Pulling It All Together

Several stories by themselves are just the usual news and views, but when you pull the bits and pieces buried in them all together, you get a very interesting, if surely unintended, result.

In today's lead editorial on passing laws against downtown cruising the Commercial Appeal opines:

Does the councilman believe the intimidation of legislative bodies
by excited mobs is a better way to create law than reasoned
debate?

People behave this way when frustration reaches a peak. The frustration results from citizens' sense of disconnection from, and disrespect by, their political leaders. Free-spending and profligate government agencies, or politicians who benefit from decisions they make in ways not available to the average person are a sure fuse to ignite that sense.

Next there's the story of politicians getting free University of Tennessee football tickets, some of the hardest to get in the State. In this post-Income Tax War climate, what has been going on for years suddenly is unseemly, and rightly so. Legislators will be "requested" to pay for those tickets they do get, a mere $38. The University doesn't have the spine to demand payment, since the tickets are their way of lobbying legislators for more money and better treatment. Your tax dollars and your ticket dollars are going to bribe and pamper their fat daddies. While it's a small and largely symbolic change, it's a change of attitude and a start.

And then there was this. An otherwise rote story about the slow ticket sales for the Redbirds this season, blaming Sept. 11 and a slow economy on the slowdown, has this tiny bit dropped in:

On
Saturday night, The Med (The Regional Medical Center) had a
group outing of more than 6,000 people, leading to ticket sales of
17,104.

Look at that number again. If you assume they paid only $10 a ticket (I have no idea what a reduced-price group sales ticket is, but that's a fair, if low, number.), then the Med spend $60,000! That's a year's salary for someone, or several someones in maintenance. And this from an agency that's chronically cash-strapped.

Regular folks look at things like this and get steamed. But politicians and bureaucrats don't blink. It's the perquisites of the job for them.

It's from such acorns that the mighty oaks of voter rebellion are grown.

Until next time, that is all.
Your Working Boy