But Can We Trust Them?
by James Glaser
July 30, 2008

This morning, in USA Today, I read the headline, "Drop in homeless count seen as 'success story.'" That sounded great, but the report was coming out of Washington, and worse than that, it was coming from the Bush administration.

Really now, it is hard for me to believe anything that has a positive note when it comes from anyone associated with George Bush, and that is sad. I should at least be able to trust reports coming from civil servants who work in Washington, but George Bush and his White House have destroyed that trust. There are credible reports that in the last seven years appointments to federal jobs have been qualified by the appointee's political party or his religious affiliation.

Under George Bush we have an Army General preaching in uniform about how our war in Iraq is Christians against Muslims. We have the President of the United States giving known falsehoods to the American people in order to justify an illegal war.

Now the Bush administration is telling us that homelessness is no longer on the rise, and we are supposed to believe them. Remember, it was only a few months ago that President Bush was still telling the "story" that our economy was in good shape.

I say it is sad that I can't believe my government because our democratic system hangs on a thin thread of trust. We have to trust that the people we elect are trying to run our country in a manner that will protect our freedom. Everyone elected takes an oath to uphold our country's Constitution, but so many times in the past few years the Supreme Court has ruled that things done by the Bush Administration were unconstitutional. It is almost like Bush is seeing what he can get by with.

So, now when "Washington" puts out a report, be it from the Executive branch or the Legislative branch of our government, I have to wait and see if it is true or not. It doesn't matter if it is about the war, the economy, or the number of homeless Americans. Washington has lost my trust and the next President is going to have to work hard to gain that back, but to tell you the truth, I doubt if he can.

Trust, once lost, is very hard to get back.

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