We’ve certainly seen contentious elections here in the US but the small village of Podgora, a poor hamlet in Bosnia is fed up with the government’s broken promises.

I wonder when we in the US are going to learn what the residents of this small village have concluded?

Many cities in the wild, wild, west of earlier days posted signs that guns were not welcome in their city and must be turned into the sheriff’s office.

The Podgora Banner

Families pitched in to pay for a €50 ($58) banner — a hefty sum in a community where most are unemployed, living off of small vegetable farms and livestock.

“You’ve been lying to us for years. No party is welcome in Podgora,” reads the white banner strung across the main square of the 700-person village, which lies some 30 km from the capital Sarajevo.

But the banner did not deter some politicians that put up posters anyway and the citizens unceremoniously tore them down almost as soon as they went up.

These folks change their own streetlights, haul their own garbage, and police themselves.

Their water system consists of asbestos concrete pipes put in before the war back in the 1990s.

Their sparse incomes are from family farms, livestock and vegetables they grow and sell.

Some Final Thoughts

I wonder when our cities are going to get the message that untruthful politicians are unwelcome.

I suppose the old joke, “How to do you tell when a politician is lying?” “His lips are moving,” has some merit in today’s political climate.

Should Bozeman, Belgrade, Four Corners and Livingston be a politician free zone? Perhaps  that might silence my constantly ringing phone.