It will come as no surprise to anyone that I am concerned with the size and scope of our federal government. From the NSA spying to our massive debt, to Obamacare and the concentration of power in the executive branch, I think the pendulum has swung too far. And so I have been advocating for power and decisions to be returned to state and local control.
Recently I did a little soul searching and I realized I have for some time been a hypocrite. I talk about giving more control back to state and local politicians but have not put my money where my mouth was and become informed and involved with that level of government. As a result I resolved to fix that, and I have made some progress, which I would like to tell you about.
This story on its surface is about local politics but please look past that for a second as there is much more to it than that. Bear with me; the “more” is important but without the details I cannot effectively make the point. But before I begin I want to ask you a few questions.
· Who is your State Representative?
· What State House district do you live in?
· Who is your State Senator?
· What State Senate District do you live in?
· Who is your Governor? Lieutenant Governor? Speaker of the House for your State?
· Who is on your local School Board? Who is your Mayor? County Executive?
· Who will be running for these positions this year?
These are tough questions. I live in Missouri’s 107th congressional district and my State Representative is Ron Hicks. Ron is a Republican and a supporter of the Second Amendment. He has a young family, loves dogs and recently saved a woman’s life using CPR. I have never met Ron but have connected with him on Facebook and he seems like a good guy. If you are interested, here are two links.
http://fox2now.com/2014/02/25/missouri-legislator-looking-to-stop-cities-from-banning-specific-dogs/
I live in Missouri’s 2nd Senate District and my State Senator is Scott Rupp. Scott is a Republican and has been a State Senator since 2006 and has reached his term limit, and so he leaves a vacancy this fall. I have never met Scott but he lives next to my dentist and some good friends who tell us he is a good guy as well. Scott is now running for Missouri Secretary of State. He is an advocate for autism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/03/scott-rupp-missouri-autism-voters_n_1738886.html
My Governor is Jay Nixon (D), Lt. Gov is Peter Kinder(R), and MO’s Speaker of the House is Tim Jones (R).
The Mayor of Lake St. Louis is Ralph Sidebottom. St. Charles County Executive is Steve Ehlman. Frankly I do not know who is currently on the Wentzville School Board (my kids graduated from there a number of years ago), but here is a link to the candidates in the April 2014 election.
http://wentzville.k12.mo.us/mod/resource/view.php?id=22456
So far, I have never met ANY of these fine folks. I suppose that is why I felt like a hypocrite. How can I promote giving more power and control to state and local government when admittedly I have not even met any of my local government officials? And so, like I said, I set out to change that.
Ok, now what? How does a person go about becoming informed and active in their community? Being somewhat lazy, I started with the internet. Obviously with a few strokes of the keypad one can find the information posted in the links above. I tried connecting with these folks on social media, mainly Facebook and Twitter. I did reach out, but with the exception of Ron Hicks nobody really reached back. Mostly they don’t do a lot of social media.
Again, now what do I do? I am pretty libertarian but have always tended to vote Republican and so I went to a meeting of the St. Charles County Pachyderms. They were a bunch of great people and they had a good speaker. And I met a candidate for Scott Rupp’s vacant position by the name of Dr. Bob Onder.
Dr. Onder is very Pro Life and he supports the Second Amendment and opposes Common Core and Obamacare. Here is a link.
Dr. Onder is one of three people running for the Republican nomination for State Senate to replace Scott Rupp. The other two are Chuck Gatschenberger, currently State Rep for the 108th district in the Missouri House, and Vicki Schneider, who is a former State Representative, as is Bob Onder.
And then I went to another meeting, this one of St. Charles County Patriots. Again I saw Dr. Onder and listened to him speak, and I am impressed with him. I also met Justin Hill who is running for State Representative in the 108th District to replace Gatschenberger, who is obviously looking to move from the house to the Senate. And I met Alex McCarthy, who is running for Missouri State House in the 103rd district. Justin and Alex seem like good guys, here are links to their Facebook pages.
https://www.facebook.com/engageLIBERTY
I was also fortunate enough to meet Ron Lares, who is one of the candidates for the Wentzville School Board. Ron was kind enough to hold the meeting in his home and I spoke to him briefly and he is a good man who is passionate about his community.
http://wentzville.k12.mo.us/file.php/1/Community_Relations/Ron_Lares_Bio.pdf
So far, so good. Missouri’s primary is in August, and so there is some time left to explore the rest of the candidates and determine how best to vote and more important what the issues are. Yes, that is a good question. What are the issues in Missouri that we need to be aware of?
I have taken a look at what is going on in Missouri and of course like everyone we are concerned about national issues such as Obamacare and Common Core. Missouri has made some headlines in the gun control debate. And then I found the small matter of House Bill 1133, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
I suppose I am probably the only nut job that has a problem with such a wonderful piece of legislation. The supporters are trying to address the problem of prescription drug abuse. Let’s stipulate up front that prescription drug abuse is a significant problem in this country. Doctors over prescribe and people over medicate and abuse and doctor shop. Family members steal each others’ medications and abuse them. It is a problem.
Last week the Missouri State House of Representatives voted to try and fix the problem by creating a database that would track what prescriptions Missouri citizens are taking so that our government can be aware when someone is overmedicating and cut them off.
That sounds great, right? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let’s step back just a few paces and look at this again. The State of Missouri will now have a database to tell them what prescriptions you are taking so they can “monitor” you. It comes as no surprise to anyone that I am not a fan of Big Brother or the Nanny State, and so I oppose giving this information to our state government.
The State legislators in Connecticut recently voted to require gun registration and the state has now sent out letters to the owners of illegal firearms telling them they have one final chance to dispose of or turn in their guns or they will be taken away. The state knew where to send the letters because of the information collected via background checks. Again, these laws were passed by the STATE.
We are told the NSA “needs” to spy on us to keep us “safe”. We are told we need Common Core to properly educate our children. We are told we need Obamacare to keep us healthy. We are told we need to turn in our guns so we can all be safe. And now Missouri is going to keep track of what prescriptions we are on so that we can be “protected” from ourselves.
I don’t want to see America attacked by terrorists. I don’t want anyone to die due to lack of medical care. I want to see our children educated and I don’t want to see any more school shootings. And I do not want to see people continue to abuse prescription medications. But I also believe in personal responsibility and I know these laws and regulations are not successful in what they are trying to accomplish. It turns out states with a prescription drug database still have a problem with prescription drug abuse.
Strict gun control laws have not been successful in Chicago or DC or Mexico in eliminating gun violence. The NSA could not stop the Boston bombings or even Edward Snowden. And a Prescription Drug Monitoring Database is not going to stop prescription drug abuse any more than laws against heroin have prevented the heroin epidemic.
But the momentum seems to be on the side of the nanny state. As I said House Bill 1133 passed this vote and now moves to the senate. I checked the vote and Ron Hicks did not vote on it; he was “absent with leave”. Chuck Gatschenberger voted in favor of the database. I could not find any explanation for why, but perhaps like Boehner and many Republicans it may have been an attempt to be on the right political side of an issue in the hopes of winning the next election. Here is a link to an article on the database issue.
And what of you, the gentle reader who does not live in Missouri’s 107thCongressional District? I hope you have some questions about your own situation. Who are those people and what are they up to? What things are happening that you are not aware of? How will that which you are not aware of affect you?
You see, I am pretty aware of things politically. I watch the news and look at the internet. And yet I was terribly ignorant of what was going on in my own state. I suspect many of you are in the same situation. Perhaps you are waiting until the general election to vote for whatever R’s or D’s show up on the ballot. But the primary season is already upon us, and in many cases the REAL decision is made in the primary.
It is not easy. It takes an effort, and some interest. But if you do not get involved you leave it to a small group of people to decide things for you. Democracy is not about a small vocal minority or for that matter an uninformed electorate voting blindly yes or no or simply for any name they recognize.
If we want to live in a great society it is up to us to create it. If we continue to be ignorant and apathetic it will not be long before a policeman will pull you over and after checking your license ask for a blood sample because he ran you through the database and it says you may be on a prescription narcotic.
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