By Irving Leemon, Contributing Columnist
(This was written on September 7th at 1:30 PM, before the Republican debates.) Our state legislators in their wisdom have taken one of our cherished freedoms away. They have decided that all of California’s electoral votes in national elections will go to the presidential candidate with the highest national popular vote count. If I vote for a Republican and a Democrat gets the most popular votes nationally, it’s as if I did not vote. This appears to me to be an end run around the one citizen one vote, and Electoral College required by the United States constitution.
In the previous system this state’s electoral votes were apportioned according to each district’s vote, therefore, each vote had more meaning. On another subject, the Texas governor keeps harping on how he has increased the number of jobs in Texas. The only problem is, the jobs that he “created” are the lowest skilled and lowest paying jobs available. Most of the new jobs are paying just barely above this nation’s poverty level. People in those new jobs are having trouble meeting their bills and putting food on the table. And, health insurance is practically none existent for them.
They want federal government to stop paying for health insurance, do away with social security, government supervised and subsidized health care, publish poverty level data, and also stop paying for education. The proposal that disaster relief be paid for by taking the money from other programs would prove disastrous for this country’s economy. What programs would they raid to pay for it? It really sounds as if they want to do away with disaster relief altogether. Rick Perry and the Tea Party want to dismantle the safe guards against total collapse of the economy and other programs that have been put in place during the last 70 years.
Until the government starts to start funding projects like refurbishing the nation’s infrastructure, this economy will continue to be in the doldrums. Those projects will put people back to work and reduce the frustration people are feeling. Like the great depression, crime is on the way up. Robberies are increasing at a fast pace, and bomb threats and shootings are happening every day. People are becoming more and more frustrated in their attempts to keep themselves and their families’ body and sole together. It also appears as if they are attempting to recreate the robber barons of old by eliminating competition with the elimination of controls to allow companies to swallow each other up and create monopolies. If this is what Rick Perry and the Tea Party mean by less government, I don’t want any part of it. Agree, Disagree? Email ilemon@socal.rr.com.