This week’s tweets are not about Bill Raggio who was a good, honest, thoughtful, caring and hard working State of Nevada Senator for over three decades. The tweets are about the gathering of political power and its abuse. I am sure Raggio never made a back-room deal that put any money into his pocket. He was a very competent lawyer, outstanding district attorney and certainly one of this state’s greatest, if not the greatest legislator.
A democratic system cannot survive and reach its maximum potential where political power begins to be entrusted in one person, regardless of the person’s integrity, good faith, hard work and high intellect.
The higher education system colleges in southern Nevada have always been treated as second class citizens, only worthy of being financially supported, if the northern Nevada colleges got first count of the state’s higher education system money. Bill Raggio did his job and did it well. He was the most powerful Nevadan for over thirty years. He was a representative from the north who strongly and logically believed it was his job to fund the higher education schools in northern Nevada, not to fund the southern Nevada colleges. He was right; he did what he was elected to do.
It was not Raggio who failed the southern Nevada colleges. It was the system of government in Nevada that allowed the gathering of unlimited power into far too few people that failed us all. Term limits are one of Nevada’s greatest achievements. Those rules alone will protect the state from having the destructive concentration of political power that Bill Raggio was given. There will never be another Bill Raggio – that is bad. But there will never be another Bill Raggio and that is good.
Back when I was a young man, they had a thing called the draft. It did not affect me, I enlisted.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought the draft would be an interesting way to appoint officials. Couldn't be much worse that the system we now have in place.