In his Sept. 2 column, Cal Thomas says that the economy is still down and that “policy-makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.”

Who would disagree? But he criticizes without offering any advice.

Are any of our economic problems the sole property of one president or party? And didn’t the ones currently out of power control the White House for the previous eight years, and both houses of Congress for six of them?

Do the Republicans now know (or have) something that eluded them then? The current administration may be guilty of “sugarcoating reality,” but seriously, to say “We know what works and what must be done” (depending on who “we” are), is to stretch beyond the believable.

Our democratic system is in a state of advanced paralysis. One doesn’t need a degree in political science to see that, and the agent of that paralysis is money, mostly taken for the purpose of surviving the next election, mostly given for the purpose of buying influence.

The challenges we face are huge and serious, and have been brewing for a very long time. But little will be done to solve them so long as those who represent us and create policy are beholden to the “generosity” of the rich, powerful interests.

So long as we are distracted by the irrelevant sideshow of the talk-show big mouths and suckered by the slick manipulations of the political marketers that those mountains of money are spent on, “change” will continue to be just another word.