It’s time to take a stand. And, it’s up to us, the voting
public, to draw the line in the sand. If not now, when?
Government struggles to solve problems facing the nation, state
It’s time to take a stand. And, it’s up to us, the voting public, to draw the line in the sand. If not now, when?
Our governments are broken, structurally unsound, leaving legislators unable to focus on the issues and the problems percolating from Washington on down to every city, county and agency in America. At the national level, politicians are more focused on pleasing party leaders – on both sides – and are adhering to ideology rather than working on creative solutions.
At the state level, we have an election in which candidates bash each other over who is more conservative and spending tens of millions of dollars to win a job that pays hundreds of thousands. At both levels they only seem to listen to corporations and lobbyists with big wallets and not to their real constituents. Something is wrong, terribly.
Voters tired of negative campaigning
We need go beyond who is spending money on slick commercials and mailers that point out the flaws of the opposing candidate. Tuesday, Republican gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, and Democratic candidate Jerry Brown argued over who is going to release personal tax returns, and – like school children – who would do it first. Locally, Santa Clara County Supervisorial candidate Forrest Williams told a group of people at a candidate forum Tuesday that he wants “to see how we can decrease costs without reducing services. And I think we should create opportunities to generate revenue so we can be more self-sustaining.”
Time to hold politicians accountable
So, what can voters do? We need to ignore the negative campaigning. We need to do our homework and demand candidates get specific. Williams’ quotes are mere platitudes with no substantive information.
How exactly does he hope to decrease costs without reducing services? And what revenue generation is he talking about? Become an informed voter, understand the issues, then vote for the person you think will best fix the problems we face, regardless of party.
After the election, we need to hold our politicians accountable. They need to follow through on promises. They need to listen to the people that live in their districts and not just the party representatives. Send e-mails, call their office, attend meetings. Demand their best. We should expect no less.
