I LOATHE housework. My sibling would love to do nothing else. Sometimes we’ve wondered if we had the same parents.
That is not to say that I do not do it or that I’m bad at it. I just hate doing it. I’d rather go out and clean the barn, horse trailer, or get filthy stretching fence, etc. But I generally wait until the weather heats up and going outside gets to be impossible, then I’ll do housework. It’s not spring cleaning around here. It’s summer cleaning. What the heck.
But there comes a time for everyone that you have to pull EVERYTHING out of the closets and reacquaint yourselves with the contents. You know what I mean. Oh, there’s that _____ I thought I’d lost! Shoot, I can’t wear that anymore. Crap, look at the cat hair on that. Look at the moth holes in that one. And you try on, sort, and throw out, give away, and wash stuff. Then make a list to go shopping because, well, your closet shrank some stuff. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
And then there’s the drawers, under the furniture, behind stuff on shelves, back behind things in cabinets, and, oh, did you clean the upper levels of the kitchen? Then on to things like porches, basements, and garages if you have them. Don’t forget the gutters.
Do I do all this every year? Mostly. I won’t claim to be perfect, but I’ll hit a darn good lick at it. Why? Because if I don’t, nobody else will and it will still be there.
That’s my point about our government. Nobody has done a good cleaning for quite some time. In effect, what we’ve got is a ‘HOARDERS’ situation. If you’ve ever seen that show on cable, then you know the horror cleaning that stuff out can be. There’s what you can see, but then there’s what’s UNDER all that stuff. We’re pretty certain that a good bit of corruption exists, but how far does it go? The only way to know is to start cleaning.
Grab the HAZMAT suit, hood, and respirator mask. If we, the voters, want this done, then we are going to have to VOTE SOME OF THESE LONG TERM REPUBLICANS OUT. Maybe some of the long term Democrats, too. (Joe Manchin, I’m thinking about you in particular in DC. ) In the Georgia General Assembly, we sure have some LONG TERM FOLKS up there, don’t we? David Ralston, Butch Miller, Mike Dugan, Steve Gooch, Larry Walker, Dean Burke, Jan Jones, Jon Burns, Matt Hatchett, Micah Gravley, Bruce Williamson, or Rob Leverett. These are just suggestions. They’ve been there quite some time and possibly need to find something less to do. There may be others.
Yes, I know there are some long term Democrats, and I’m aware that Democrats can be corrupt as well. They’re just not as likely to be. But if they are, then they need to go, too.
(Yes, I am open to talking about “term limits”. I am cautious with that because there is a learning curve with the job and it does take time to figure out “the ropes” necessary to do an adequate job in politics just like any other job. Most people say it takes 3-5 years and I realize that is not what most people talking about this topic want to hear. However, I was in management for 15 years and that’s about average for new hires. If you take that into consideration, then base your calculation on the results your elected official is getting for your area and the responsiveness you receive. That’s your answer.)
Who am I talking about? Anybody who went into office broke, in bankruptcy, or with just a middle class income, but is now a multi-millionaire. People DO NOT get wealthy on government salaries. EVER. Some of these people have become billionaires. Example: Mitch McConnell. He went into the Senate with a little bit of money. He’s now rolling in it and his wife, Elaine Chao, is a multi-millionaire. Both have benefitted immensely from their government connections. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler were caught doing insider trading during the pandemic. They were never punished, but they made millions. So did other Republicans. The loopholes need to be closed and the unspoken agreement not to prosecute sitting Senators and Congress members needs to hit the trash can. They are no better than the rest of us. If anything, they should be prosecuted FASTER. They are supposed to be better than that.
On the State level, Nathan Deal came home from Washington where he’d been found to have his sticky fingers in the till and was allowed to leave in a state of bankruptcy. Two years later, he’s in Georgia’s Governor’s Mansion. After eight years, he leaves a multi-millionaire. Hello? On a salary of $178K/year? I don’t think so. Nobody I know can turn a profit like that on the stock market THAT fast. Sonny Perdue did the same thing. Maybe that brick edifice has a printing press in the basement, but I think the Feds would know about it by now. Something is really fishy.
That’s why YOU, the voters, need to think very seriously about why you keep vote all these incumbents back into office if you think government is so corrupt. If they’re corrupt, why are you sending them back to do more of the same damn thing? It makes very little sense. What does make sense is putting somebody new IN and sending the old to the dumpster, compost heap, recycling bin, or wherever. We can and should do better.
Is the Senator for District 29 part of the Republican “machine”? You tell me. It’s public record that he was one of the sponsors of the laws that reduced access to voting for many people, make it illegal to hand out food and water to people waiting in line (Republicans or Democrats), shortened early voting access, made drop boxes only accessible during business hours (which means they’re now virtually useless), essentially scrubbed most absentee voters’ names off the mailing lists, and made it possible for the General Assembly to TAKE OVER the election board of any county and declare the votes of the ENTIRE COUNTY void and declare races however they damn well please (which effectively means the voters in that county would have NO VOICE AT ALL and the General Assembly assumes dictatorial power over that county.) I find that outrageous and totally unacceptable in any democratic society. He’s proud of it.
I want to be in that Senate to help rewrite those laws to make it EASIER for ALL CITIZENS to vote. If you are a citizen of this country, there should be no barriers to you being able to vote. That’s why there should be drop boxes available 24 hours/7 days a week. People work out of town, odd hours, overtime, or they have to work very long hours. They don’t have the option of getting to a poll to vote. They can find the opportunity to run past a drop box. Or make mail-in ballots universal. Start counting them as they come in. If barcoded to each voter, each one can be unique so that falsifying them would be impossible. At the end of the voting period, all ballots would be stored and counts announced. It would be verifiable, fully accountable, and reproducible. How do I know? Five states have been doing this for 15 YEARS without problems.
Republicans have intentionally made people paranoid about our elections being “rigged”, “corrupt”, and “pre-determined” when the truth really is that they are the ones who have been trying to do that. It’s called projection. It’s like the little boy who doesn’t want Mom to know that he got into the cookie jar even though he has cookies in his hands and cookie crumbs all over his shirt. Instead he points to his sister, Debbie, and loudly claims, “DEBBIE ATE THEM ALL!” Uh, huh, right. Pay attention, folks.
Vote for me for the State Senate. Let’s start this business of cleaning things up. It’s not going to be overnight, but we can start. LIKE and SHARE my posts. Visit my website http://www.wright4georgia.com .
Wright4Georgia 