Today I was walking to work to my new office. (Did I tell you I live three blocks from my office and that is the major impetus for my forming the new boutique law firm.) For the third time, I took with me a plastic garbage bag because I have been troubled by all the detritus of humanity that litters my walk to work. You can avert your eyes from the public space and go about your own affairs, but every once in a while it pokes its way into your conscience and prompts you as an individual to take some responsibility. I couldn’t look away anymore, after climbing out of my car and abandoning my automobile commute. Anyway, I picked up yet another garbage bag of roadside litter and dumped it in the trash can. That is my contribution today to the public good.

Which brings me finally to point of this blog. Last Friday, the Government just fell into another short shutdown before finally approving a budget. Not enough of us care for the public space. As a government contracts lawyer, you get to work daily in all the mundane but important things that the government does, and which our freedom, health and livelihood depend. Someone needs to pick up the trash and clean the public spaces, protect us from some very real enemies, cure our diseases, maintain our space program, keep our parks functioning, and perform the important public services which define our society. The people who do those jobs (in the Government and the contracting community), and the work they do, deserve more respect that they are getting from our elected representatives.

I have friend who is an NIH scientist, working on get discoveries like the cure to cancer, and when our government shuts down, she is told to lay off the post-docs, and stop monitoring the monkeys. It is the human project is being monkeyed with. It is a good thing that is not supposed to happen again for some time. And as those principled individuals who oppose the deficit spending -- and who have a point, deficits do matter-- but who just voted for the massive tax cuts that will expand those very deficits, it is their government now, and they need to run it responsibly. Of course, one can debate whether bread and circus deficit spending is responsible or not, but with the shutdown threat now sidelined, let that debate begin.