I heard that America was founded for the people. I don’t think that’s true now, and I don’t think it’s been true for a long, long time.
We have odds on American Idol. We have groups of people who band together every week to buy lottery tickets in the hopes that they are the ones who will strike it rich. Yet gambling is bad, says our leaders. Don’t they work for us?
Somehow they must be correct. They must be protecting us, right? After all, they sure nabbed those illegal gambling machines! Uh, yes, but at the same time (in the same state, no less), they say it must be okay to gamble if the profits benefit the schools.
Meanwhile, other parts of our government are busy raising the red flag because someone paid off their debt (via), spending billions on ‘upgrading’ our security while increasing our protection not at all and managing to treat one of perhaps our closest allies in the Middle East with utter contempt.
To take a line from a movie with which I share almost no political views, the government is far too caught up in keeping their jobs and needs to get back to doing their jobs. The amount of money we could save because of the sheer amount of politician layoffs would be incredible. Of course, we would have to find something to do with them since they are obviously useless for the regular world, like the rest of us. I’m sure we can think of something. Maybe they can drive school buses.
Update: Why does the UAE matter? They’re doing cool things. (via) I hate to tell you, but the world is a getting a lot less US-centric these days. Might be a good idea to pay attention. Oh yeah, and Arvind lives there too.