Make the right resolution for the future

By Tony Farkas
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We’ve made it to 2024, so you know what that means?

It’s time to make those pesky New Year’s resolutions. You know, when you promise to lose weight, or stop eating gravy fries, or to exercise, or to learn how to make origami cranes or ninjas.

I found the whole practice to be a head-scratcher, since about 12 ½ seconds after making a resolution, it’s broken (cause there’s no force on this earth that will make me stop loving and eating gravy fries).

Yes, I realize that I should stop, and should take up regular, but moderate, exercise, like walking and such, but who am I kidding? I’m currently at the age and girth where that will be akin to torture, and the Geneva Convention prohibits that, so pass the gravy, please.

While poking holes in my ambition is fun, there is one resolution I have kept for years, and one I will bequeath to you in hopes you will also take up and keep.

This year also is significant in that it’s another election year, one I feel is more significant than most in the past.

For many years, our nation has been rampaging toward a brand of socialism that will leave the republic in rubble. Elected officials have ceased to represent, and instead have decided voters what them to be leaders, part of an elite cadre of folks that are part Santa Claus, part Judge Roy Bean, with a smidge of your parents mixed in.

Bit by bit, degree by degree, our liberties have been eroded in the name of safety, while our elected overlords enjoy the fruits of our labors. In order to keep that power, laws and regulations have been enacted that curb our abilities to call them to the carpet.

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They can pass laws that protect them from us while breaking laws themselves, meddle in areas that any government should not meddle (health care, science, energy, etc.), and all the while ignoring the tenets of their positions. They fail to represent their constituency, ignore their oaths to protect the country (look to the Texas border), and throw money at countries while their own people are suffering.

We are monitored in our daily lives almost completely: bank transactions, internet searches and messages, telephone conversations. Our purchases are tracked, our travel is subject to scrutiny or will be allowed only with the blessing of the government.

From birth to death, we are surrounded by control.

Here’s my resolution for you: resolve to hold your elected officials to account.

There is a gentleman of my acquaintance who shows up to every meeting of a county commission, and every meeting asks them to answer his questions about their spending or their reasons for their voting positions. While it hasn’t resulted in wholesale changes, the commission has paid more attention to its voting, and makes sure the residents are given information.

Call them. Write them. Email them. Do it more than once; do it as many times as it takes to not only get a response.

Also, vote. Vote every election, no matter how small. The only vote that doesn’t matter is the one that’s not cast.

Tony Farkas is publisher of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.