Some of my readers don't like politics or political columns and they sometimes seek me out to tell me that. In fact, a friend of mine just told me that the other night. And I can certainly understand why. There's not much to recommend when it comes to politics anymore and, because of that, people have become disillusioned, disconnected, and disenfranchised. We are sometimes even disowned by many of our elected officials until, of course, they need our vote again.

 

But there's something you need to consider if you've never thought about it exactly like this before. Keeping up with politics and politicians is kind of like being made to eat your vegetables when you were growing up. Few of us liked them and not many of them tasted very good but our folks kept making us eat them because they were "good" for us. Keeping up with politics and politicians is exactly the same. Most of us don't "like" them but if we don't pay attention to them, it could be very hazardous to your health as a citizen of this city, county, state, and country. That's because of the tremendous amount of power politicians have over our lives. They control what we make or don't make, what we eat or don't eat, what we do or don't do, where we go or can't go. Practically every aspect of our lives is influenced by politics and politicians and when you choose not to care, not to be involved, not to vote, you give them carte blanche to do whatever they choose to do.

 

Lord Acton, a British historian, once said that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In many of my classes at the college, I use the power pyramid to illustrate this sentiment. As you look at a pyramid, it is obvious that most of the room is located towards the bottom. As one ascends the pyramid, the available room becomes less and less. This is a perfect graphic for society. Most of the people in the United States and the world fall into the bottom half of the pyramid. Only those with power, influence, prestige, and /or control are able to either ascend up or remain near the top of the pyramid. To illustrate this point, a recent study indicates that 2 percent of the world's population owns more than half of the world's wealth while the bottom 50 percent of the world's population owns only one percent.

 

Politicians are much more likely to be found in the upper range of the power pyramid than toward the bottom. If they're not when they enter politics, they're certainly more likely to be when they leave. And look what they're prepared to spend to get elected. The money spent in the 2006 U.S. Senate race between incumbent Ben Nelson and challenger Pete Ricketts in Nebraska topped 15 million dollars for a job that pays $165,200 a year. A  simple math computation quickly tells us that someone serving one six-year term will earn a gross salary of $991,200. Assuming the money spent in the campaign was divided equally, the person elected would have to serve for 7 and ½ terms (45 years) to just make it back to zero. Of course, the loser gets nothing back at all. What compels a person like Pete Ricketts to spend in the neighborhood of 7 million dollars of HIS OWN money to seek a job he would have to hold for almost half a century in order to break even?

 

The answer is POWER. Henry Kissinger once said that "power is the greatest aphrodisiac." And when the power becomes too intoxicating, politicians often forget who they work for (you and I) and begin to seek their own interests rather than the interests of their constituents, the Constitution of the United States, and their country.

 

Yes, politics and politicians are often a bitter pill to swallow. But regardless of how badly it tastes, it is crucial for us and the future of this country that we hold our politicians' feet to the fire and compel them to represent the interests of the many rather than the few. Even though we didn't like our vegetables, our parents made us eat them so we would grow up to be "big, strong, and healthy." For our country to continue to be "big, strong, and healthy," we have to pay the same kind of attention to our elected officials, whether we like it or not.

 

We all know it's going to take a turn for colder weather starting today but Joe Bastardi, the long-range weather forecaster for Accuweather, is predicting much colder temperatures than the NWS is, at least for now.

For the period Feb. 1 through the 10, Bastardi is predicting temperatures not to rise much above zero for highs in the plains and the zero high temperature line to drop all the way down to Amarillo, Texas, with highs in Dallas in the teens and highs in Houston in the 20s.

He's also calling for a winter storm somewhere in the southern or Central Plains for the first part of the period, probably Wednesday or Thursday and for us to have below average temperatures all the way into March.

The Farmer's Almanac is predicting a snow storm to dump a foot or more of snow between the 7th and the 10th in our region.

They correctly predicted every snow we had in January. Regardless of who's right, we all need to be prepared for at least the possibility of severe cold and more snow.

We've probably just had the warmest week we're going to have for a while and the snow that fell the last week of December may still be on the ground in April.