Our money, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights all clearly affirm “In God We Trust”; it doesn’t say “in government we trust” and that’s for a very good reason.  The Founding Fathers studied the history of nations to guide them in designing their new government.  By structuring a republican form of representative government that is “of, by and for the people,” they were clear that trust in your fellow man must be verified.  Since we are governed by our fellow man, the Founding Fathers built in checks and balances on government’s power to verify that the interests of all were being addressed.

Like hiring a handyman, a painter or anyone to render services on your behalf, you will make clear what you expect of their services and then follow up to ensure your expectations are being met.  It’s the same with elected officials, when we elect them, we are in fact hiring them to render the services of government on our behalf.  Given that, I ask these two questions and strongly encourage you to ask them too:

• First, when you vote as a citizen, how well do you know the people you are voting for?
• Second, once your representative is voted into office, how well do you follow up on their legislative and voting records?

You may check out completely if your preferred representative loses their election.  But I am concluding that it is in each of our best interests as citizens of this great country to know more about our representatives and verify that their activity is in our best interest.  The reason is simple – they greatly impact our daily lives as well as our future prosperity.

I took the liberty of setting up my own verification of the current Biden administration.  Though he was not my preferred candidate, I was clear that the services he was offering were not the ones I thought were in my best interest or that of my fellow citizens.  So, let’s look at what happened over the last 18 months since Joe Biden took office in January 2021 through June of 2022.

If you were running a company or managing your household budget, you would see these results as alarming in their impact on the cost of living and the prospects for growth opportunities.  And many of these indicators of government performance are also hitting all-time highs or lows.  For instance, the inflation rate is at a 45 year high and we have never seen the average price of gas for our cars or natural gas for our heating this high so that is an all-time high.

In short, we not only need to verify what our representatives are doing, we need to take citizen action to correct the negative direction our government is taking on our behalf.  We need to find out who is running for office and learn more about who they are and how well they reflect what we expect before earning our vote.  Then we need to make sure we verify once they are in office that they are doing the right things on our behalf whether we voted for them or not.

Milton Friedman, the renowned economist, said it succinctly – “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”  We can’t trust government, but we can verify and use our rights as citizens to vote the right representatives in and fire those that don’t meet our expectations.  The Time is Now!!!