Local democracy in action

Saturday, the neighborhood clubhouse was filled.  It's often empty most of the time, but it was time for the annual meeting of the neighborhood association.

Democracy is a little messy up close and personal, but everything else is far worse.  Taking time out of busy lives to help our neighborhood be a special spot is commendable especially given that you will never please everyone no matter what you do.  People in general do not like their money spent without their approval.

Given that is the case, I wonder how our Congress gets away with their spendthrift ways.  Maybe folks are so concerned about their neighborhood association dollars because that is the only place they have a say anymore.

Still our elected folks are not exactly straight forward about spending.  There is an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Post, "War Costs Money. Why Can't Politicians Say So?."  I guess so far the war on terrorism including Iraq has cost about $503 Billion.

As in earlier wars, Americans deserve credible estimates of the costs of protecting the nation -- a burden they're likely to tolerate if they're given the unvarnished facts. More than 200 years ago, Alexander Hamilton squarely confronted his fellow citizens with the need to pay off the enormous debt the country had incurred during the revolution. Doing so, he wrote, was "the price of liberty." We still need to pay for our freedom today, and all Americans need to share in the cost.

It seems that we have become a country that thinks we can have our war and not pay for it.  I think we should work hard to understand the facts during the election season irrespective of individual opinions on the war.  We understand the true cost of the war in human and monetary terms, and we make sure that the politicians who authorized this are the ones who have to figure out how to pay for it, not kids who have yet to be born.  This pig in the poke war is a little too big to hide.

Even our neighborhood association knows that we need a reserve to take care of future unforeseen expenditures.  Our national government seems to believe not only that we can live without a reserve, but we can also spend like no bill ever has to be paid today,  That is not going to work much longer.

Politicians of all stripes who spend without thought to the future need to find new jobs.