As an avid reader of newspapers perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised on the many stories on government at all levels that make me wonder if we are really getting the government we pay for and deserve.

I have no problem at all stating that government has outgrown its britches that the U.S. Constitution provided for it. I think that the government collects taxes for three reasons. If it moves, tax it. If it doesn’t move, tax. If it’s there, tax it. Like I have said on countless occasions, we don’t pay taxes, the government takes taxes.

I might as well start in Windham where the town councilors and staff held a meeting on Dec. 9 (a Saturday) on orientation and goals. This meeting was not televised and if no reporters covered the meeting, it might as well have been held in secrecy. I was going to attend but with a bad storm coming at us the next day I went into my storm preparations, which I learned too well in the military. Now I wish I had attended but I guess it went on for several hours so I presume it must have been an informative meeting for councilors and not Windham citizens. Makes me think that is one of the important reasons the recent bond for a new Public Works facility was turned down. I heard there were no microphones so someone must have learned something from President Nixon and the Watergate Affair.

Now I see the Maine’s government oversight committee, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, is going to look at the advertising that the Maine Lottery Commission has done. There have been some news reports about people living in poverty in Maine spending money on the lottery. Gee, does that give anyone else a huge surprise? But I am willing to bet that committee won’t look at the money that same group of folks spends on alcohol, cigarettes and junk food. If one lives in the poorer areas in Maine or other states, what hope do they have to become instantly rich? I bet (no pun intended) that even rich people have been out buying Powerball tickets for a chance to win $1.3 billion. Who wouldn’t?

Then I see that the Maine Legislature’s Education Committee is looking at dropping the Common Core standards for English and math. Probably not a bad thing as that crap comes from the federal government. But I wonder how long it will take to replace it with something worthwhile.

It would seem that public education would have been around for a long time in this country but the big push for it really didn’t come until the 1920s, which was supported by groups against immigrants, Catholics and the KKK. I would hope to think that by now our education standards would be down pat but unfortunately American politics comes into play and messes everything up. Hey, hopefully some day we will be at the top of the test scores instead of being on the top of the list for spending-per-student and at the bottom for test scores.

I would like to skip over our nation’s capital but that’s hard to do. President Obama’s executive orders are costing millions of dollars apiece and Congress has not allocated one dollar for any of them. Our country’s problems are only solved by coming up with political deals that we don’t even have enough money to pay for. Maybe it’s time to set a term limit of six years and after that they are done and have no pension. Especially a pension that they voted for themselves along with their pay raises and benefits. We have federal bureaucracies that are out of control and nobody is doing anything to stop them.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham looks at those running for President of the United States and really gets scared.