Because I am sick of the horserace

I am going to ignore it today, at least until the returns from Wisconsin and Hawaii come in. Instead I am going to share a couple of thoughts on down-ticket races...

The farther down the ticket a race is, the more direct impact it has on your life.

Think about it: An incompetent city councilman or alderman, a corrupt county commissioner or a crooked sheriff has more potential to negatively impact your life than a bad president does; and don't even get me started on school boards.

I watched in abject horror as school boards were overtaken by fundamentalist, anti-science whack-jobs who openly scorned intellectualism.

I'm not going to preach for paragraphs, but I am going to enter a plea that we all, each and every one of us, watch our newspapers and familiarize ourselves with the issues facing our localities, and with the candidates running in those down-ticket races. They really are important, they really do matter.

Those are the people we elect to select textbooks and set curriculum for our schools, fix the pothole at the end of the street, get that buzzing street light outside your bedroom window fixed and prosecute the bad seed who broke into a secluded, empty house, trashed it, and used it for a meth lab.

When you really stop and think about it, their impact is manifest.

Choose wisely.