Read Before You Sign

Remember in school growing up where our teachers would warn us to read a document before we signed it.  "You never know what someone put in there, you could be signing your life away" they would say.  It's a concept we all learned at a young age.  I don't sign a lease, or a contract, or even my bill at a restaurant before reading it; I want to know exactly what I'm signing.  The issue that I have is that our members of congress, whether republican or democrat, have gotten into the habit of signing bills into law without reading them.

Lets think about that concept for a second.  We pay these people to vote on bills and make them law.  The implied task there would be that they read the bills and understand what they are voting on, but they don't.  Laws that have both criminal and financial repercussions for our personal lives.  We as Americans are required to understand these new laws because we will be held accountable to the items in them, but our lawmakers aren't required to read them before voting on them, and signing them into law.  There is something very wrong with that picture.

For my part, a major platform point that I will be looking for in future candidates is a pledge that they will actually read the bills before they vote.  Seems like a simple concept to me, but maybe our leaders are just too busy campaigning, fundraising, and going to dinner with lobbyists to do the job we pay them to do.

American Ignorance

The word ignorance is often misunderstood.  Ignorance means a general lack of understanding, an unawareness. It is not simply having a lapse of knowledge.  I would, however, go further and state that american ignorance is borne out of passively ignoring what is happening around them.  Americans are happy watching "news" about a famous 20 something having a hard time in jail because they can feel sorry for her, but can't name one 20 something american hero who gave their life for their country that asked them to ferret out terrorism in Afghanistan.  They happily watch TV shows where the alcoholic wife beating main actor (the actor, not the character) is paid over $1 Million for every 22 min episode, and they happily go along with the news shows and presidential administration that villainize  an Arizona Sheriff who, by enforcing federal law, is stemming the flow of drugs into Arizona so much that the drug cartels have put a $1 Million bounty on his head.  That point deserves restating.  An elected Arizona County Sheriff is enforcing federal law, that is already on the books, and is doing it in such a way that the Mexican Drug Cartel considers it good for business to offer $1 Million to kill him, a single person.  Make no mistake, they aren't stupid.  They haven't grown that business because they are lucky or because the product sells itself.  They would not offer that type of money because they hate Americans or because they love drugs, both of those may be true, but the only reason to offer that money is because this particular person has become the bane of their existence.  While all this is going on, the federal government, the entity that owns the law that this sheriff is trying to enforce, sues his state and stands by while the ACLU sues him.

How long will Americans remain ignorant?