Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop

 Did you hear a pop, pop, pop?  Kind of like a series of champagne bottles being opened?  That is the sound of the media pulling their collective heads out of their collective....  Maybe I'd better use a light bulb metaphor.  So, did you see a few small lights coming on the past ten days or so?

A couple of weeks ago, in the Sunday Denver Post, I read an editorial.  The writer, whose name I can't remember, wrote about his surprise about local politics.  He quoted several stories from local meetings and elections.  He was surprised that even with all the distrust of Washington, especially here in the west, most people actually feel pretty good about their local government.  Several of his stories even involved raising local taxes for local issues.  His point was that people are willing to pay for what is important to them.  If it is handled locally.  Sound familiar?  Constitutional even?  It is easy to trust people you see everyday, whether you voted for them or not.  And on the flip side of the equation, it is hard to take advantage of constituents that you see frequently.  You don't steal from, or over-tax people you know, or people you have to answer to.  The writer quotes former speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, "All politics are local."  A slightly less complex version of Jefferson's creed, 

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents . . . will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. . . . What an augmentation of  the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the federal government.

Pop.  Pop.  


Last week three of the four editorials in the Sunday Denver Post were about the importance of local control of issues, not federal.

Pop.  Pop.  Pop.

Monday night, Brian Williams from NBC news, appeared on David Letterman.  He said that he felt the huge swing in the stock market last week had nothing to do with "fat fingers" or automated trading or any of the other official explanations given by analysts.  He said that all that was showing on monitors all over Wall Street was news video of the riots in Greece.  He said that he had the same sick feeling he had on 9/11.  

Pop.  Pop.  Pop.

Today's New York Times, yes, THE New York Times, you know None "of the news that's fit to print."  That New York Times.  They ran a story about the parallels between the path the current administration and its leaders (yes, leaders, not followers) are taking our country down and the situation in Greece that led to the current union-led violence.  Of course, the article never mentioned unions.  Some heads are buried so deep, it'll take some pulling to get them out.  

Keep listening for the pops.  I mean looking for the dim bulbs to brighten.