Get Involved With Government?
By Randall Holcombe • Thursday July 22, 2010 1:50 PM PDT • 5 Comments
Bill McCollum, Florida’s current attorney general and candidate for governor, recently announced his support for legislation to eliminate teacher tenure and design a pay system for teachers that rewards them for their students’ performance. One of the criticisms McCollum has had on this proposal is that it is an idea promoted by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. In this, and in other policies, critics are complaining that Jeb Bush is still pulling the strings in Tallahassee (the state’s capitol). Despite the fact that he’s been out of office for nearly four years, and isn’t running for office now, Florida Republicans are still Jeb Bush’s puppets.
I don’t have anything to say about whether this accusation is true, nor about McCollum’s teacher tenure proposal. What gets me about this accusation, though, is that elected officials are all the time saying citizens need to get involved with their governments. They need to attend commission meetings, they need to be informed voters, they need to let government officials know their views. Yet when someone like Jeb Bush does that — someone people will actually listen to — he’s criticized for it.
I am somewhat informed on what my governments are doing, and I have, on a few occasions, actually gone to city commission meetings, asked to be on the agenda, and expressed what’s on my mind. My experience has been that the commission gives me three minutes to speak, strictly timed, and even during my three minutes acts completely disinterested in what I have to say. My impression is that they are thinking, “This guy is wasting three minutes of my life, and when he and others like him finish talking, we’ll just go ahead and do what we were going to do anyway, public opinion be damned.”
Public officials “want” you to be involved in the policy-making process... as long as your involvement has absolutely no influence on the outcome. But if you’re somebody who might actually have some influence, like Jeb Bush does in Florida, you’ll be criticized because your involvement might actually make a difference.
Government officials want to make it appear that they are listening to their constituents, but there is a difference between allowing someone the opportunity to speak, and listening to that person. If the speaker is someone people will actually listen to, government officials will tolerate the speaker only when that speaker supports their agendas.
Tags: Culture, Education, Elections, Politics, Power, The State 
It is extraordinarily interesting what is happening right now in the political world. The populace is becoming more and more disenfranchised, but have no major party to turn to.
Eric Olsen of Why Every President Sucked | Jul 24, 2010 | Reply
This has been my experience, my government officials at almost any level fail to listen for whatever reason. It gets progressively worse as it moves toward the federal level. I have argued lately that as a citizen I no longer have influence on governmental outcomes. Even if there is a group or block of concerned citizens there seems no influence on the outcome (example Obamacare). The people we vote for have their own agendas. I’ve been saying lately in a satirical way, vote them all out and its a shame we have to vote in a replacement.
Pete | Jul 27, 2010 | Reply
Be careful what you wish for. I for one do not want my “representatives” to listen to me, What I want is for them to follow the law (Constitution), which sadly is not going to happen any time soon. Remember, we are supposed to be a Republic, NOT a democracy. I served 4 years as a Trustee (Town Counsel), and to be honest, I must admit that it really did not matter for me what the residents said at those meetings, as accused in this post, I did what I was going to do anyway. That is only because I was one of the few Trustees that actually researched the issue at hand, and had a firm idea of the issue, and ALWAYS put liberty first and foremost. That is not to say that I did not listen, I did. From time to time, a point would be brought up that would actually help me to see an issue in a different light. However, the vast majority of the times, the people speaking were asking me to violate my oath of office. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the State of Colorado, and like the federal Constitution, it prohibited me from giving money to businesses (specifically forbidden in Colorado’s Constitution), or to individuals. Those speaking were almost always ‘asking’ for something, be it money directly, or favors in the form of doing for their neighborhood that which we do not do for the other neighborhoods (revamped park, etc..), or worse, to forbid a business from opening it’s doors because they were opposed to what that business did, or a “not in my backyard” argument against a developer who proposed building on land that others had grown accustomed to being vacant. Liberty was my guiding principal. If I did not have the moral authority to give something that was not mine to give, I did not give it, and if someone was not violating the rights of another, I did not forbid him from perusing his endeavor. As such I was almost always out-voted by my fellow Trustees who felt that it was their job to do what their constituents asked for regardless of whether they had the right to do so – after all, there are no laws to lock up elected officials who break the law (Constitution). Those officials can always claim that they are doing what their constituents want, and therefore they are not to be blamed – exactlly what Mr. Holcombe endorses in this post – despite the fact that the town had a population of 8,000, and there were never more than 30 residents at any meeting at any given time. So I would have to say; “Be VERY careful what you wish for” – the problem in America today is the exact opposite of that mentioned above – not that elected officials don’t listen to their constituents, but that far too often they do, and completely ignore their oath of office, and liberty is the looser in the end.
joe4liberty | Jul 30, 2010 | Reply