It’s a real mystery why American voters continue to put people into office who will make – and have already made – decisions that negatively impact those very voters time and again.
It happens at both the national and state level. Part of the reasoning (if “reasoning” can really be used here as an explanation) is that those who are already in office have gained name recognition and are returned to office solely because so many voters fail to research issues and simply pull the lever for a name they recognize.
What seems to be happening more and more in current times is that legislators pursue bills and laws which continue to whittle away at the rights of individuals at the same time that those same legislators simply lie to the voters about what their intentions will be in office, and then do exactly the opposite.
At the national level, senators and representatives go to the voters and convince them that, for instance, all the coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky can be brought back or that changing the tax laws will benefit the average wage earner instead of lining the pockets of corporate CEOs or that maintaining voting rights laws is no longer necessary because the states are not eroding those rights.
At the state level (it’s different in every state but a look at events in Kentucky reflects those in many other states) and just during this legislative session, numerous bills have been proposed and passed that, while being touted as protection of individual rights, erode or eliminate many of those rights.
Every session produces bills designed to limit a woman’s right to adjudge control of her own body — and it’s a further mystery why Republicans seem to be so fixated on this issue. It comes up in some form every year.
There is a proposal this year to reduce the state income tax. Sounds good for the average voter, except the income tax provides the necessary money for infrastructure such as roads and educational services. The reduction is estimated to cost Kentucky 1.8 billion dollars and will have to be made up somewhere. Will they suggest raising the sales tax or applying it to groceries? Since low-and-middle-income workers spend a larger proportion of their income on necessary purchases, they will be the ones bearing the disproportional load of that suggestion.
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Charter schools. Sounds good. Let families use the money pumped into this program to select where their children attend school. Of course, the families who support and like the public schools will suffer when the money extracted from the public school system makes those schools less able to meet the requirements of educating their kids.
Trans athlete ban. A solution in search of a problem. A law that has no foundation in necessity and is designed to discriminate against an infinitesimal number of individuals. How does a law like this make life better for individuals?
How about the bill giving school superintendents powers that formerly resided with the SBDM councils? That is certainly not a way to empower individuals.
Library boards. SB 167 was enacted, admittedly and fortunately, with a number of changes that made it less onerous. But it’s a bill that does nothing to elevate the power of individuals with the exception of the one individual in each county called the judge/executive, who will now have the sole power to appoint local public library board members, replacing a three-tiered system that worked for decades. A further question about this bill is why were only library boards singled out for this legislation, especially when one of the bill’s sponsors admitted that “most” libraries operate for the benefit of their constituencies?
So, when someone running for office tells you that he or she wants to work for the individual, don’t take it with a “grain of salt.” Take it with a dose of cyanide because it is, most likely, a poison pill.
