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Show B la me you rselfjo recono my It's a very popular thing to do nowadaysblame everyone else, especially President Bush, for our nation ' s economic troubles. But you know, if we look in the mirror, real close, I bet we'll find the real culprit staring right back at us. Yes, we have this blaming bit all wrong. J Wisdom & VA Wisecracks J by Sherri Elnfeldt First of all, check out our good ol constitution. George Bush belongs to the executive branch of government, the one that's supposed suppos-ed to "execute" the laws, carry them out, make sure they're implemented. It's the business of a Congress to write the laws, so if I domestic policies need to be fixed, Congress should be doing it We should be nagging our legislators to take action. After all, it's in the Congress that we find the Appropriations Committeesyou Com-mitteesyou know, the ones where they decide how to spend our -aoney. And because Congress is QJtade up of mostly incumbent representatives, rep-resentatives, they're pros at spending spen-ding lots of money. That's part of the problem...they remain in office by appeasing their constituents back home with regular porkbarrel projects pro-jects as ridiculous costs to taxpayers. tax-payers. So if we don't like the way our Congressmen throw away our money, we should vote them out of office. And by the way, blaming first the Republicans and then the Democrats is a bunch of bunk, too. We've had a Republican president for several years now, and we've Qiad a Democratically controlled Congress for even longer than that. It takes a lot of villains on both sides of the fence to drag us trillions of dollars into debt. And it will take more than just a single person to get us out of the mess. It'll take some 260 million individuals acting responsibly. Let's examine our own household financial situations. How many of us are living on borrowed money, credit cards, installment loans, and paying interest to the Nth degree? Look how many people are declaring personal bankruptcy. Why? Because we aren't any better at controlling our materialistic appetites ap-petites and living within our means than our government is. Yes, times get tough. So we have to get tough, too.. .tough with ourselves. We need to learn to be more self-reliant, more resourceful, more disciplined It may even mean no more Girbaud jeans.. .heaven forbid! The only way we're going to prevent a national economic crisis is to quit relying on Uncle Sam for every little bitty thing we want or need in life. That's not what the government is there for; the government doesn't owe us anything (contrary to popular opinion). opi-nion). Communities are going to have to start solving some of their own problems through volunteerism, through citizen involvement, through the private sector. People working together for worthy causes are much more effective than the government. Families and neighborhoods and states will need to bite the bullet and look to their own resources rather than look for federal aid when times get tough. America is made up of an awfully awful-ly lot of great people who can accomplish ac-complish great things if they truly want to. So let's quit blaming and just start working! F r |