This could go onto our regular pages as a news story, but it’s funny and deserving of more attention than a mere paragraph would give it.

“The Sweet Home City Council met on Nov. 24 and did nothing, just like the meeting before.”

OK, maybe it hasn’t been that bad. Our councilors did something that wasn’t on its completely empty agenda in one of their recent meetings. But mostly, they haven’t done anything in several weeks.

We always complain about how our government doesn’t ever do anything. It’s always the same old thing. Even The Change that The One offered during last year’s presidential election is more of the same.

Evidence: As one liberal acquaintance explained to me while trying to understand why fiscal conservatives are freaking out as if President Obama were some unexpected radical, the president is just bringing the same social democrat philosophy that FDR brought to the table in the New Deal era.

He forgets that this is the same economic liberalism that fiscal conservatives have been freaking out about since FDR and the New Deal. Nothing’s changed, except it has. Our lives are inexorably growing more regulated every year, and it doesn’t matter who’s in charge.

Our government agencies and elected officials can’t win with us, well, except when we re-elect them. We just love to complain. I do my share of it. You think you have it rough, having to read my rants. Think about my poor friends – and a lot of them are in my choir.

Our governments don’t do anything, some may cry; but they do – well, except for our City Council.

Our councilors show up to their meetings for six or seven minutes, bang the gavel and go home after Councilor Jim Bean announces, like clockwork, that the Traffic Safety Committee is continuing its efforts in bicycle and pedestrian safety.

Some of us might feel compelled to complain about the $50 or so per month that we pay those poor folks – or the $75 or $90 we pay the mayor, who didn’t even make it to last week’s meeting. Jim Gourley had to run that possible record seven-minute waste of time while Mayor Craig Fentiman was busy picking his daughter up from the airport for Thanksgiving.

Some of us might feel compelled to complain, but I don’t.

I think they’re setting an excellent example through brevity and a general lack of passing new impositions and rules that could simply further restrict our freedoms. The City Council doesn’t do much of that kind of legislation in general, but they’re setting a good example of how hands-off government works.

Yes, the city still meddles in our lives where it shouldn’t, but it also does its job where it should. Y’all can figure out which of those parts is which based on your own political-philosophical leanings. I really don’t care much other than things are staying status quo, and that’s always a plus if we can’t roll back regulation and all the people the freedom to keep as pets wallabies, spiders and iguanas.

If our state legislature and Congress were to take up the same pastime, think of the effect that might have on our lives. Even if they never turn the direction I’d like, I’d even be willing to keep giving them a paycheck for that kind of lawmaking.

Nice job, Sweet Home City Council. I’m truly proud. Good government. I think I have a tear….