2018 Political Lessons

This past year has been an interesting one in the political realm.  On our local level, Kansas City finally passed approval for a new airport terminal.  This is a LONG overdue need.

The state of Missouri passed the Clean Missouri initiative.  This is a win for all citizens of the state.  It requires more records be made public, eliminates most lobbying gifts and requires a waiting period of 2 years after people leave the legislature before they can become lobbyists.  It also asks non-partisan experts to draw legislative district maps.  Good for Missouri citizens in attempting to clean up our political house.

On the national level, what can I say?  It started out as chaotic mess and ended up the same way.  I'm not sure that much meaningful legislation got passed.  There were constant scandals within the administration.  From the various Russian interference indictments (Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, Gates, etc) to a large number of scandals within the president's cabinet and white house staff (Pruitt, Zinke, Porter, Ross, Omarosa) to the grossly mismanaged child separation policy at the border it was just crazy chaos.  The result?  The Democrats taking back the house by their largest winning margin since Watergate.  

Another other lesson that I learned this year is that President Trump's twitter account is nothing but noise.  I dutifully tried to read and keep up with his comments in 2017.  I gave up this year.  There is very little meaningful knowledge to be gained.  Responsible leaders should not govern by social media and maybe the public is also agreeing with this sentiment.  Legislating and policy making is serious business and throwing up verbal vomit on twitter is meaningless.    

So, I'm hopeful that 2019 will bring progress and Congress will get more things done to help people.  More new faces (with more women being elected) is a great step forward.  We need work done on healthcare, infrastructure, and reducing the national debt and budget deficit.  The tax give aways to the rich resulting in massive stock buybacks have not helped us average citizens and now the stock market is hurting any retirement savings that people have invested.  Governing needs to get serious again.  Let's move the country forward.