From the Publisher/Arnold G. York
The French went to the polls to ratify the new European Union constitution and decided that they liked yesterday better than tomorrow; so they cast their ballots for yesterday, and voted the new one down.
Good try, but sadly the world just doesn’t work that way. All the political leadership in France of most every stripe except the real extremes seemed to be for the new constitution, but the farmers and Johnny six-packs, or should I say, the Jean-Pierre six-pack, were dead-set against it, and it went down to defeat. Now everyone is scrambling trying to figure out what happens next.
This was not ignorance. Those who voted No understood exactly what it meant. They feared that a Yes vote meant they were going to be flooded with cheap labor from the poorer EU countries and their way of life was going to change. And they didn’t like the probability of that at all. Can you blame them? They voted to retain the 35-hour work week, six weeks of summer vacation and a package of other protections and guarantees, particularly for farmers and factory workers, that exist few places outside of France. They kind of understand that unemployment is rising, and that they’re growing less competitive and they need to do something about it. They know, in time, if they do nothing there is going to be big trouble. But it’s always easier to put it off, so essentially the message they sent to their leaders was “fix it, but don’t do anything painful or we won’t go for it.”
That has become the problem of our times. Not just for the French, but for all of us. The problem, I believe, is not with the leadership; the problem is with us. It’s sort of the head-in-the-sand school of politics.
If you think it’s just the French, then let’s look at California.
Every year we run about a $10 billion deficit, plus or minus a few billion. Or, to put it another way, we need to trim $10 billion out of an approximately $100 billion budget. That would seem to be doable. Well, that $10 billion is somebody’s $10 billion and everyone says the same thing. They all say we need to tighten our belts a bit, but take it out of someone else’s share. Now when it comes to budgets, everyone is a special interest. To the governor, the public unions are a special interest. To the teachers and nurses, the Chamber of Commerce and the large industries are the special interests. To local government, anyone who takes away their money is a special interest. Everyone’s job is to make sure that it’s not their ox being gored and, of course, if they’re all successful, we’re back to square one and a stalemate because nothing happens.
Let’s bring it closer to home. I think it’s fair to say that the “way of life” in Los Angeles is not so hot, and it’s getting worse. The freeways, any hour of the day or night, are jammed, in both directions. I actually can remember a time when they were only crowded going downtown in the morning and coming home at night. The kids laugh at me when I tell them that, figuring it’s just some old man’s reverie. Think about it, everybody must be living in the wrong place. If we all moved cross-town there’d be no traffic. It figures that the traffic is a growing problem. We haven’t built any new freeways, extended any streets, nor have we allocated money to do any of that. In fact, for the last I-don’t-remember-how-many years we’ve raided the traffic trust funds to help keep the state running. Now our freeway system is falling apart. We’re going to fix it when we get the money. That is, provided we don’t do anything that impacts the environment, which, of course, we must, or we don’t have any new taxes, which, of course, is a necessity if we’re going to do the job. So, in the final analysis, we don’t sound very different than the French. I’m sure we’ll get to it one of these days, but I’m not going to worry about it because I figure by then I’m going to be in a home and probably not driving anything but an electric golf cart with a speed governor on it, which I know my wife will insist on.
Au revoir.