Rick Perry and Consequences

Inconsequential?

Perry can't acknowledge it, being committed to his populist panderings amongst Tea Party activists, but there are some positive consequences of Washington's involvement in our lives, even if the government haters don't like it.

I'm fond of higher clean water standards, pollution controls, interstate highways, federal racketeering and conspiracy laws, our armed forces, our air traffic control system, drug regulation, our common currency, and even our federal appeals court system, to name just a few.

They're far from perfect, but they're more comprehensive a safety net than any state and local systems could manage.

And think what you like - no, make that react how you like.  Too many people don't think, they simply react.  Anyway, however and whatever you like, if you assume I'm an unabashed fan of big government, you're wrong.  There are plenty of things that seem to be done more poorly the more distant the people managing it are.

I'm no fan, for example, of the Army Corps of Engineers, who to this day retains too much of a sense of manifest destiny when it comes to rivers.  The levees they build don't hold as well as they ought, and when they do, they mostly serve to transfer the problems upstream or down, not actually resolve them.  It's hubris to think we can tell the Mississippi River what to do, and it will meekly comply.  No china shop was ever saved by putting the bull on a leash. 

I also have doubts about government being able to provide affordable health care that is responsive to the actual needs of people, and not just to actuarial tables somewhere.  I don't want a soulless bureaucracy managing my health, and my relationship with my doctor and hospital of choice.  Unfortunately, I can't say I've been well-served by the soulless insurance companies that have been doing it.  I could move to some remote village in Alaska, I suppose, where bureaucrats and accountants are seldom found ... but then, the same would be true of doctors and hospitals in remote Alaskan villages. 

I'm all for Washington being as unobtrusive as possible, but inconsequential?

What I'd like to do, as a Texan, is make Rick Perry as inconsequential in my life as possible.  Unfortunately, sending him to Washington would only compound the problem, not solve it.