Politicians Fight Trumped Up Crises While Nation Struggles With Real Problems

What’s up, you may ask? Well, lots of stuff.

Gas prices are up, topping $4 a gallon in most regions now. However, most news stories report that there are no supply shortages. A week or so ago OPEC said it has plenty of oil and has even considered dropping the “per barrel” price a bit. Apparently the price is jumping – and worst-case scenarios are calling for $5 a gallon by the end of this month – because speculators are manipulating the market out of fear that the recent unrest in the Middle East could – could! – create some disruptions in the flow of oil.

Unemployment is up, hitting the 9 percent mark again last month – and some believe it may be as high as 16 percent because the lower number doesn’t include the people who have exhausted their benefits or just quit seeking a new job out of sheer frustration. The economy had started showing some strength over the past few months and the jobless rate had dropped a bit. Now, as summer starts and gas prices rise, employers seem to be stepping back again despite the fact that U.S. corporations are sitting on a total of $1.93 trillion – with a T – in cash, according to the Federal Reserve.

Finally, CEO salaries are up. Dramatically. A recent Associated Press analysis shows that pay for chief executive officers jumped 24 percent between 2009 and 2010. The median pay package for a CEO at one of the Standard & Poors 500 reached $9 million last year, including straight salary, bonuses, stock, options and other perks.

The first two issues are things that hit home to most of us. Higher gas prices make everything more expensive, from food to clothing to medicine to the commute to work – where very few, if any, rank and file have seen raises above 1 to 3 percent in recent years, if at all. They make it harder to find work if you are unemployed or under-employed because now you can’t even afford to drive to interviews, if you get one.

But in Washington and the major political circles across the nation, more attention has been given to the president’s birth certificate than any of these issues. And we let it happen. We let both parties distract us with petty debates and phony crises.

H.L. Mencken, the great newspaper columnist at The Baltimore Sun in the early 20th Century, once said that. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

He also said that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Funny, that’s just how we are getting it.