Perceptions and questions these days...

Have we forgotten our manners? What kind of arrogance goes so far as to make anyone think they have the right to bomb someone’s car or home?! What a difference Mendocino CA is from other places in the world! They have voted in a law that says each of us has the right to self-governance, and that such a  right is primary over big government. This reminds me that all government governs by the consent of the governed. In sorting out the uproar over Luxembourg as a tax haven my thoughts ran like this… “Yeah…so what? There have always been tax havens…I’d want a tax haven too, if I had money. Why shouldn’t they have an opportunity to get away from government and all those stupid taxes?” But then I started thinking a little deeper, and my thoughts shifted. “Probably most of the people with money are the big businessmen running the government… you’d think they would be smart enough to take down laws that impose so many taxes… but if they took down tax laws, how would they impose taxes on us – the so-called common people who work our buns off and have so little to show for it partly because we have to pay so many taxes… come to think of it, why should they be able to hide money when we can’t? It’s not fair! How dare they try to sneak money into tax havens!!” A friend was complaining about the takeover by the Republicans in our recent elections. “Don’t worry,” I said to him. “In two years people will be running the Republicans out of town and replacing them with Democrats, which probably won’t do any good because there’s no difference between them. Nothing is going to get better until people wake up and realize that the two-party system is nothing but a distraction from the real work of running one’s life, making wise decisions, helping your neighbor, and keeping your word.” Speaking of Republicans, government has now spilled so far out of bounds that it has become a shapeless, useless, meaningless glob of rules that contradict themselves in every direction. Government should be about wise leadership for a group. A government that is running drugs, food systems, businesses, prison systems, education, the climate, and medicine is no longer government, it’s a  disaster!