Crime, inflation, open borders, drugs, fuel shortages, supply chain failures, war and the threat of nuclear attack, and growing poverty are still hot-button issues. Now that the elections are behind us, we can talk about the problems facing the country without any candidates or parties making glittering generalizations about the serious issues of today. Now is the time to demand answers, solutions that work and hold people who fail responsible for delivering for the American people.
The recent firing of the Commissioner of the US CBP, Chris Magnus, was a weak attempt to hold an incompetent political appointee responsible for an overall failed policy from the administration and has done nothing actually to resolve the massive influx of illegal immigrants. Blaming is a regular pattern in government, and so is the inability to identify and solve problems. The average high school term paper has more research than the standard government program.
The War on Poverty has produced only more poverty, and anyone who studies it sees that it quickly became a Leftist recruiting program under Kennedy’s brother-in-law and politically appointed “office of economic opportunity” head Sargent Shriver and is a classic example of the difficulty in implementation of even a good idea. The problem of poverty is a complex and dicey issue as sensitive topics need to be addressed. As happens all too often, the discussion is held to a shallow evaluation of only one or two variables as the root issues go unaddressed and unresolved.
The War on Drugs in the US was going full bore until it was decided that the disparity of who went to prison was the real problem, not the drugs or the overdose deaths. Those of us who remember the debate on the 1990’s Crime Bill ⏤ it was held that there was racism in the fact that crack cocaine was treated just like cocaine in charging and sentencing but crack, which was devastating the inner-city, was a powerful form of cocaine with a meager amount of cocaine needed to make it deadly. Thus, the crack was made a more severe crime leading to the resulting unexpected consequence of inner-city dwellers being imprisoned.
The Three Strikes Law, designed to put career criminals away for a long time, ended up putting a single demographic group in prisons. Despite the fact it had led to a remarkable reduction in crime, it is still used to this day to justify the Leftward turn of the prosecutors in power today. Unwinding the policies of the nineties is rapidly returning us to the crime rates of the eighties.
Time and again, real problems are turning into real crises. Yet, today’s talking heads and politicos restrict debate, demand agreement, and solve a single symptom of the problem, usually only short-term, and set us up for real critical issues. From energy independence to fuel shortages didn’t seem complicated to predict, but the idea of draining our Emergency Reserves for an immediate price reduction and with winter coming up, shortages of heating fuel will be an even bigger issue than price.
Inflation is a serious issue, but no one is saying how fuel supplies and prices increase the cost of groceries in your neighborhood store. Just like it seems folks believe the electricity to charge their Tesla comes, magically, from a wall socket, groceries come, just as magically, from the back room of the local store.
Blaming Russia or Trump has become a fun game among the chattering class. Still, solutions don’t come from blame, and we seem less able to identify and solve problems rationally. Abortion may have been a critical deciding point in the last election, but it will pale pretty fast when folks can’t find fresh vegetables, afford meats, or fill their tanks.
Millions of undocumented, mostly military-aged males have swarmed across our border unvaccinated against anything, unskilled and unaccounted for, roam our nation now. If a terrible event resembling a 9/11/01 tragedy takes place, it will be a Houdini-like escape by the administration to avoid blame. Yet, no solutions are being discussed, and one wonders if anyone is even thinking about such problems.
The way this administration ended the Afghanistan War is analogous to how we are ending the War on Crime, surrendering, and walking away. Defunding the police was just a skirmish in the ideological struggle of today. Still, it is time for political leaders and community leaders to demand real solutions to the genuine problems of today, to debate, research, and then effectively implement them.
Finally, there has to be a measurable result to be expected — a way to determine if a program is working, failing, stuck, or needing correction. Spending billions only to have the problem addressed in the solution to be worse should be something simple to condemn, but time and again, we decide to keep spending and make no substantive changes in the program.
Solutions, not blame, should be our demand, and then we must monitor the actual research going into the problem-solving process. The results of every program should be reviewed, and praise or criticism should be given when appropriate.
America is sliding into third-world status. We must demand our elected leaders do better at solving problems and spend less time in the blame game.