Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

Politics is the manner in which elected officials make decisions and includes compromise part of the process. What politics is not is a method to bludgeon others into submission in order to force others into your way of thinking.  These days politics has a dirty connotation because of the tendency of those in power to use politics to course others into a narrow and unconstitutional ideas, policy’s and actions.

If all decisions in the political process are done in the glare of the public arena then lobbyists will have less clout, as will neighborhood associations or other “groups” that reportedly have the public interest at heart. Making decisions in public is also a very good way to see compromise at work limiting the inherent slip into abuse.  Normally elected officials do not like the public method of making decisions and if someone wants to televise the proceedings of government it is the elected officials that object.  Why would they object to a public view of the political process?  Because they are concerned that the public will see them as buffoons or worse the public will see the next move that they are trying to make.

Generally, in rather broad terms, a political decision involves very little vision the politics of the process is what has to be dropped so that all interested elected parties can come to an agreement.  There are times when no agreement can be produced and the decision either fails or the vote on whatever is being discussed is no.  A no vote is not a failure as such but it does indicate an unwillingness of the elected person to go along with everyone else.  This can look odd in public as in when at Friday Harbor I voted against the storm water utility but voted for the money needed to fund it.  What was I thinking?  I did not then, nor do I now, see the value to anyone to charge a fee for what is not preventable. It is not the property owner’s fault that water falls out of the air.  But after the ordnance that created the utility passed I knew that funding, that contained flyers to everyone what the charges were going to be, needed to happen.  Since most people never attend a town council meeting there needed to be an in-depth explanation of what this was and newspapers seldom get everything correct.

On occasion a compromise cannot be reached and the topic fails sometimes t be resurrected again and sometimes to be lost forever.  The real question to be asked about any decision is who compromised what and d we want them representing us?  Newspapers phrase this something like “they have lost their base” or “they have lost touch with most Americans.  That may or may not be true though as some decisions, like having unrelated charges on a utility bill, might be approved my a majority but at the same time simply be the wrong decision to make.

At times it would appear that normal, common sense, decisions are impossible and this is true because common sense is not usually part of the political process.  Commonsense is not compromise able, and takes in to account that some people simply cannot afford or do what ever it is that needs to be done.  If the give and take of decision is done in a “back room” process then the public input of the process is a joke as the testimony taken will have, and does not have, any effect on the outcome of the process.

If lobbyists, community associations, business groups can have more sway over the outcome of a political decision than can a single registered voter.  The normal person then has lost their position in the political decision process and you have just – gone Down The Sewer Pipe.

Sherman