| Vol. 17 No. 21 | Final Edition | |
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Monday April 16, 2001
Can We Count On Government?
Winston Churchill once called
democracy the worst form of government except for all the others. !
By Amy Williams, Clovis Free Press, Saff Writer
CLOVIS -- In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Americans had a touching faith in government. When asked “How many times can you trust the government in Washington to do what is right?” three out of four answered “most of the time” or “just about always”.
By 1998, fewer than four out of ten trusted the government to do what was right. In 1964 only 29% of the American electorate agreed that “the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking after themselves”.
But by 1984, that figure had risen to 55%, and by 1998 to 63%. In the 1960s, two-thirds of Americans rejected the statement “most elected officials don’t care what people like me think”. In 1998, nearly two-thirds agreed with it.
The proportion of Americans who expressed “a great deal of” confidence in the executive branch fell from 42% in 1966 to 12% in 1997; and trust in Congress fell from 42% to 11%.
In the 1950 census, America was 89% white and 10% black. Other races hardly got a look-in.
Now Latinos account for around 12% of the population. Within the next five years, they will overtake blacks to become the largest minority group. If current trends continue, they will be the majority in Los Angeles County in ten years. In 20 years, they will dominate Texas and California.
By the year 2050, one in four of the 400 millions of people who will then be living in the United States will be Latino—and if you add in Asians, their joint share will be one in three.
The bulk of the “new Americans” are Latinos and Asians, although there are also newcomers among the “white” and “black” groups.
Those of us who believe that government has over-reached itself and call on governments to become smaller and to promise & spend less may soon to be shouted down by those with seeking government hand outs.
With this in mind, it seems ironic that the very persons elected to serve the public in the Clovis City government are just the people who a few years ago would not want government to do for them what they now insist on doing for themselves & everone else. The motto "less is more" should be the guide to informed governmen in Clovis.
Don't be surprised if the City Council is soon calling on local, state, and national government to bail itself out of excessive public debt at the continud expense of hard working taxpayers.©2000- 2001 Clovis Free Press Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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