A Facebook friend, Hannah Miyamoto posted the article below to Facebook with this comment:
In London, the Conservatives and Liberals are saying they expect to have 30% support by next year. This is what America will be like by 2012.
I think she is right on the money! Here is a snip from the article, but please, go and read it all- well worth the time. (emphasis added is mine)
One Conservative minister says: “At first glance, you think: that can go. Then you take another look and you find that a lot of these organisations exist for a purpose.”
Some ministers say they are finding examples of wasteful spending that can be terminated without much impact on the public. Others have gone looking for relatively pain-free savings and come back empty handed. One minister says: “I keep thinking that if I dig deep enough I will find something, but to be honest there isn’t all that much.”
Then there is the human factor. Labour tribalists won’t believe this, and the Treasury axemen won’t like it, but it is quite rare to find a minister, Conservative or Lib Dem, who relishes firing people. They are already having to confront the personal cost of cuts when making decisions about their own civil servants. One Tory minister says: “We all attacked ‘faceless bureaucrats’ when we were in opposition. They aren’t faceless anymore. They are people working in the department and they are nice people. They are people with children, people with mortgages to pay.”
There are two important themes here, each worth exploring:
1) Politicians can talk all they want about saving the economy by cutting wasteful spending, but every program cut, takes money away from real people. Real people lose their jobs, and unemployment is only increased. No politician who has an authentic care for the notion of “building jobs” can also be calling for cuts in spending as the only source of economic recovery. They are either a hypocrite, or naive, or a sleazy liar using a knee-jerk causing sound bite for effect only. Sure, there may be wasteful spending to cut, but that alone won’t do the trick, and if the politician isn’t calling for a cut in waste while at the same time seeking new sources of income, they are a liar, and things will not improve.
2) Some, like Ariana Huffington have been talking about this for several years now, but the dichotomy of Left and Right (here in the US) is a false dichotomy today, and serves only as a distraction from the real political battle which is happening. Or as Hannah, puts it, the largest part of the voting block isn’t falling into the nice and neat boundaries of Liberal and Conservative. “Tea Party” folks, progressives, and for lack of an accepted label far-right Christianists, and perhaps a few other categories of political thought are all battling for some sense of control.
Our government increasingly fails to operate as political feuds take precedent over the creation of sound and meaningful policy. “The sides” in the battle are changing away from the previous understood corners of conservatives and liberals. Each side attempts to shore up the ranks by promising things they never deliver (on the left) or by avoiding traditional conservative positions and selling out the the far right social conservatives (on the right). But growing the bigger “army” to win the battle isn’t what the country needs. What we need is real leadership and thoughtful policy creation.