Tucked into the First Amendment to the United States Constitution are a handful of words with powerful meaning:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Freedoms of religion, speech or of the press we see, use and express on a regular basis, but not very often are we moved to assemble. Rarely do we gather together and express our views, engage in protests or petition the government. But we did recently. I live in Elk Rapids and hundreds of local citizens gathered together, made signs with messages of displeasure and peacefully walked around the downtown area for about an hour. All across America, groups larger and smaller than ours with similar signs and messages did the same thing.
Though the volume of protest was impossible to deny, do the people that matter hear, or care? That’s my concern. You’ll notice that the First Amendment begins with the word “Congress.” The complete absence of Congressional response to anything that the Trump administration has either posed or paused has pushed the people into action. Will our action affect anything, only time will tell. Personally, I just wanted to stand up and be counted at this time in history. It’s important to me and to my legacy.
When I say “legacy,” I am not referring to how any of you feel about me. I’m talking about generations and generations from now when those that study this moment in time analyze what exactly happened. And I remind everyone here that this is personal — my views are those of Rob Ford, local columnist, not the Traverse City Record-Eagle. They put my email address at the bottom of this piece for that reason.
I have a number of issues with what’s currently transpiring. One protest is the concentrating of decisions into the hands of an incredible few that have no oversight. Private citizen Elon Musk makes a lot of money doing business with America. Between SpaceX and Tesla he must be among the top earners of our taxpayer dollars, and I’m OK with that. What bothers me is that he and his self-gathered staff have unfettered access to the entire federal budget, picking and choosing what they deem to be fraud or waste and is not. A little reciprocity should be in order. By that I mean that someone with no scientific background should have equal access to his corner of the federal budget to determine what does and doesn’t need to be paid for from the various governmental entities with which he is connected. It’s no wonder that people and departments have been excised only to then realize that they were, in fact, absolutely essential and necessary.
Even if that happened it would be missing the point though. DOGE shouldn’t be doing this, the people that we have elected should and, for that, I blame the Legislative branch of our government. The GOP has been a rubber stamp, either all right with this or fearing retribution for stepping out of line, and the Democrats, not having numbers to out vote anything have been rendered silent.
The effects of removing an entire branch of the government from the process are already evident, if only in the turmoil it has caused. The effects of these decisions are going to have consequences intended and unintended. I want the world, and history, to know I wasn’t happy with them.