The Government Is Us

The New York Times today has a timely story about the recent spate of tainted peanuts sent out by the Peanut Corporation of America. An onerous name for a company if ever there was one. Seems that, while the government is investigating the possibility that the company may have actually sent out tainted peanuts knowing fully well they were tainted, they had to actually ask permission from the company to send out a recall notice.

Most Americans will stop for a moment and think. What? How could this be? Isn’t there an agency that is suppposed to oversee all this stuff?

Well yes, Virginia, there is. But you see, in the fiscal-conservative zeal to allow business the final say over everything that happens in America which has covered this nation like a blanket for the past 25 years, the balance got shifted. Can’t allow the government to possibly harm our industry, business would say to their lobbyists in Washington. Make those senators see that we will always do what’s right because profit demands it! The free market knows what is right!

Ronald Reagen got right down to business when he arrived in 1981, beginning the gutting of agency consumer protections that continued through Bush 1 and Clinton and especially into Bush 2. “Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem” he said famously.

Well, the Government, that big faceless entity we all refer to when we are angry or frustrated. Is US. We are the ones who comprise its committees and offices and outposts. We are the ones who make the rules. To protect ourselves. We are the solution, not the individuals who promise that they will make jobs with the crumbs of the profits they will toss our way. How’s that promise working out for you now? Feeling Madoff’d yet?

The promise of Obama is that he represents a sea of change from the majority who disagree with the premise that government is a problem. It is the organizing solution to companies who disregard safety for profit and industry that is willing to shift funds overseas rather than employ locally. Obama may not get it right all the time, but there is plenty of strength in the organization that put him into power now. And that strength won’t be easily dissapated.

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