Federal lawmakers above the law: Part 1

2011


More proof of corruption in Washington

Did you happen to watch the segment on 60 minutes last Sunday? If you did not I strongly urge you to Google “60 Minutes jack Abramoff” and then click on the video labeled with Abramoff’s name. I do not think you can watch this without becoming, as Leslie Stahl stated she was, “sick to my stomach”.

Almost every citizen that I have met or corresponded with over the past year sees the exact same problems that our nation faces today, even if they don’t agree on what to do about them. On the extreme left you will hear shouts of blame aimed either at all Republicans or often more the Tea Party for their collective intransigence in fighting for no new taxes and blocking all Democratic proposals. From the right you will hear the calls for a smaller government and the return to a pure form of constitutional government. My sense is that most voters just want to see the frozen political debates to stop and find common grounds to begin to find workable solutions that are best for the vast majority of our citizens.

However, no matter what you personally believe needs to be done to overcome the many truly massive problems that our nation faces, we must not forget that we live under a Constitutional Republic form of governance. That means that our founding fathers, with the Constitution, decided that we would elect individuals to the executive and legislative branches to represent the best interests of “we the people” (today over 300 million of us). We can complain about the things that we do and don’t like until we turn purple. The fact is that we only have our ballot to speak with.

OK, so we are stuck with the fact that those we elect alone have the power to change the laws and regulations under which we must live. Guess what….they have collectively been failing us for many decades, and we just keep re-electing them! The housing bubble creation and bursting, the resulting recession, the financial institution bailouts, the failed stimulus spending, the 20-25 million out of work, 49 million Americans living in poverty, almost a quarter of our children living in households under the poverty limit, a broken education system, the ethanol boondoggle, the many, many tax loopholes and subsidies, Illegal Immigration, the many wars that could never be won, the plundering of the Social Security trust fund, a health care system that leaves 30-40 million citizens with sub-standard health care. You cannot look at this list of symptoms and not conclude that our nations is quite ill…perhaps even terminally so for too many of our children and grandchildren.

What’s to be done? Clearly it is up to each of us to find it within ourselves to begin the arduous journey of personal change that we must find the courage to make. We must find ways to unite in the center between the extremists on each end of the political spectrum. To continue to stand on either end and remain frozen on principles that cannot be compromised simply misses the point…which is that our elected from both sides have been bought and paid for by the lobbyists for the powerful special interests. Please, if you have not watched the Jack Abramoff interview on 60 minutes…do so. I have been preaching about this for quite a while so I was not particularly surprised at the amount of graft and greed in Washington that actually determines our laws and regulations. I was a little surprised to learn just how little it took to buy favor from our elected. What truly shocked me was how easy it was to gain the full support of the many staffers who work for these elected by the simple promise of a high paying jobs as lobbyists after they left public service. We desperately need term limits, and a signed document from every elected official and each of their staffers that prevents them from holding any type of paid role in working for any type of lobbying organization for at least ten years after leaving public service. We also need to find ways to dramatically limit campaign contributions from any single source. Clearly we know that those we have elected have proven they will not change the rules of the game. Therefore we are going to have to do it from the voter side.To me, what’s really not feasible or acceptable is for we the people not take back control of our country before it’s too late. The only feasible solution I can see short of a bloody revolution is for us all to remember that those elected from both parties to represent our best interests have consistently failed us. The truly American way is to fire them! They are our employees and unless you have some delusions that they will suddenly change their behavior...we must find the courage to send them all home. Surely we cannot do worse.

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

Hendersonville, NC

Please visit:  

Citizens Against Politics As Usual
http://capau.org

Lee's Political Opinion
http://leespoliticalopinion.blogspot.com