Joey’s Take: The Dog Park

We’ve got a lot of problems facing our country right now. One of the biggest is the insane partisanship that’s ripping us apart. My years of experience as playground police at the dog park make me uniquely qualified to handle this situation. If the bullies in Congress – regardless of their party affiliation – get out of hand, I’ll be right there nipping at their heels until they get back to business in a civil manner. If that doesn’t work, I’m great at body slamming the pit bulls and rolling the little yelpers.

Speaking of the dog park. … I’ve noticed that what works in the neighborhood dog park doesn’t play so well on the Capitol Mall. Can you imagine 100 dogs, of every size and breed imaginable, running unleashed and out of control on the Mall? (OK, we’ve got that pretty much in the Senate!) Seriously, that many dogs chasing sticks, Frisbees, tennis balls and each other outside the confines of a dog park would create traffic jams, lead to some dog-bites-man non-news for the 24-7 news frenzy and result in a few dead Snoopys and Rovers. What works on a small scale usually doesn’t work on a national scale – whether you’re talking unleashed animals, health care or education.

The reason is accountability. In most neighborhood dog parks, the dogs get to know each other, and they’re accompanied by people who get to know each other. The end result is the people and the dogs begin to look out for each other. That doesn’t happen on a national scale populated by faceless masses and manipulated statistics.

Hillary (Clinton, that is) got it half right when she said it takes a village to raise a child. But when she “introduced” that African concept to the U.S., she mistranslated the word village. In most African countries, a village is simply a cluster of people united by kinship – and, thus, accountability and responsibility. In other words, it takes a FAMILY to raise a child, or care for their elderly, or tend to the sick within their midst, or look after the destitute among them. But in Hillary’s mind, village is translated as government, removing the need for personal accountability and responsibility.

As your representative in Congress, I’ll demand civility and do everything I can to remove the government from the village.

I’m Joey. I’m running for Congress. And I approved this message.