Puffs

Legislators, both federal and state are often condemned for the way they vote. Some times they are praised, but it depends on the issue, the time and place.

I’ve read and heard and at times have also made remarks less than flattering at the people involved with the issues they vote on as they become more and more complicated. I thought of this when reading the Nebraska Unicameral Update last weekend.

A front page article had to do with the inheritance tax the state allows counties to use to generate money. The interesting thing for me was the inclusion of two other issues with the Inheritance tax.

Those two other issues are: housing of prisoners who have broken a law and using the money already given to counties to promote tourism and improve visitor attractions for other purposes such as the inheritance tax money would have been used for.

Inheritance Tax.

Prisoner housing.

Tourism.

Three very different issues tied together.

Is it any wonder that a person who has to make a decision as to what would be the best path to take receives opinions less than flattering? It’s a difficult job.

A O

An 1800’s Irish author, Oscar Wilde, described his own life as a ‘fallen’ human creature with the following statement:

“We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.”

A person can use a quote like that for many things. For example: even though the Nebraska Cornhuskers Women’s basketball team lost the championship game in the Big Ten Conference a person has to be looking down at the mud to say the world has come to an end. You could be looking up at the stars and celebrating a very successful season to start with.

The same could be said of the Cornhusker’s men’s team. They certainly lost some games this season that caused much sadness, but they also won a lot of games that resulted in a need to look up at the stars.

I read the quote above for the first time last weekend and thought about how the quote could be applied to so many things in life. With this being an election year and with so much of the news centered on politics, my mind went to the political process that has evolved here in the U. S. of A.

Not everyone today identifies with either the Liberal or the Conservative parties that seem to be the major forces in national politics these days. However, everyone has to come down to making decisions in politics and most all of them are either Liberal or Conservative.

Connecting the quote above to the political parties comes this way. I see the Liberals as the people laying in the gutter, face down, seeing only the mud and mess. The Conservatives, to me, are the ones in the gutter, looking up.

I get this idea from several very important issues. First off, it comes from the question of abortion. Is it OK to kill unborn humans, or not? Liberals look upon babies as being the problem for many people. Additional children can cause hunger or poverty if the family has limited income. If the women is not married and becomes ‘with child’ a baby can cause that women to lose employment opportunities, or need to change educational plans, or a number of other things.

Those are all major situations (not a problem necessarily) but liberals think they are solving the problem by simply killing the unborn child.

The conservatives seem to realize that there are certain “God Given Rights” that can’t be surpassed by a man-made government. Conservatives seem to be “looking up” even though they may be in the gutter. They try to help the women with support. Encourage adoption of the babies if no other outlet works. Providing support via material things like clothes, food and employment searches. Surely we can do better than killing our own children.

To me another obvious example is what they call “Gender Identity.”

Many Liberals consider this such a major problem in recent years that most all such cases have to be treated with drugs and/or surgery to solve what they call a problem. Again, without looking up, they take up a man-made resolution to a situation they think cannot be solved without drugs and surgery.

I don’t know if all Conservatives understand the situations involved in what is called Gender dysphoria, and most do not endorse past brutal treatment of such people, but again they can’t agree with practices employed by liberals to deal with the situation. Drugs, surgeries, changing the meaning of words, changing the use of public restrooms and other practices supported by liberal is looking down to the mud again.

Conservatives seem to want to use counseling services for such people, letting them change their situation rather than do something that may be unchangeable at a later date.

In general liberals seem to think that they can come up with rules and regulations that are better than what the people of the United States have enjoyed since the beginning of the country. Those “God Given Rights” should never be overlooked, or changed, no matter which political party is in power.

I never thought of it in terms like this before, but that little quote at the beginning often can come to your defense in many, many issues in life.

A O