It is getting tiring

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

The government shutdown is not affecting my family or me – except my wife is the volunteer executive in charge of our local food bank, and she is putting in lots of hours to make sure they are keeping people fed in our town.   

The immaturity of this action – the shutdown – (and I blame both parties equally) is just that – immaturity. If this were a company, someone would be fired by now.  

As an expert witness, I have testified in cases where the entire board of directors has been held accountable for sloppily running operations into the ground in a company. It should be the same way in the government.

I am obviously wishing for something that is not going to happen, but accountability on an individual basis (what my best friend calls “the hot breath of accountability”) should apply here.  

We deserve a better government than this, except that we all voted the current incumbents into their places. Each voter is responsible.

One tiny way to perhaps help out in solving this problem is to ask all candidates, when running for office, “Under any circumstances, would you vote to shut down the government?”  

This may end up being more of a test of who is the better liar, but at least it would set a hurdle to be overcome.

Actions like this turn us into cynics. I have been voting for close to 55 years, and I am very tired of being assured that a candidate has a certain viewpoint on a specific subject, only to watch them change horses in mid-stream, so to speak. And, again, it makes no difference which party they are in.

Another dream of mine is that we would all take responsibility for our own lives. Of course, there are situations where governmental help is needed, but they need to be infrequent and genuine. We have turned into a nation of entitlement-thinking people.  

Many of the advertisements thrust in our faces are from companies wishing to collect from us in order for us to get a large handout from the government.  

I’ve written before that as recently as the Great Depression (yes, surprisingly, almost 100 years ago) many people were embarrassed to take a handout from the government.   

Would such days return. 

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.