Politcal Responsibility »
Eight months ago, I wrote about my ongoing issues with animal licensing. In that post, I mentioned that my representative, Nancy Carter, didn't believe that the animal could be seized.
I also spoke with now-departed council member Lynn Wheeler about the code, and she agreed. Yet in that same post, I mentioned that I spoke with the CMPD, and that was in fact not the case. They are responsible for enforcing the code, and they will seize the animal if necessary.
This should illustrate one principle that's readily missed by most: That our elected officials simply don't know the law. Often, they vote on these laws, but they don't know the entire contents. This is a local example, but consider this national one: A recent spending bill was passed by congress that allows particular members of the House and the Senate "access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein." At least one member of Congress has indicated that this provision was inserted by mistake.
How can that happen? It's actually quite easy when the entire bill is more than 3500 pages long. Who is going to read that? Nobody. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there wasn't a single member who had read the bill in its entirety. It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a single adviser to a member who hadn't read the whole thing. Yet it passed.
It happens locally too (as if you needed another example). Bills, even well-intentioned ones, are stuffed with all sorts of things, and people who are already pressed for time accept the bill at face value and for maximum image. So they end up adding more and more junk to the books, making it more and more difficult to keep up, thus providing less and less time to read everything, and... well, you get the picture.
I know that we just went through - or are still going through - an election. But this isn't just a national issue that needs deciding every four years when we elect a new president. It needs to start at home. Take a look around you and you'll see that this sort of waste is present in nearly every piece of government. Maybe it's time that this changed.
