By Jim Townsend
State Representative District 54
During the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln described the fundamental principle of our representative republic as being a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Yet, 161 years later, most people today have concluded that government really does not care what the people want, rather the government is only interested in becoming more powerful and telling people how they must conduct their daily lives. I share this current belief, but I am also optimistic that if people demand accountability from their government officials, we can restore our government to what President Lincoln so correctly described.
But before we can fix this problem, people must be willing to become more engaged with their government and demand that officials start solving the problems most important to them. Let’s look at a few important examples:
• The U.S. Border Patrol is no longer capable of protecting our southern border. We all know it and we all see the effects, yet the government refuses to stop millions of illegal immigrants coming into the country and protect our young people from the fentanyl crossing our border. Yet, nothing has changed for the past 3 years.
• The New Mexico Children, Youth and Family Department is a complete disaster as it is unable to protect our state’s most vulnerable children from abuse and neglect. Sadly, too many of these children have died because of bureaucratic incompetencies. But the government won’t address the issue and nothing changes.
• Electricity, food, gasoline, vehicles are all rising almost daily because of the stupidity of government policies. We all realize inflation is out of control and our standard of living is deteriorating, but the government’s response is a public relations campaign trying to convince us the economy is good, and that inflation is going down. Until government policies are modified, nothing will change.
• Our state’s education system has consistently been ranked 50th in the nation. Our kids’ achievement scores are far below national averages, but the government’s answer is to only provide more money for a broken system. Until parents and educators require student performance to improve, nothing will change.
My point is this, until the people eliminate their own complacency, government will never reflect our values and we will be victimized by our own inaction.
In the last election cycle the voter turnout was horrible in too many areas. People said “I am mad at the government so I will not vote –that will show them, and it sure did. We had more people elected with less voter participation than before and too many of those elected hold a woke political ideology. That woke agenda has no roots in New Mexico, as it’s a California agenda that no connection with our heritage. If it wasn’t for COVID, we would have never realized the huge impact this woke agenda is having on our children.
Our New Mexico government is passing the so-called “green energy agenda” that will have absolutely no calculable effect on Global Warming (Climate Change). Yet, the Legislature and the governor approve it anyway because some environmental idiot (activist) in Washington or California said it was a good idea. Make no mistake, this green energy agenda will hurt New Mexicans as prices are going up for no positive reason. Natural gas is the cleanest and most cost-effective way to generate dispatch-able (available on demand) electricity. All these wind towers and solar panels are unreliable, unstable, and will require millions of dollars of investment to plug them into the grid. The increased unpredictability of the grid, which will result in a loss of cheap and reliable energy, is caused by elected officials who are fully committed to implementing this green agenda without a thorough review of the consequences. But back to the problem with the government. The problem is we don’t vote and then we complain about who “THEY” elect. “THEY” have elected people who don’t represent our values, who care more about their political future than they do our children’s, yet we have stayed silent too long.
The choice is ours, not theirs. If we don’t get involved, if we don’t require honest representation, and if we don’t hold our elected officials accountable for their votes then we shouldn’t be mad at anyone other than the person in the mirror.