Puffs

The end of last week, I finally realized another example of the power of three.

A lot of people believe things happen in “threes.” As I understand it, mostly bad things happen in threes. I’m not sure I believe in that, but it does seem to happen often enough to make many believers.

My example in recent weeks is that three first cousins have just died, all close together: Robert Ostdiek, Harold Brockman and Jack Lemke. All first cousins to each other.

That’s enough of my relatives to leave us. I hope the power of three is satisfied and I have no more.

However, even in times of sorrow, there are signs of God’s love.

Most everyone is familiar with the story of the great flood and the rainbow God set in the sky at the end of the flood. Well, I think it was last Friday when I open the window shades in the house early in the morning and I was greeted by a beautiful rainbow in the southwest sky. It took me by surprise as I was certainly not expecting it. I think it shook me out of the funk I was in.

Thank you God for the surprise and the reminder of your goodness. We all have our trials in life.

A O

An election year comes every two years, but it is every four years that many people get excited about government. It is every four years we elect presidents.

We like to complain that government is not doing its job and we kick and scream, and come up with solutions to solve what we call “a problem.”

There have been many suggestions as how to change our way of government to make it better. Many of them can be reduced to two general phrases. First is always the suggestion we change our whole political, social and everyday living to a socialistic form of living. Secondly, the suggestion is that we have a “term limit” for the number of years a person can serve as a representative of the people in Congress.

You have heard me talk about socialism enough. Today, I’d like to discuss the limitation on the number of years a person can serve in Congress.

For quite a number of years all the popular solutions to the problem were “Term Limitations.”

I could see some benefits from that solution, but never felt right about that being the ‘best’ solution.

As you all know, the United States government operates with three supposedly equal branches of government. In theory, there is that ‘check and balance’ thing that is able to correct itself when things happen to the detriment of the American people.

Well, the theory does not always work. At times, one branch of the government may take advantage of other branches (for many reasons).

To me that is what is happening today. I contend that the Judicial branch has long had excessive control with its decisions and the Legislative branch did nothing to do its job of passing laws that the Judicial could not change.

Of course, there is the Executive branch that for years has been running over the Legislative branch roughshod. (This has been done by both political parties, but some worse than others.

But, as things seem to get worse by the day, the Legislative branch is the one which catches all the blame. In part, they deserve it, but in other cases, they probably should not receive all the blame.

The Legislative branch is the one most responsive to the people as members have to stand for re-election every couple of years and we, the people, can vote to keep them in office, or not.

We could limit the number of years a person could be in Congress, but would that solve our problem? Mr. Armstrong Williams recently wrote about this subject and several of his points make sense. He points out that while the size of the federal government is mushrooming, staff levels in House of Representative member offices was down from 6,556 in 1977 to 6,329 in 2021. Expense for actual human beings to run the government is very, very low opposed to buildings, the Capitol Police and maintenance.

He goes on to say: “Congress is largely run by rookies paid miserly wages who then move on after a few years to lucrative lobbying on K Street as financial necessity. The executive branch runs circles around them, stiff-armed oversight and typically originates major legislation for Congress to entertain.”

The point, I think, he was making is that members of Congress, by and large, don’t have the experience and memory of how and why things were done in the past. It appears that many members of the Legislative branch of government are supposed to pass our laws and the Executive branch is supposed to carry out those orders.

It appears in recent years the Executive branch has taken over the power of doing “everything.”

It reminds me of many farmers and small businesses today. They are successful because they have been in business for many years and they remember what they did last year and many years before and what worked and what did not work. They have the experience.

Congress, having new people all the time, does not have that experience.

Now, I don’t believe a person should be elected to Congress for all time. I think a form of term limita would be good, but to limit Representatives to only one or two terms is very short sighted. I don’t know the magic number of years, but maybe 12 or 18 years would be better.

Then, the Legislative branch has to take back its job of making laws for the government. As our current president recently said concerning his effort to forgive student loans after the Supreme Court said he could not do it: “if I can’t do it one way, I’ll find another way to do it.” We need strong presidents, but not presidents that abuse our whole legislative system.

Our system of government is not a simple one and can get ‘out of control’ pretty easy. History is full of examples of good intentions going bad.

Those of you old enough may remember a comic strip called “Pogo.” It contained political satire about always trying to correct things that go wrong in society. That being a tricky problem.

The final strip contained a statement I’ll always remember. It went: “We have met the enemy, and He is Us.”

We may be our own worst enemy, but that only means we have to try harder to make corrections in a pretty good system.

Don’t give up trying, or else we may be stuck with our current president . . . forever.

A O