Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

Part of making decisions in the public arena is the perception that the people of you. That you have not a clue to what you are doing.  Politics, the art of making deals to get what you want, is often perceived by the public as an evil and the reason they think so is: the decisions public elected officials make are often odd, to say the least.

Governance is how those political decisions are carried out and the public will either be on board or will oppose you.  Enough opposition and if you run for reelection you will either loose or have a hard time retaining the office

So what drives the confidence of the average voter?

• Government waste in regards to money.
• Their ability to pay for the services that government supplies.
• Their ideas being heard not just tolerated.
• Other groups or individuals being given more opportunity than they have to do anything.

Are the top four reasons people will have or not have confidence in you as an elected office holder.

If the public thinks that you are wasting their money, you will not get more if they can help it.  If you account, in the budget process, for every penny of income and every penny of expense then raising taxes will be easer.  If you cannot account completely or if a newspaper points out either in your expenses then the voters will not trust you. 

If the voter’s are having a hard time finically and you ask for more money they will not be happy.  The answer will be no; so getting the best bang for the buck in providing services, what ever those services are, is essential.

In the public hearings, or in a private meeting, if the public perceives that you really do not want to hear form them then expect lots of opposition. In making political decisions, like requiring all gasoline sold to have ethanol in it, you need to give equal weight to people when they tell you that your decision is bad for them.  Bad because it will take more fuel for them to get to work, go to the doctor, put food on the table. 

If you make a political decision to place more opportunities for some groups, either ethnic or religious, ahead of another group then the public will loose confidence in you as an equal handed politician.

The best example of each of these, governance “what not to do”, is in Portland Oregon.  The confidence level loss is so great, especially in the school system, that the population is beginning to decline

This is expected when elected officials crawl Down the Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking.

Sherman