If you’ve been following the Louisiana pay raise outrage… WE WON!!!!

I’m exhausted. It was two weeks ago today that I started the LegeWatch website. People started signing on and volunteering. We scheduled a rally. On the advice of a more experience local politics watcher we canceled that rally and he scheduled one for two weeks later that a lot of groups like ours could pitch in on. LegeWatch did media interviews, arranged for billboards and a TV spot, got a permit to march in a parade, worked together with people organizing recalls, organized volunteers to get the word out and generally kept the heat on in every way we could. Quite a few legislators began to beg Governor Jindal to veto the pay raise, and today he finally did.

It’s a real testimony to the fact that representative government can work when people engage. I’ve met some incredible people who worked their butts off, people who got creative and dug in and spent their own money, and figured out ways to accomplish all kinds of interim goals to get us to this point of winning the larger victory. We all worked together, Democrat, Republican and Independent alike, and didn’t argue about things that weren’t pertinent to the goal at hand.

As for me… now that the phone has stopped ringing and the celebrations are calming down… after two weeks of nearly nonstop work and sleeping four hours a night, trying to keep up with my own obligations and do what I needed to do for LegeWatch… I’m taking a nap. I’m thanking God that it all happened, and thanking God that it’s all over.

And wondering what it would be like if I devoted myself to ministry with the same sense of energy and purpose I gave to this political movement.

I thought this quote was interesting:

Before launching a panel discussion with some of the nation’s top industry and economic leaders participating in the event, Obama told the invitation-only crowd: “For America to succeed, we’ll have to join together to harness the energy and ingenuity of the American people. “

I was thinking about the nature of a harness, in the context of the 60% tax rate of which Obama approves.

Definitions of harness on the Web:

put a harness; “harness the horse”

exploit the power of; “harness natural forces and resources”

a support consisting of an arrangement of straps for holding something to the body (especially one supporting a person suspended from a parachute)

control and direct with or as if by reins; “rein a horse”

rule: keep in check; “rule one’s temper”

stable gear consisting of an arrangement of leather straps fitted to a draft animal so that it can be attached to and pull a cart
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I suspect that Obama’s version of harness will have a great deal more to do with “rule: keep in check;” than with “exploit the power of.”