America is Broken ![Rated Excellent [5 out of 5].](/dogblog/Themes/default/images/Star5.gif)
(Author's note: Lest you think this some kind of anti-American, unpatriotric diatribe I urge you to read this piece in its entirety)
It is long past the time to state something that has become obvious to the point of mundane acceptance – America doesn’t work anymore. Granted, I don’t think I’ve seen the concept expressed in precisely those words, but the idea has been there for longer than I’ve been alive. Our nation, young as it is, has a very old problem.
Unfortunately, the troubles are NOT just limited to the United States. They infect human society in its entirety and in all its permutations. However, tackling just this nation’s problems is nearly too big a task. The rest of the world’s will have to wait--but I believe, if we clean our own little room in this great big revolving house we all live in, we’ll have taken a significant step toward living in harmony with all our roommates.
I’m not sure whether America ever actually worked, but I know for sure it’s not working now. It’s a shame America is not panning out like those founding folks envisioned because, frankly, it’s one of the noblest and most brilliant ideas in human history: A Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.
Unfortunately, the execution has fallen flat. Granted, our nation is, in fact, a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people…but as it turns out, only some of the People. These privileged People are a strange brew. They wear fine clothes and spend a great deal of time ensuring they leave the house well-groomed and remain that way throughout the day. They smile a lot. They make jokes. They wave. They even, on occasion, kiss the babies of strangers.
These People are, of course, Politicians.
I’m going to address this great big issue of why America doesn’t work with two words: party politics. Let’s take a very small example of this (or not so small, depending on how much of a dog lover one is).
SB 861. It’s a California bill. Nothing special about the number. Thousands of California bills get drafted every year. Many pass. Some do not. This particular bill did pass, and in so doing has shown us exactly what is clogging up the works here in America.
The dual party system. Yep. Democrats and Republicans. Oh, I know there are “other” parties out there, technically. They’re called Libertarians and such. However, none of them has ever come close to producing a president, so for now we’re still stuck with a two-party system.
And, of course, when people divide into camps, they tend to end up bickering with one another. They side with each other, even when doing so would be irrational. In this case, that manifests itself as voting party lines.
SB 861 is a victim of our dual-party system. It started out as a bill related to prescription drugs. That sounds like it would be an important issue. However, after the tragic death of a young boy in San Francisco who was killed after his mother locked him in a basement with a male dog she knew to be aggressive but whom she hoped would breed with the female dog, in heat, in the same house…SB 861 was gutted and amended. Prescription drugs were squashed into nothingness in favor of a bill that would allow communities to target specific breeds of dogs.
Dogs aren’t generally a party-ticket. No one can say, “Republicans like dogs, Democrats don’t” because, frankly, people in each camp have them! People in each camp have also targeted them for destruction. Take Mayor Giuliani of New York. He’s a Republican. He’s tried to eliminate Pit Bulls, but so far, he’s failed. Then there is good old Michael Bryant in Ontario, Canada. Technically, since he’s a Canadian, he’s not a democrat, but he IS a liberal. He pushed to ban certain breeds in Ontario. Another Democrat, Sen. Martin Sandoval from Illinois, wanted to declare 10 different breeds of dogs legally dangerous, including Doberman Pinschers, Siberian Huskies, Great Danes, Alaskan Malamutes, and Akitas.
Now take Mayor Newsom and Senator Speier of San Francisco. They want to allow communities to discriminate against breeds. Speier gutted her obviously not-so-important prescription bill to introduce a law that allows communities to put ANY restrictions on any specific breeds of dogs, so long as they don't ban a particular breed. That would’ve allowed restrictions prohibiting, as Senator Soto (another democrat) suggested, people from walking their well-behaved dogs on public sidewalks, even on leashes.
Speier has amended her bill again and again, and each time, almost all the Democrats on all the assembly and senate committees vote AYE on her bill (even though, with her amendments, she admits to addressing problems with the previous versions her fellow Democrats all happily gave their AYE votes for, despite such problems).
SB 861 then underwent another transformation, from being a bill to control dangerous or vicious dogs to a bill purported to address pet overpopulation. At each step in its journey, the Democrats have virtually all voted AYE and the Republicans have almost all voted NO. As Senator Ortiz’s aide told me after an earlier, rougher version of SB 861 managed to pass the Assembly Committee on Local Government – “Ah, okay, I see they all voted straight down party lines, as expected.”
Excuse me? Voted party lines? Call me naïve, but if there’s a bill that could affect thousands if not millions of citizens, and there’s a hearing at which people can present testimony and evidence, then doesn’t that sort of imply that those voting on the issue should actually familiarize themselves with it first?
Yep, naïve. However, as Michael Moore pointed out so effectively in his anti-Republican diatribe known as Farenheit 451 – politicians apparently don’t read laws before they vote on them because there are just too many laws on the floor at once. After all, there are only so many hours in a day. These poor politicians just have their aides read the crib notes, give them the truncated version, close their eyes, and…vote along party lines.
And, thus, when people vote on laws they don’t take time to fully consider because, frankly, it’s just easier and more politically self-serving to vote along party lines, America stops working.
Thank you, politicians of America, for selling out this could-be Great Nation of ours to party politics.