Tag Archives: Rogue Columnist

business news, political news

Government is no business

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I just have to share this tidbit from a friend and fellow blogger.

Jon Talton writes a blog called “The Rogue Columnist.” This is what he said about Carly Fiorina, a recently declared Republican candidate for president of the United States of America.

“So wealthy Republican Cara Carlton Sneed, aka “Carly Fiorina,” is running for president. She represents everything wrong in an America run by oligarchy, including running venerable Hewlett Packard into the ground and laying off tens of thousands of people.

“The two businessmen who became president were Warren G. Harding and George W. Bush. In fact, government can’t and shouldn’t be run like a business. A business, especially a big business today, seeks only its own growth and increasing stock price. Too many of its leaders, Fiorina included, are sociopaths with no notion of the public good. So she’ll fit right with the Republican contenders.

“It tells us something that this supposed titan of technology forgot to register her domain name.”

Here’s the link to Jon’s blog. http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/

President Harding’s administration was tainted by scandal and near-impeachment because of the “business” he conducted while serving as president from 1921 until his death in 1923. Does the name “Teapot Dome” ring a bell?

President Bush? Well, I don’t recall him espousing too loudly his “business acumen” after he was elected in 2000, although he seemed to take his eye off the financial sector as it was lending lots of money to folks who couldn’t repay the loans, which likely contributed to the economic collapse that occurred near the end of his presidency in 2008.

Jon is right about government being run like a business. It can’t be done. Government’s mission is to “serve the people.” The core mission of every business in America — if not the planet — is to make money.

These missions, as near as I can tell, are mutually exclusive.

 

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Proof of citizenship to vote? Oh, please

My friend and former colleague Jon Talton calls it the Kookocracy that’s run amok in Arizona.

I think he’s on to something.

The Arizona — and now Kansas — kooks have been handed a court victory by a judge who says that, yep, it’s OK for those states to demand voters prove their citizenship if they intend to vote.

http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2014/03/keep-out-the-vote.html

I’ve been voting in every presidential election since 1972, starting in my home state of Oregon and — since 1984 — in Texas. Not one time has an election judge asked me to produce either a birth certificate or a passport to prove I’m a citizen of the U.S. of A. Never has any elections official looked sideways at me — at least none that I’ve ever noticed — and wondered whether I’m a red-blooded American male.

For the record, I am.

Now, though, the fight to make it more difficult for people to vote is heading down a curious path.

The courts — or shall I say those courts presided over by Republican-appointed federal judges — are notching up victories for the GOP-led effort to curb what they call an epidemic of voter fraud by illegal immigrants.

Of course, no such epidemic exists, except in the fanciful minds of those who want to suppress voter participation by those who might be inclined to vote for those nasty Democrats.

As Talton notes in his blog: “Real instances of serious voter fraud are almost nonexistent, and the few recent scandals have involved Republicans. On the other hand, minority and poor citizens are less likely to be able to produce a passport or birth certificate in order to exercise the franchise.”

I want to be clear about one thing. I join my fellow Americans in upholding the sanctity of the vote. We shouldn’t allow non-U.S. citizens to cast ballots in a rite that is reserved only for those who either swear allegiance to the Constitution or those who earned their citizenship by birthright.

These efforts to make it harder for people to vote, though, simply are un-American.