If legislators don't know, why aren't they asking?

(Canyon County Democrats)

         

          "If you think democracy was an obvious choice for the Founding Fathers, walk down Market Street in San Francisco."

            It was an casual remark in a late-night talk session in the dorm, but I took my friend's advice. 

            Who did I see on Market Street?  Everybody.   Flower venders, tourists, businessmen, bums,  mothers, students, maids, police.  Anglos, Hispanics, Asians, blacks. 

            Everybody.  All endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.  All with rights and responsibilities as citizens. 

            Amazing basis for a government.  Admittedly,  Americans have broadened the franchise from those first days, but the Founding Fathers were looking at a mixed America also.  Georgia had been a prison colony.  Europe's poor had swarmed across the Atlantic as indentured servants.  Others were adventurers who planned to grab what they could and move on. 

            The Founding Fathers trusted them, collectively, to choose people and policies to govern a nation.   They set the standard for the rest of the world.

            Even after this early lesson, it's taken me a lifetime to accept that most people are doing the best they know how. 

 

            So I resent it when Rep. Tom Loertscher asks, "What can we do to keep Mom at home?" 

            I resent it because I don't think he wants to know.  If he did, he would ask  the waitress that served him this morning's coffee or a  clerk at the statehouse.  He would ask teachers at a local school or a nurse at his doctor's office.  He might even talk to some of the mothers we're shipping to Iraq. 

            The knowledge is out there, with the people.  

            Loertscher might even ask these working women how they feel about sexual predators and drug abusers being allowed to serve as child care providers. 

            He knows.  His colleagues know, too.

            Working mothers are not in need of punishment.  They are doing the best they can.   

 

            I resent it when legislators decide people in the Boise Valley cannot vote on taxing themselves for a light rail system.

            I was living in Seattle when residents there were asked to add a 1/2 cent sales tax to fund mass transit.  At first I felt if people weren't using buses enough for fares to support the service, maybe it should be cut.

            Then, in televised hearings, person after person—the blind, the epileptic, the compulsive, the retarded, the old-- stepped up to a mike and explained why they couldn't get to their jobs without the buses. 

            I listened—and knew that 1/2-cent tax would not only save these people's self-respect,  it'd cost me less than the welfare they'd collect if they couldn't work.

 

            If legislators don't value the input of working mothers and the physically impaired—or other Canyon County residents supporting light rail--I guess I shouldn't be surprised they don't listen to gays or Hispanics. 

 

            Just how many law-abiding  people who work  hard and love their kids shall we choose to marginalize?