My Sunday column

We have been told by our national “leadership” that the only way we can get out of this gigantic government-caused, government-exacerbated financial mess is to dig out our wallets and do exactly what government tells us. This time, we have been assured, THEY are going to get it right.
THEY, make no mistake, are both Democrats and Republicans.
While the two knuckle-headed presidential candidates excreted by the major parties this time take turns blaming the other guys, any reasonable American citizen knows full well that the elected officials of both parties have created this mess.
For years the political pundits and other assorted popinjays have told us about the great wonder that our federal government could accomplish if the two great parties set aside their differences and worked together. Well folks, they did and this is what we’ve got — a plummeting stock market, a looming recession and a worldwide financial panic.
I miss gridlock.
Newsweek Magazine big cheese John Meachem, a major Obama supporter, authored a recent cover story about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and how her lack of “knowledge” was a major impediment to her serving as VP. Meachem is convinced that what America really needs right now is more of the inside-the-Beltway “knowledge” that has benefited us so handsomely up to this point. Say what you want about Palin — and I’m no fan — but while the smarty pants in Washington and on Wall Street were constructing a financial house of cards, she was off hunting caribou, or doing something equally harmless.
It was the Bidens, Obamas and McCains — the knowledgeable crowd — who went along to get along.
And why not?
The way things were going every moron in America was going to own at least two houses. The construction industry was booming and the big time financiers were stumbling over their Friday paychecks.
What could possibly go wrong?
Call me a cynic. I have little confidence in the federal government doing just about anything.
I lived in Florida in the 1990s. While I was there, the federal government unveiled its plan to restore the Everglades. Let me repeat, the federal government was going to RESTORE THE EVERGLADES.
Hahahahaha.
A decade and billions of dollars later that project is stuck in the mud. In the end, we’ll be lucky if a single squirrel survives.
The government is a muck up.
At the federal level, the government should do three things:

n Provide for the national defense
n Provide a system of courts for legal matters not better resolved at the state level
n Provide a basic framework for dealing with other nations.

No NASA. No Department of Education. No Commerce Department. No NPR.
Chuck it all.
Send power back to the states and that way if California passes a lot of stupid economic laws, the people who suffer from it will primarily be Californians, who can then either pick up and move to a better-run state or vote out the idiots that bungled things up to begin with.
Also, boot the big corporations (and the little ones too) off the federal teat. Do away with the Washington-based power center that draws corruption and criminality like rotten fruit lures flies.
Will there be corruption and stupidity and arrogance at the local and state level? Sure. But it will do a lot less damage.
Don’t believe me?
Go ahead and elect McCainobamabidenpalin and see it anything fundamental changes for the better. If you think it will, you’re exactly the kind of sap they’re counting on.
Sorry if this column is a downer, but I just got my 401(k) statement and I had to vent.
Live long. Be prosperous.

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He offers more opinions, not all so angry, at his blog, Espysoutpost.blogspot.com. Stop by and sit a spell.