And In The Left Corner, Wearing The Clown Suit....

In your daily life, what do you expect from your government? Mentally review the events of today, and see where you had an expectations of the government to provide a service to you. Here goes my normal day:
0530 - Leave home from work. I get behind a little elderly woman every day who drives 15 in a 40, and holds up a line of 30 cars on a 10 mile stretch of two lane road. We attempt to merge on the interstate and she STOPS at the top of the merge lane. Literally. Cars rushing by at 90, she stops, and turns on her left turn signal and waits for thee to be NOTHING coming for about a mile. My expectation of the government is that if they require a license to operate a vehicle, then they should test people when they obviously shouldn't be driving. If you want to kill yourself, fine. But leave me out of it.

Of course, I expect the government at some level to take care of the roads and change out lights when they go out.

0600-whenever I go home. I expect nothing of the government. I have no thoughts about the government except for what I see on the news and blogs while at work.

Going home - I have to stop for gas. I expect the government to enact policies that control what gas costs and deal with the other countries who sell it. Since the government refuses to take action so that we can be self-reliant, I expect them to counter that level of idiocy by making my gas cheaper so that I can drive places and spend money for the economy to remain strong. I am close to postulating that I can claim the three Iraqi oil field workers as dependents because so much of my income goes to support their families and not mine.

At home - Nothing. An underlying expectation that no jack-booted liberal thugs come crashing through my door to take my weapons, but other than that I don't expect them to do anything. Wait---I do have an expectation that since I live in the present time and electricity is a really nice luxury item, and since electricity has been one of the incredible items that raised the overall quality of life in the world, I expect the government to keep the prices reasonable so that I don't have to ration lights in my home.

See a trend? About the only thing I expect the government to do on a daily basis is to have domestic and international policy geared that makes my life easier, not harder. Policy that improves the quality of my life and that of my family, not makes us choose between spending money to eat dinner at a restaurant and staying home to eat peanut butter when the pantry is empty because we haven't been to the store in weeks.

Now wearing the Conservative Commentary Clown Suit is Michigan's Senator Dingle, a democrat if you can believe that, who wants to raise taxes on gasoline by .50 per gallon. Yes, you read it correctly, he wants to raise my gas taxed by $9.00 a tank. There are some environmentalists that want to raise it by that much every year for 10 years. The aim here is to punish consumers and polluters, or so they say. I guess that we are too successful and can afford to buy big cars and drive and fly so much.

I think it is a ploy to get more money from you and me. It flies in the face of every logical train of thought, so it must be about getting more money to spend. I don't know what else it could be. You do know that 40% of the current gas price is tax, right?

Perhaps the government should return all of that tax to the energy companies who will put it into alternative fuels. Maybe they should stop with the nonsense about domestic production and let the wells flow! Maybe they should stop trying to raise so many damned taxes and find ways to let me keep my money to spend.

Maybe voters should spend less time listening to the news and more time thinking about the big picture.