go.

If we would just lower that incumbent re-election rate to 80 or 85 percent, we'd send a message too loud for even an utterly disconnected elitist Congress to ignore. But that means we have to get off our butts and, at minimum, make a point of voting anti-incumbent. Perhaps even start additional political parties and run for office ourselves. After all, if it's left to only corrupt Democrats and Republicans to seek office, then we're going to get exactly what we have been – a “choice” that's not really one at all.

And if we won't do this, then quit being surprised and outraged that we wind up with a Capitol full of scoundrels who do so well in screwing this country up and preventing that which would fix it. 

“There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. [...] Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.”  – Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

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