To those who acknowledge that the categorical imperative of politics should be the realization of the common good.

Where Art Thou?

O where in the bosom of our land

Sleeps the Pericles of our time?

Dream on sweet statesman of noble deed

That men of heart and reason seek

But are like sheep among the wolves

Whose hunger feeds upon the shame.

Our wolfish leaders in packs of greed

Jaw law and break the noble heart

While staging underplots and counterplots

To foster restive peace

Toward glory and honor in war.

Ignorant of the subterfuge of petty quarrel

We fleece ourselves with the cut of the electorate

Who from our own dim view let the elected pass for gods,

Though in our hearts we feel their contempt for us.

Awake, O Pericles! Put an end to the monsters of the age.

Speak the elegant justice with a sense of loss

And rile against the pack that howls

Of human values of the exclusive right

While circling for the kill of human needs.

From the author’s Modest Impressions

[On Lulu Website www.lulu.com/rrkfinn]

Excerpt

Congressional Rules & Procedures:

Give Credit to the Republicans for this efficiency check. It is a good thing to change the oil and tuneup; but with all the hoopla as though it were a major overhaul was pretentious. Downsizing or streamlining government can shortchange the public in an increasingly complex society. The point of a centralized government is streamlining in order to coördinate fifty states that would otherwise do their own thing without regard to the whole. There is already too much of that. Moreover, downsizing means only a shift of power to the states to increase their own spending bureaucracies and thereby continue their taxation binge that goes far beyond the federal government where the common citizen is concerned.

Update: With the enormous tax cuts enacted by Bush, the states are left with no other alternative than to fend for themselves. NCLB, and Homeland Security, however, do assist but not without the trend to shortchange the states.

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