MORE CHECKS AND BALANCES, PLEASE

The Founding Fathers had it right: to function democratically, a government needs to have a variety of opposing views aired in full view of the public. When you have the Executive branch, Congress and the judiciary all controlled by the same party it creates one-sided deals and unhealthy excesses.

Witness what's happened in the past six years. Under the "fiscally conservative" Republicans' one-party rule

-a national surplus has turned into a crushing national debt
-federal resources such as oil fields are given away without royalties to billionaire companies
-virgin federal lands are earmarked for roads to enrich extraction industries
-federal regulations to protect our air, land and sea are loosened so that companies can avoid costly retrofitting
-lobbyists buy off our Congressmen and then write the laws to benefit their industries

The Republicans are selling our birthright. That's not to say that the Democrats would perform more honorably if they ran all three branches of government. What we need is control of one branch by a different party so that the politicians can keep each other in check. Remember that on November 7.