Tuesday is the big day…or is it. By all accounts turnout would seem to be a huge question mark for this early primary date. A lot of questions come to mind as to why and most of them have been discussed either here on this site or in a multitude of blogs and newspaper articles. The issue seems to be motivation…
The Georgia primary is coming earlier this year than ever before and that looks to be a contributor to a possible low turnout of voters. It’s a non-presidential election cycle and that hurts turnout as well. Again I’m certainly not the first to cover this ground but I’d like to try and motivate both sides to the polls with a little reality check.
When and if you vote on Tuesday consider a few facts, especially when voting for your choice of the Senate candidates. Washington is broken as bad as it ever has been. Congress gets a resounding ten or twelve percent approval rating and that’s on a good day! The sad part is that it seems like war or catastrophe are the only places that Republicans and Democrats can find common ground to work on together. My opinion is that if we can’t agree on spending cuts as a way to rein in our out of control budgets then we aren’t going to have the opportunity to argue much longer. Consider some of these budget items (and thanks to Americans for Prosperity for supplying the facts) that are the “black hole” for your tax dollars to be sucked into from your wallets and your kids and grandkids wallets.
The GSA spent over $6.7 million dollars on lavish conferences last year. You remember the news reports showing the director soaking in a hot-tub overlooking Las Vegas holding a wine glass. Yep you paid for it!
$12 million for retired chimps…I believe in taking care of our animals but I can’t even begin to understand this one.
How about $4.5 billion for federal phone subsidies for resort towns? The resorts appreciate your contribution to their bottom line. Tell your grandkids about this one. You probably could have had a few family vacations on the amount stolen from their wallets.
And then there’s $105 million for an aquarium in Brazil. Atlanta has an aquarium…Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus paid for most of it out of his pocket. Why are we contributing to anything in Brazil?
What’s my point? Go to the polls and vote for the person that you think shares your values and can also find some way to move the ball forward in Washington and get something done. Our system of government is set up for both sides to work together for common ground and yes some compromise. That’s a dirty word to some I know. Nobody gets everything they want…ever! We are a nation of hundreds if not thousands of different viewpoints and each one should be heard. The bottom line is that if we don’t compromise sometimes we get stalemate and that’s what we’ve had for a decade or so.
Vote on Tuesday and vote for someone that you believe will sit down and have a real conversation with the other side about doing things differently. What’s the definition of insanity…?
