Governance

Just how should we be doing this?

It really comes down to us. Not our elected representatives, not our governor or our congressmen. Just how do we want our government to work?

I have to admit, even when I was campaigning to be elected, and after elected and serving in the official governance position of State Senator, I wondered just what people expected of me.

So here we are. A guy in the White House has decided his elected position is our permission for him to enrich himself. Don’t tell me you don’t know.

So maybe that’s all that governance is about. Get into a position of power and enrich yourself or your family.

So much for representative democracy. I could go down the history rabbit hole. Franklin forecast this. Franklin predicted we would end in despotism.

But, I thought, coming to Idaho, this remote place, maybe we would be shielded. Who cares about this wilderness?

I did. I do.

But we are headlining right here to despotism.

It’s about how and where we want our tax dollars spent. We agree to be taxed under the laws of this republic and this state. Then we want the dollars spent wisely.

Our legislature voted last year to send over half of our annual budget off to some contracted for-profit corporation so maybe they could better spend our Medicaid dollars.

Many states have done this before. It is the popular assumption that business can do things better than government.

There is no evidence to support this. Maybe just your faith. Some folks are going to make bank on your faith. Maybe you like that.

Are you happy with how your private, for-profit health insurance company authorizes your out of network needs? Do you think their denials of care make sense?

But this is where our elected officials have decided we should send 1/3 of the pregnant women in Idaho. And ¼ of the children. Idaho Medicaid will go to corporate managed care.

Governance means we care about how things the people we elect control the things that affect us.

Maybe we don’t.

Maybe we don’t care that they get millions, maybe billions for the backroom deals.

And then we get shitty care and long waits on hold and denials, and their stockholders smile as their share values bump. And maybe we don’t care because this will just affect poor people, not us. We are aspiring to be in the Epstein class.

Is governance about us and them?

Are we going to stand up for what we want/need, or are we going to go back to Netflix? Instagram? Facebook?

And if we have health insurance from our employer and we aren’t too bothered, are we going to care about the whole picture.

Maybe we just think those guys, those losers, deserve the poor care maybe we have avoided.

But maybe we haven’t. We live with the annoyance.

Isn’t this what the first aspirational words, written so long ago in our Constitutional Preamble “…a more perfect Union” called us to?

Maybe our current vision of this more perfect union is just what I can get for me and mine. Jeffery Epstein sure knew how to use that motivation.

So maybe we here in Idaho do aspire to be in that Epstein Class.

The contract awarding process for our billions (chump change for this class; we are still a small state) will shuffle big money off to corporations and the accountability will be remote from our elected officials.

Just as the deaths from Governor Little’s hold back don’t lie in his or the Director of the Department of Health and Welfare’s lap. These services are contracted through a managed mental health company. They are to blame.

When we give up our governance to big corporations, we are giving up our freedom. If you can’t see that, then you aren’t paying attention. Still on Netflix?