So, What Happens with the Recent Election

   I love Fall colors. I took the bike in to town this morning and all the vineyards were glowing.
This is a photo of the wisteria in the back yard. 

   On the farm, the wheat is sprouting. We are working in the orchard and getting ready for the holidays.

So, What Changes With the Recent Elections?

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright December 2014

            A lot of money was spent campaigning and a lot of ink was spilled analyzing. The question still remains-What changes with the  recent elections? Probably not much.

            Yes, the Republicans now have the House and Senate. The Republicans have a majority of the governorships. But, the fact is the public is still very evenly divided. If the Republicans think they have a massive mandate they are going to be surprised.

            The Republicans won, in large part, because one thing voters agree on is that our government is not looking out for our concerns. The Republicans have two years to show they can work on behalf of the public or they will face voter frustration themselves in two years.

A Quick Reminder About the Constitution-

            The most common word to describe Congress in recent years is ‘gridlock.’ There are a lot of comments about how they don’t get along with the President and how bad the partisan bickering has gotten.

            For starters, if you remember back to your high school civics class the system was created this way on purpose. Founding Fathers designed the separation of powers because they had lived under a king and the really, really, really did not like the king. More specifically, they did not want a system where one person had all the power.

            Now to this notion that Congress has grown more partisan, I don’t know how that could possibly be true. I have a picture in my files of a political cartoon showing President Lincoln with the face of a baboon. If you remember your Congressional trivia before the Civil War one Congressman almost beat another Congressman to death on the floor of the House with his cane. That’s pretty intense and we haven’t had anything like that in quite a while.

Now, if you are concerned that these people seem to be working for their own interests instead of the greater good, I agree with you whole heartedly. But, you have to realize their number one job is to get reelected not get along. A key part of my education when I ran for the Legislature ten years ago is there are two parts to being a politician; one is campaigning and the other is doing policy. There are those who can get elected, but may not be any good at policy. There are those who may be good at policy, but we will never know if they can’t get elected.

Back to 2015

            So, what changes in the coming year? We actually have a small sliver of opportunity. The 2016 campaigns for the Presidency and Congress will begin about this time next year. We do have a few moths for ‘Them’ to get something done before they go back into campaign mode.

The President has fired off the first salvo in the next round of immigration reform. There are really two issues in this case. First, the obvious need to reform a broken immigration system. The public wants to see reform. If we do not get anything done this year it will be 2017 before we have another chance.

The second issue here is the use of Executive Orders. Each side hates when the other team’s president does it. The Constitution clearly allows the President this power, but changing laws cannot be done by the President alone.

The next step in National Health care takes place this year and with divided government will cause fireworks.

            Water-we are still out numbered. Getting a national Congress to focus on something important to farmers in CA is a long shot.

            We did pass the water bond. We’ll see if they can implement that without squandering all the money.

In California we face a news fuel tax. I am kind of expecting a firestorm when fuel prices go up January 1 to cover AB32’s carbon tax. IT’s all fun and games until some one has to pay for Sacramento’s foolishness. Like the choo choo AB32 is another mandate sent from on high that has not caught the favor of the general public who is just trying to survive day to day.

I’m sounding a little cynical aren’t I? I don’t mean to. Just realistic. These are complex issue with many different interests.