Simplicity

I have been watching Congress and its wonderful desire to create bills that no one (including their authors) can understand. They simply desire to fix basic problems with complex solutions that include additions that have absolutely no relationship with the original problems. I suggest a constitutional amendment that a good English teacher would appreciate, a bill can only be voted on if the average 9th grader can understand its logic and basic implications.

I realize that lawyers dominate politics and that they are experts at creating their own rules but the basic rules of composition and clear and understandable writing should be a basic criteria of any law adopted by a democracy. If the people can't understand it, and if the people who vote on it admit publicly that they have no idea how it will work until after it is implemented (I understand that we can't know perfectly the implications of any law) it shouldn't be a law.

Simplicity should be a hallmark of democracy.

Be more concerned with your character,,,

John Wooden said, "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

Wouldn't this be nice to see as a trait in those who lead us? People who consider who they are before they care what you think of them? Our political landscape is made up of people who don't seem to have heard these words though the greatest politicians of the past seem to have lived up to them.

Now we have career politicians, people who are designed to care what people think of them, people with small convictions and great ambitions, and very little understanding of the people they are called to represent.

I am not here to bash one side of the political spectrum or the other but to call both sides to their convictions. Say what your character says you should say, be who you actually are, let the people know and make their decisions and be inspired by your convictions. Stop playing games with us, we know you are and are pretty upset about it.

I would hate to see any of the greats of the past come back to listen to you play your games and make your decisions on polls and prognosticators. They would say listen to your character, be who you are, don't sell your soul, and most of all do what is right for the country and not what makes YOU feel good.

30 second commercials and soundbites don't mean anything, what you actually do means everything. If you bow to enemies thinking they will be friends after you are a fool, if you ignore your friends when they are in trouble you are a fool. Fools have no place in leading us.

I don't want to run you out of office, I want you to run into yourself: to see who you really are and make the changes that need to be made to make you into a real person who can lead real people. Do what it is that YOU are called to do and don't play games while you do it. If that means they will hate you, let them, you are called to do something greater... and if they love you be careful, the praise of human beings is a very dangerous thing, it is what we naturally seek and what naturally puts us face down in the mud.

So listen to your calling, express it honestly, and don't play games to get people to like you.