Fund the Children?

I just got a solicitation call from a nonprofit tasked with publishing a directory of missing children, a kid finder, a locator of some kind.

It sounded extremely important, and apparently this directory is often used by Multnomah County social services, to assist in its job of providing assistance to juveniles and their families.

I did not offer to send any money. Why?

Because I think County services should get the taxes it needs to generate these directories minus any need to go begging.

That's a problem in this country: anyone with a worthy cause has to beg, while anyone with a sure-fire way to make dough, all ethics aside, is assured of a friend in Congress.

There's gotta be some happier medium, even without crossing that dreaded line into 20th century socialism. 20th century capitalism: it's your company that owns that computer, so use it to do company work, not personal work. Works great if you're a company prez like me, of some nebulous Global Data dot net.

Of course I don't want the guy who phoned me just now to lose his job. I want him to work full time helping with that missing children situation, not begging for hand-outs. Same with Congress, they deserve more freedom from special interests. Like, we make them need gobs of money, just to stay in the game, but then say "oh, but bribery is illegal."

In the original USA theory, elections could be run cheaply, and some worthy individual with drive, but shallow pockets, could get a crack at holding office. Holding office wasn't supposed to be an exclusively rich man's game, not even high office (we differed from Britain in that way). Not even exclusively men (still tends to be though, at least as long as it's war time).

That's all gotten stretched out of kilter by now. Elections were made super expensive (not to mention untrustworthy), and you had to be on the take somehow, just to get inside the beltway. Going back to the old ways won't be easy on any national level.

That's why I'm suggesting we start local and small. Like, let the County do its job, don't make it beg to save the children. Let's just save the children already. That's just our job, as older adults, s'been that way since prehistory (and not just if we're penguins).