AN OPEN LETTER TO BOB AND AMERICA
Bob Crowe wrote :
(1) ” How can we get the conversation away from the war hawk talking points and onto the realities of the mistakes, disasters, and illegalities?
(2) Perhaps part of the answer is that in order to do so we must criticize ourselves (we Americans) and we all shy away from self-criticism.
(3) But that, I think, is what it will take. From among our leaders, who will stand up and say "this is wrong, this is a mistake, and we must now take responsibility and get to work to fix it?
(4) Where is the leader who will risk reelection for the sake of doing the right thing?”
Let us take the last part of that first (4). I am being neither dismissive of the question, nor trivializing it by my oblique commentary. The FACT of the matter is that hundreds of the members of Congress in the House and Senate are mental midgets, embarrassing blowhards, chronic liars, outright crooks, corporate lackeys and cowards who feast at the public trough, pillage every coffer they see and believe it is their right to covet and collect every perk and privilege that they can in exchange for access and their vote.
All that has nothing to do with all the fine platitudes and high sounding hyperbole they slathered on the public like a coating of honey while seeking office and our VOTE. It felt good, sounded good, smelled good and in the hunger for change in November 2006; it tasted good!
The Congress of The United States, within its membership, and systemically as an institution, has failed. Bob it is not simply a matter that as nation we are unwilling to participate in self examination and constructive, essential- for- survival, self criticism; we can’t and we won’t until catastrophe has befallen us because as a nation we are egomaniacal and arrogant to a fault.
We are exclusive, exemption minded from the rest of the world. Our every act of collective or permitted/tolerated aggression and inaction to a world beset with Genocide is daily evidence of that FACT.
We are comfortable with Genocide because it is a mere word that most cannot comprehend, and never will until this country is shaken to its core on own soil.
Oh, but there is a rub; our mentality that says: “It can’t happen here.”
Anyone who clings to the notion that any malady suffered anywhere else in this world cannot be visited upon our “SACRED IMMUNE SOIL” I cannot help or cannot reach with reason or words because they are the very heart of the problem with this nation.
They do not possess the requisite pride in this nation, a conscious appreciation of our heritage, an understanding of the real and sometimes horrific sacrifices that have been made by generations long gone to their graves, dying to achieve, defend or preserve those very things we anguish over with words.
There are few who really believe that all is right with this nation, but there are fewer prepared to be a Bobby Kennedy or a Martin Luther King, an Edward R. Murrow, a Che or Chavez, a John L. Lewis or Joe Hill and those who are so prepared can find no troops but their own private circles.
I fear that while intellectually America knows it is becoming unglued, personally, viscerally the people have been fear driven into impotence or the belief that that are impotent in the face of this government.
The Machiavellian performance of this congress is worthy of a Doctoral Degree on Machiavelli, and what I find most troubling about that fact is that most are intelligent enough to have digested his work, but time, experience, trial and error example and the machinations and manipulation of the technologies that dominate our society have made understanding unnecessary as contemporary political process has been reduced to routine scripted formula manipulation of a benign populous.
Money in obscene amounts is generated on the internet for candidates and organizations, according to practices formulas, formulas that tap into individual harbored hopes. One can easily donate that way, feel that are somehow a contributor to hope and change, effortlessly, thoughtlessly, anonymously and risk free.
There are so few members of the house, all facing election who are worthy of even a penny of support at the moment, but the money flows foolishly in the naive partisan knee jerk instinct that all will change in the 2008 elections and that we just have to forgive the failure following the November 2006 elections.
The Founders of our nation and the Framers of our Constitution surely did not foresee the day when, of the federal government’s three branches, the public would have the least confidence in Congress. In fact, the public has a little less confidence in Congress than it has in HMOs. At 14 percent, the fraction of Americans with a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress is the lowest in Gallup's history of this measure -- and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year's Confidence in Institutions survey. The Supreme Court received 34 percent confidence and the criminal presidency of George W. Bush received 25 percent – nothing to be proud of and certainly not inspirational.
The 2006 congressional elections demonstrated/revealed that switching power between the two major political parties is an act of utter futility.
We have a bipartisan failure of Congress to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities and serve the public.
In the end, we Democrats may have a different style, but like Republicans we are also corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent.
Things have gotten so bad institutionally and culturally that we cannot vote our way out of a dysfunctional and destructive Congress as long as the two-party duopoly maintains its grip on our political system.
We no longer have a significant number of members of Congress that rise above partisan political priorities or private privilege and plundering/pilfering/pillaging to put the good of the nation and the integrity of our Constitution first.
For our constitutional republic to really work Congress must have the courage and integrity to use its constitutional powers to safeguard Americans’ freedom, security, health, safety and welfare. Even the most distracted and cynical Americans now see Congress has done next to nothing to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
But the very words: integrity, courage, service and constitutional have been pretty much relegated to the trash bin of history as speech making vocabulary that no one believes. America has come to accept that their leaders are corrupt, will continue to be corrupt, and that the best they can hope for is that the organizations they support, the party they support, amidst their corruption will incidentally protect and serve their personal well being and interests; that they will not be bothered, negatively impacted or have to put down their beer, get off the sofa and so something distastefully meaningful that someone else has not done for them.
That is a painting of American apathy, not personal cynicism.
Worst of all, Congress has allowed the Bush presidency to accumulate far more power than our Constitution permits. Even after years of arrogant disrespect by Bush and Cheney for our Constitution and Congress itself, Congress is too cowardly to do what they are supposed to do to maintain the structure of our federal government. It has not used the constitutional remedy of impeachment – not to punish Bush – but to preserve the constitutional limits on the presidency.
How many Americans understand that the thread of Executive power that broke away from the whole cloth fabric of our democracy did so in the shadows of WW I and the Great Depression?
How many Americans understand the pending catastrophe that confronts us is a web of power woven from that errant thread of so many years ago?
How many Americans understand that, that we call the “military industrial complex”, corporate capitalist excess and conspiracy among the few has been allowed to simply grow like an untreated cancer to the detriment of the entire world in the name of power, privilege and wealth for the few?
How many Americans understand that, that evolution has all but disassembled the fruits of the labor movement that men and women died for?
America was too busy with other matters, other comfortable matters, and we slumbered in placid decades of self absorption. The Vietnam era is a forgotten aberration for most of the younger generation and forgotten by others annoyed by the noise after Nixon fell as the pound of flesh paid for that adventure and the masters of politics and war learned to manage Television, made body bags disappear and replaced then with honored patriotic flag draped coffins, so much more acceptable.
Add to all this: the failure to protect the rule of law; the failure to control spending and reduce our debt; the failure to control our borders and protect our national sovereignty; the failure to stop the insane Iraq war; the failure to stop creation of the North American Union; the failure to stop the many forms of corruption of Congress itself; the failure to restore public confidence in our elections; the failure to stop the excesses of globalization that is destroying our middle class; the failure to address rising economic inequality; the failure to fix/replace our broken health care system; and so much more, all the result of repugnant runaway politics.
Getting elected, grabbing power and enjoying the benefits of office trump governing.
Those hundreds of members of Congress – in the House and Senate – the mental midgets, embarrassing blowhards, chronic liars, outright crooks, corporate lackeys, and elderly buffoons are plutocracy protectors more than democracy defenders. And too many that think they should be president. What a list!
So Bob; what can the 86 percent of Americans without confidence in Congress do?
Put aside partisan views and stop re-electing members of Congress. Only a handful of incumbents deserve to be re-elected. A very few that never supported the Iraq war, do not use pork spending to reward their supporters, and have worked to impeach Bush, for example.
It really is time that America breaks the mold. It is the only peaceful, bloodless, last option available!
Our Constitutional system does not provide for a revolution at the ballot box, only evolution. As close as we can get to affecting real change will occur in the Presidential Election of 2008 when all 435 House members are up for election, and a few Senators.
Now is the time to elect independents, third party candidates and non incumbents to Congress.
When one objectively sees the utterly low quality of both Democratic and Republican members of Congress it becomes clear that even a random selection of ordinary Americans would probably do better.
But we have thousands of independents and third party members with considerable civic and elective office experience that deserve the opportunity to restore our representative democracy.
How could we do any worse? Let’s make a dent in house cleaning and send the message that we are watching and that voter rage is real, and that the two party incumbents do not have an automatic lease on their offices throw the bums out and give real change a chance.
We also need much greater public awareness that Congress for a very long time has failed to obey the part of Article V of our Constitution that gives us the right to a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.
Such an Article V Convention was created by the Framers as an alternative to Congress proposing amendments. They created this convention option – a temporary fourth branch of government giving us some direct democracy – in case Americans some day lost confidence in the federal government. That day has arrived!
I don’t know if the call for a Third Continental Congress has ant chance of being realized, but it is worthy the try. It would make a solid statement that Americans can organize nationally to express their will and serve both notice and as a platform for the launch of a Constitutional Convention should it be necessary and deemed an appropriate vehicle for correcting the accumulation of tools and statutes of Executive Branch excess.
There are many constitutional amendments that deserve public discussion, especially ones to make our government work they way our Constitution intended it to work. We need to strengthen our Constitution to prevent power-hungry presidents, useless Congresses, and Supreme Courts that create new public policy that is injurious to the fabric of this democracy.
Moreover, the one and only requirement to have an Article V Convention specified has already been satisfied, because way more than two-thirds of state legislatures have requested such a convention. Learn more about this congressional disobedience of the Constitution at www.foavc.org , the website of the new national, nonpartisan group Friends of the Article V Convention.
Why has Congress failed Americans?
Because Americans have allowed it to fail them.
Now is the time for Americans to assert their sovereign constitutional power and take back their country. That means US!
Six months on, the defining characteristic of the new Democrat majority in Congress has been failure: failure to lead, failure to communicate, failure to organize, failure to deliver. It's normal for a caucus long out of power to have some tough sledding when relearning how to run the place, but this crowd is taking incompetence to a new level.
Forget about the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) are riding at the head of the Gang That Can't Even Shoot.
To deal more directly with the idea that we as a nation cannot deal with self-evaluation or self-criticism; there is no question in my mind but what you are right! The idea that America can be wrong, that it might have to admit to error or wrong doing is foreign a concept to a nation that perceives itself as the world power, the bastion and marketer of democracy and the moral compass of the world, that to suggest such is viewed by a majority as lunacy and treasonous.
The collapse of the immigration bill is a perfect case study in the legislative idiocy that is right now posing as leadership in the Democratic Party. The Democrats wrote the immigration bill like it was 1977, when they commanded huge majorities -- behind closed doors, details kept even from their own caucus, as if confident their ideological pals at the networks and major newspapers would keep the story from the American people. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid simply do not understand that you can't manage Congress in a vacuum of closed-door meetings and party discipline.
The idea that a handful of senators could get together in secret, write a 1,000-page bill opposed by 70 percent of the American people, come down off Mount Sinai and demand a supermajority of support with less than 48 hours' lead time is even stupider than it sounds. Pelosi's and Reid's careers are far from over, but I think it's fair to say that Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson they ain't. The entire immigration issue was a political administration ploy from the beginning.
Never intended for resolution is was a diversionary tactic. Some how the Genie got out of the bottle and things have become complicated and divisive within the states and local communities. At the Federal level both parties wish it would away as even a lip service measure cannot be agreed upon. Congress does not want to admit it is a bunch of hypocrites on this one and supporters like Tancredo are simply opportunistic xenophobes.
What makes the Democrats' failures stand out thus far -- again, some learning curve should be expected -- has been their utter lack of leadership.
Quick: What's the congressional Democrat position on the war, or taxes, or earmarks, or entitlement reform?
They themselves don't really know.
On the two issues on which Democrats have taken a firm position -- in favor of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill and in favor of the un-American denial of secret ballots to union members -- they have walked into public relations and policy disasters.
Meanwhile, their floor management has been, literally, unmatched in the history of legislative incompetence. The House Republican minority has passed more motions to recommit in six months than had been lost in fifteen years.
Even the Democrats' presumed top-line agenda items are foundering.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has no schedule for reauthorizing the popular, and expiring, SCHIP children's health care program.
Reid has no plan to rescue the Democrats' promised bill to allow for collective bargaining on drug prices.
The House student loan program not only fails to cut loan rates in half, it doesn't cut them at all.
House Democrats shot down a proposal that would have held them to their promise to stop raiding the Social Security Trust Fund.
Their unserious promises about gas prices have long been exposed as empty rhetoric, as no energy plan is in the works.
Health care, cheaper drugs, senior insecurity, sticking it to Big Oil: This is the Democrats' bread and butter, and one-quarter of the way through their term (and almost one-half of their time for actual legislating), they can't even get the bills out of committee. There is no excuse in this nation that every man woman and child is not covered fully for health care costs…none.
We have the money to bomb and blast anyone back to the stone age, unleash the forces of Genocide anywhere in the world, the ability to reduce this planet to a burned out charcoal briquette in the icy void of space and yet the elderly have to chose too often between medication and food. Costa Rico has better medical care and coverage than the United States. Does that make sense?The worst of the lot, of course, is earmarks. The Democrats for years ran against the Republicans' supposed culture of corruption.
Speaker Pelosi called for an end to all earmarks, publicly and repeatedly. She called for earmarks to be open to public scrutiny. She called for a ban on earmarks that would personally impact a member's finances. To date, every single one of these campaign pledges have been broken.
Democrats to date have passed one spending bill, a continuing resolution left over from the previous Congress, and it contained hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks.
Pelosi herself proposed one earmark that would have funneled federal dollars into a San Francisco neighborhood where her family owns four homes.
Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) admitted on "Meet the Press" that $20 billion in pork was put into a bill to buy the votes of reluctant Democrats.
And despite repeated pledges to the contrary, Democrats have made no move to require members to disclose earmark requests. Regarding the lowest of low-hanging fruit -- cleaning up the earmarking process -- Democrats have simply adopted the practices they once called corrupt.
Does that make me feel proud to call myself a Democrat; no?
In sum, the style, substance and management of the new Democrat majority has been an abject failure. The leaders do not lead.
The back-benchers do not follow. They have no unified agenda. They espouse no underlying principles. It's a good thing their presidential candidates are having such substantive debates. The U.S. Congress is a failure. Nancy Pelosi is a failure as speaker. There is no other way to look at it.
They passed an ethics bill that was only window dressing.
After all the promises and lip service, Pelosi and her liberal friends can’t deliver anything.
This was all predictable. Their attempts to reign in the president where the war is concerned have been ludicrous. Our party looks like a bunch of sock puppets paralyzed, hypnotized by Presidential 2008. We have our eye on the prize; it could well be our eye on our demise!
We have painted ourselves into a corner. We can’t or won’t force a timetable for withdrawal on the president. All that is left is to defund the war completely, and they can’t see their way to doing that due to political considerations. It’s time for Pelosi and her cheap shot friends in congress to lead or get out of the way.
Passing ridiculous bills that have no hope of becoming law is nothing more than political posturing on their part. Is this what you wanted when you cast that vote against the GOP in 2006? There I can be critical.
But there are other matters that high light the problem. George Bush and others are as guilty of War Crimes as Adolph Hitler. The country does not want to hear that. Only our enemies can be guilty of War Crimes.
We have the exclusive right to do any damn thing we please in the name of democracy. There are even liberals/progressive who are closet exclusivists.
We don’t want to admit it; the day of empire for any national state is over, and that includes us. That does not mean that there are not other institutions and organizations capable of economic dominion to the degree that their power constitutes Empire, and therein lays the problem.
It is a global problem and for the most part we just struggle with its symptoms in America. We search and we scratch; we fight and try to martial some cohesive plan that will at least break a significant number of links in the chain, and all too often we develop the feeling that we’re being, the Congress is being allowed to play in someone else’s backyard, as long as we play nice.
Someday there will be players who are not included in the global game who will unite in their own new game, like a giant clerical Arab state and all bets will be off as they will be playing by their own rules for their own purposes.
Congressmen and Senators ( F ) equals failure to do the (Will of the People). The Will of the people is no longer a part of the democratic process in the United States.
Today the (Will of the People) is no longer a part of the democratic process in the United States of America’s Congressional and Senatorial agencies.
It is a sad state of affairs when from the highest office in the land, to those who are directly responsible for hearing, representing, and properly enforcing the voice, and Will of the People, disregard, and act totally independent of the People. And they are doing it on a daily basis.
Despite party affiliations and agendas, (We the People) of the United States of America, the largest, constitutionally based union; predicated upon bylaws specifically adapted by the people and for the people, desire officers who recognize, understand, and are governed by the same, to which we’ve been entrusted.
We…the People, have a legal and moral obligation locally and abroad, to enforce the laws relative to electing and dismissing governing officers who by a preponderance of the evidence break the laws of the land and fellow countrymen, and yet speak of lawlessness, and the lack of democracy elsewhere. We are agreed on Impeachment being the only legal remedy for this matter. To those who are “Terrorist” hypnotized there is nothing that this government can be held accountable for in “The War on Terrorism”. They are lost to the voice of reason and the rule of law. They don’t even want to hear the words.
It just may be that these same neighbors abroad, listen, and watch while our United States official representatives, blatantly disregard, and offend the Will of its own people, while claiming to love their neighbors abroad: thus, our neighbors may determine that, they want no part of the United States’ brand of democracy.
Example: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; Nancy Pelosi, knowing the Will of the People, and despite all evidence desiring impeachment of President G.W. Bush and Vice President Cheney, after being sworn-in, made the open statement that ‘impeachment of President George W. Bush is off the table,’ thus, flooring the ‘Democratic’ Party as a whole.
Example: Upon the changing of the guard, in both the US Senate and Congress, promises the likes of, and relative to addressing the affairs of, and miss-management by this less than legal, disingenuous administration, bringing our young troops home; out of Iraq and the midst of civil unrest, medical health care and insurance, education and benefits for US citizens, and the overall ill-fated state and welfare of our local economy, seemingly, were no longer imperative.
Now, it’s a lax ‘Impeachment is not on the table,’ as to suggest that the direction the United States presently faces, The War; the invasion and occupation in Iraq, the thousands of casualties as a result of an illegal (WAR AGENDA), the real unemployment statistics, outsourcing of jobs, and numerous other illegal activities, were either inevitable, or, already a reality; and, have become an acceptable behavior and condition. Perhaps Speaker Pelosi and her collaborators aren’t cognizant of the ‘Peoples’ Will today, and believe they can continue to hold down the fort, without (the People). Could a person be more remiss than this?
Example; and, less we forget too; upon the changing of the guard, in both the House and the Senate, during the most critical event any country could facilitate; a major election, not one United States Senator stood to, i.e., (represent) an entire ethnic group (of people), whom undoubtedly were disenfranchised.
Despite other social ills, this single personal affront upon these US citizens alone has set the United States back one (100) years. All of this, while other countries look-on; questioning, and wondering about our, the United States’ brand and definition of democracy, that, we so desperately want to share with the Iraqi citizenry.
When a country deliberately breaks the legs of, and cripples those within its own society, not only is it defeated from within, it’s sure to reap a similar harvest without.
We are left with few options. We can continue to fumble about in the dark, each doing his/her own thing in the name of what believe to be right. We can march; we can picket; we button and yard sign people; we can petition and walk the streets and malls until we are bone tired and foot weary. We can meet and debate, rage against the darkness, exhaust every legal remedy attempting to impeach; attempting to awaken the American conscience and consciousness to reality; we can author a Third Continental Congress, Convene a new Constitutional Convention, attempt a blow against the traditional electoral process; try to shake loose the media.
We can speak out like a Kucinich, honest to a fault and dismissed by the media as we the peons are.
We can do all this as peace loving, law abiding people…and when all that fails, comes to naught, you know there are only two roads left at that point: The road named Surrender and the road named The People In The Streets.
We are left with few options.
(1) ” How can we get the conversation away from the war hawk talking points and onto the realities of the mistakes, disasters, and illegalities?
(2) Perhaps part of the answer is that in order to do so we must criticize ourselves (we Americans) and we all shy away from self-criticism.
(3) But that, I think, is what it will take. From among our leaders, who will stand up and say "this is wrong, this is a mistake, and we must now take responsibility and get to work to fix it?
(4) Where is the leader who will risk reelection for the sake of doing the right thing?”
Let us take the last part of that first (4). I am being neither dismissive of the question, nor trivializing it by my oblique commentary. The FACT of the matter is that hundreds of the members of Congress in the House and Senate are mental midgets, embarrassing blowhards, chronic liars, outright crooks, corporate lackeys and cowards who feast at the public trough, pillage every coffer they see and believe it is their right to covet and collect every perk and privilege that they can in exchange for access and their vote.
All that has nothing to do with all the fine platitudes and high sounding hyperbole they slathered on the public like a coating of honey while seeking office and our VOTE. It felt good, sounded good, smelled good and in the hunger for change in November 2006; it tasted good!
The Congress of The United States, within its membership, and systemically as an institution, has failed. Bob it is not simply a matter that as nation we are unwilling to participate in self examination and constructive, essential- for- survival, self criticism; we can’t and we won’t until catastrophe has befallen us because as a nation we are egomaniacal and arrogant to a fault.
We are exclusive, exemption minded from the rest of the world. Our every act of collective or permitted/tolerated aggression and inaction to a world beset with Genocide is daily evidence of that FACT.
We are comfortable with Genocide because it is a mere word that most cannot comprehend, and never will until this country is shaken to its core on own soil.
Oh, but there is a rub; our mentality that says: “It can’t happen here.”
Anyone who clings to the notion that any malady suffered anywhere else in this world cannot be visited upon our “SACRED IMMUNE SOIL” I cannot help or cannot reach with reason or words because they are the very heart of the problem with this nation.
They do not possess the requisite pride in this nation, a conscious appreciation of our heritage, an understanding of the real and sometimes horrific sacrifices that have been made by generations long gone to their graves, dying to achieve, defend or preserve those very things we anguish over with words.
There are few who really believe that all is right with this nation, but there are fewer prepared to be a Bobby Kennedy or a Martin Luther King, an Edward R. Murrow, a Che or Chavez, a John L. Lewis or Joe Hill and those who are so prepared can find no troops but their own private circles.
I fear that while intellectually America knows it is becoming unglued, personally, viscerally the people have been fear driven into impotence or the belief that that are impotent in the face of this government.
The Machiavellian performance of this congress is worthy of a Doctoral Degree on Machiavelli, and what I find most troubling about that fact is that most are intelligent enough to have digested his work, but time, experience, trial and error example and the machinations and manipulation of the technologies that dominate our society have made understanding unnecessary as contemporary political process has been reduced to routine scripted formula manipulation of a benign populous.
Money in obscene amounts is generated on the internet for candidates and organizations, according to practices formulas, formulas that tap into individual harbored hopes. One can easily donate that way, feel that are somehow a contributor to hope and change, effortlessly, thoughtlessly, anonymously and risk free.
There are so few members of the house, all facing election who are worthy of even a penny of support at the moment, but the money flows foolishly in the naive partisan knee jerk instinct that all will change in the 2008 elections and that we just have to forgive the failure following the November 2006 elections.
The Founders of our nation and the Framers of our Constitution surely did not foresee the day when, of the federal government’s three branches, the public would have the least confidence in Congress. In fact, the public has a little less confidence in Congress than it has in HMOs. At 14 percent, the fraction of Americans with a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress is the lowest in Gallup's history of this measure -- and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year's Confidence in Institutions survey. The Supreme Court received 34 percent confidence and the criminal presidency of George W. Bush received 25 percent – nothing to be proud of and certainly not inspirational.
The 2006 congressional elections demonstrated/revealed that switching power between the two major political parties is an act of utter futility.
We have a bipartisan failure of Congress to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities and serve the public.
In the end, we Democrats may have a different style, but like Republicans we are also corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent.
Things have gotten so bad institutionally and culturally that we cannot vote our way out of a dysfunctional and destructive Congress as long as the two-party duopoly maintains its grip on our political system.
We no longer have a significant number of members of Congress that rise above partisan political priorities or private privilege and plundering/pilfering/pillaging to put the good of the nation and the integrity of our Constitution first.
For our constitutional republic to really work Congress must have the courage and integrity to use its constitutional powers to safeguard Americans’ freedom, security, health, safety and welfare. Even the most distracted and cynical Americans now see Congress has done next to nothing to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
But the very words: integrity, courage, service and constitutional have been pretty much relegated to the trash bin of history as speech making vocabulary that no one believes. America has come to accept that their leaders are corrupt, will continue to be corrupt, and that the best they can hope for is that the organizations they support, the party they support, amidst their corruption will incidentally protect and serve their personal well being and interests; that they will not be bothered, negatively impacted or have to put down their beer, get off the sofa and so something distastefully meaningful that someone else has not done for them.
That is a painting of American apathy, not personal cynicism.
Worst of all, Congress has allowed the Bush presidency to accumulate far more power than our Constitution permits. Even after years of arrogant disrespect by Bush and Cheney for our Constitution and Congress itself, Congress is too cowardly to do what they are supposed to do to maintain the structure of our federal government. It has not used the constitutional remedy of impeachment – not to punish Bush – but to preserve the constitutional limits on the presidency.
How many Americans understand that the thread of Executive power that broke away from the whole cloth fabric of our democracy did so in the shadows of WW I and the Great Depression?
How many Americans understand the pending catastrophe that confronts us is a web of power woven from that errant thread of so many years ago?
How many Americans understand that, that we call the “military industrial complex”, corporate capitalist excess and conspiracy among the few has been allowed to simply grow like an untreated cancer to the detriment of the entire world in the name of power, privilege and wealth for the few?
How many Americans understand that, that evolution has all but disassembled the fruits of the labor movement that men and women died for?
America was too busy with other matters, other comfortable matters, and we slumbered in placid decades of self absorption. The Vietnam era is a forgotten aberration for most of the younger generation and forgotten by others annoyed by the noise after Nixon fell as the pound of flesh paid for that adventure and the masters of politics and war learned to manage Television, made body bags disappear and replaced then with honored patriotic flag draped coffins, so much more acceptable.
Add to all this: the failure to protect the rule of law; the failure to control spending and reduce our debt; the failure to control our borders and protect our national sovereignty; the failure to stop the insane Iraq war; the failure to stop creation of the North American Union; the failure to stop the many forms of corruption of Congress itself; the failure to restore public confidence in our elections; the failure to stop the excesses of globalization that is destroying our middle class; the failure to address rising economic inequality; the failure to fix/replace our broken health care system; and so much more, all the result of repugnant runaway politics.
Getting elected, grabbing power and enjoying the benefits of office trump governing.
Those hundreds of members of Congress – in the House and Senate – the mental midgets, embarrassing blowhards, chronic liars, outright crooks, corporate lackeys, and elderly buffoons are plutocracy protectors more than democracy defenders. And too many that think they should be president. What a list!
So Bob; what can the 86 percent of Americans without confidence in Congress do?
Put aside partisan views and stop re-electing members of Congress. Only a handful of incumbents deserve to be re-elected. A very few that never supported the Iraq war, do not use pork spending to reward their supporters, and have worked to impeach Bush, for example.
It really is time that America breaks the mold. It is the only peaceful, bloodless, last option available!
Our Constitutional system does not provide for a revolution at the ballot box, only evolution. As close as we can get to affecting real change will occur in the Presidential Election of 2008 when all 435 House members are up for election, and a few Senators.
Now is the time to elect independents, third party candidates and non incumbents to Congress.
When one objectively sees the utterly low quality of both Democratic and Republican members of Congress it becomes clear that even a random selection of ordinary Americans would probably do better.
But we have thousands of independents and third party members with considerable civic and elective office experience that deserve the opportunity to restore our representative democracy.
How could we do any worse? Let’s make a dent in house cleaning and send the message that we are watching and that voter rage is real, and that the two party incumbents do not have an automatic lease on their offices throw the bums out and give real change a chance.
We also need much greater public awareness that Congress for a very long time has failed to obey the part of Article V of our Constitution that gives us the right to a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.
Such an Article V Convention was created by the Framers as an alternative to Congress proposing amendments. They created this convention option – a temporary fourth branch of government giving us some direct democracy – in case Americans some day lost confidence in the federal government. That day has arrived!
I don’t know if the call for a Third Continental Congress has ant chance of being realized, but it is worthy the try. It would make a solid statement that Americans can organize nationally to express their will and serve both notice and as a platform for the launch of a Constitutional Convention should it be necessary and deemed an appropriate vehicle for correcting the accumulation of tools and statutes of Executive Branch excess.
There are many constitutional amendments that deserve public discussion, especially ones to make our government work they way our Constitution intended it to work. We need to strengthen our Constitution to prevent power-hungry presidents, useless Congresses, and Supreme Courts that create new public policy that is injurious to the fabric of this democracy.
Moreover, the one and only requirement to have an Article V Convention specified has already been satisfied, because way more than two-thirds of state legislatures have requested such a convention. Learn more about this congressional disobedience of the Constitution at www.foavc.org , the website of the new national, nonpartisan group Friends of the Article V Convention.
Why has Congress failed Americans?
Because Americans have allowed it to fail them.
Now is the time for Americans to assert their sovereign constitutional power and take back their country. That means US!
Six months on, the defining characteristic of the new Democrat majority in Congress has been failure: failure to lead, failure to communicate, failure to organize, failure to deliver. It's normal for a caucus long out of power to have some tough sledding when relearning how to run the place, but this crowd is taking incompetence to a new level.
Forget about the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) are riding at the head of the Gang That Can't Even Shoot.
To deal more directly with the idea that we as a nation cannot deal with self-evaluation or self-criticism; there is no question in my mind but what you are right! The idea that America can be wrong, that it might have to admit to error or wrong doing is foreign a concept to a nation that perceives itself as the world power, the bastion and marketer of democracy and the moral compass of the world, that to suggest such is viewed by a majority as lunacy and treasonous.
The collapse of the immigration bill is a perfect case study in the legislative idiocy that is right now posing as leadership in the Democratic Party. The Democrats wrote the immigration bill like it was 1977, when they commanded huge majorities -- behind closed doors, details kept even from their own caucus, as if confident their ideological pals at the networks and major newspapers would keep the story from the American people. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid simply do not understand that you can't manage Congress in a vacuum of closed-door meetings and party discipline.
The idea that a handful of senators could get together in secret, write a 1,000-page bill opposed by 70 percent of the American people, come down off Mount Sinai and demand a supermajority of support with less than 48 hours' lead time is even stupider than it sounds. Pelosi's and Reid's careers are far from over, but I think it's fair to say that Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson they ain't. The entire immigration issue was a political administration ploy from the beginning.
Never intended for resolution is was a diversionary tactic. Some how the Genie got out of the bottle and things have become complicated and divisive within the states and local communities. At the Federal level both parties wish it would away as even a lip service measure cannot be agreed upon. Congress does not want to admit it is a bunch of hypocrites on this one and supporters like Tancredo are simply opportunistic xenophobes.
What makes the Democrats' failures stand out thus far -- again, some learning curve should be expected -- has been their utter lack of leadership.
Quick: What's the congressional Democrat position on the war, or taxes, or earmarks, or entitlement reform?
They themselves don't really know.
On the two issues on which Democrats have taken a firm position -- in favor of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill and in favor of the un-American denial of secret ballots to union members -- they have walked into public relations and policy disasters.
Meanwhile, their floor management has been, literally, unmatched in the history of legislative incompetence. The House Republican minority has passed more motions to recommit in six months than had been lost in fifteen years.
Even the Democrats' presumed top-line agenda items are foundering.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has no schedule for reauthorizing the popular, and expiring, SCHIP children's health care program.
Reid has no plan to rescue the Democrats' promised bill to allow for collective bargaining on drug prices.
The House student loan program not only fails to cut loan rates in half, it doesn't cut them at all.
House Democrats shot down a proposal that would have held them to their promise to stop raiding the Social Security Trust Fund.
Their unserious promises about gas prices have long been exposed as empty rhetoric, as no energy plan is in the works.
Health care, cheaper drugs, senior insecurity, sticking it to Big Oil: This is the Democrats' bread and butter, and one-quarter of the way through their term (and almost one-half of their time for actual legislating), they can't even get the bills out of committee. There is no excuse in this nation that every man woman and child is not covered fully for health care costs…none.
We have the money to bomb and blast anyone back to the stone age, unleash the forces of Genocide anywhere in the world, the ability to reduce this planet to a burned out charcoal briquette in the icy void of space and yet the elderly have to chose too often between medication and food. Costa Rico has better medical care and coverage than the United States. Does that make sense?The worst of the lot, of course, is earmarks. The Democrats for years ran against the Republicans' supposed culture of corruption.
Speaker Pelosi called for an end to all earmarks, publicly and repeatedly. She called for earmarks to be open to public scrutiny. She called for a ban on earmarks that would personally impact a member's finances. To date, every single one of these campaign pledges have been broken.
Democrats to date have passed one spending bill, a continuing resolution left over from the previous Congress, and it contained hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks.
Pelosi herself proposed one earmark that would have funneled federal dollars into a San Francisco neighborhood where her family owns four homes.
Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) admitted on "Meet the Press" that $20 billion in pork was put into a bill to buy the votes of reluctant Democrats.
And despite repeated pledges to the contrary, Democrats have made no move to require members to disclose earmark requests. Regarding the lowest of low-hanging fruit -- cleaning up the earmarking process -- Democrats have simply adopted the practices they once called corrupt.
Does that make me feel proud to call myself a Democrat; no?
In sum, the style, substance and management of the new Democrat majority has been an abject failure. The leaders do not lead.
The back-benchers do not follow. They have no unified agenda. They espouse no underlying principles. It's a good thing their presidential candidates are having such substantive debates. The U.S. Congress is a failure. Nancy Pelosi is a failure as speaker. There is no other way to look at it.
They passed an ethics bill that was only window dressing.
After all the promises and lip service, Pelosi and her liberal friends can’t deliver anything.
This was all predictable. Their attempts to reign in the president where the war is concerned have been ludicrous. Our party looks like a bunch of sock puppets paralyzed, hypnotized by Presidential 2008. We have our eye on the prize; it could well be our eye on our demise!
We have painted ourselves into a corner. We can’t or won’t force a timetable for withdrawal on the president. All that is left is to defund the war completely, and they can’t see their way to doing that due to political considerations. It’s time for Pelosi and her cheap shot friends in congress to lead or get out of the way.
Passing ridiculous bills that have no hope of becoming law is nothing more than political posturing on their part. Is this what you wanted when you cast that vote against the GOP in 2006? There I can be critical.
But there are other matters that high light the problem. George Bush and others are as guilty of War Crimes as Adolph Hitler. The country does not want to hear that. Only our enemies can be guilty of War Crimes.
We have the exclusive right to do any damn thing we please in the name of democracy. There are even liberals/progressive who are closet exclusivists.
We don’t want to admit it; the day of empire for any national state is over, and that includes us. That does not mean that there are not other institutions and organizations capable of economic dominion to the degree that their power constitutes Empire, and therein lays the problem.
It is a global problem and for the most part we just struggle with its symptoms in America. We search and we scratch; we fight and try to martial some cohesive plan that will at least break a significant number of links in the chain, and all too often we develop the feeling that we’re being, the Congress is being allowed to play in someone else’s backyard, as long as we play nice.
Someday there will be players who are not included in the global game who will unite in their own new game, like a giant clerical Arab state and all bets will be off as they will be playing by their own rules for their own purposes.
Congressmen and Senators ( F ) equals failure to do the (Will of the People). The Will of the people is no longer a part of the democratic process in the United States.
Today the (Will of the People) is no longer a part of the democratic process in the United States of America’s Congressional and Senatorial agencies.
It is a sad state of affairs when from the highest office in the land, to those who are directly responsible for hearing, representing, and properly enforcing the voice, and Will of the People, disregard, and act totally independent of the People. And they are doing it on a daily basis.
Despite party affiliations and agendas, (We the People) of the United States of America, the largest, constitutionally based union; predicated upon bylaws specifically adapted by the people and for the people, desire officers who recognize, understand, and are governed by the same, to which we’ve been entrusted.
We…the People, have a legal and moral obligation locally and abroad, to enforce the laws relative to electing and dismissing governing officers who by a preponderance of the evidence break the laws of the land and fellow countrymen, and yet speak of lawlessness, and the lack of democracy elsewhere. We are agreed on Impeachment being the only legal remedy for this matter. To those who are “Terrorist” hypnotized there is nothing that this government can be held accountable for in “The War on Terrorism”. They are lost to the voice of reason and the rule of law. They don’t even want to hear the words.
It just may be that these same neighbors abroad, listen, and watch while our United States official representatives, blatantly disregard, and offend the Will of its own people, while claiming to love their neighbors abroad: thus, our neighbors may determine that, they want no part of the United States’ brand of democracy.
Example: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; Nancy Pelosi, knowing the Will of the People, and despite all evidence desiring impeachment of President G.W. Bush and Vice President Cheney, after being sworn-in, made the open statement that ‘impeachment of President George W. Bush is off the table,’ thus, flooring the ‘Democratic’ Party as a whole.
Example: Upon the changing of the guard, in both the US Senate and Congress, promises the likes of, and relative to addressing the affairs of, and miss-management by this less than legal, disingenuous administration, bringing our young troops home; out of Iraq and the midst of civil unrest, medical health care and insurance, education and benefits for US citizens, and the overall ill-fated state and welfare of our local economy, seemingly, were no longer imperative.
Now, it’s a lax ‘Impeachment is not on the table,’ as to suggest that the direction the United States presently faces, The War; the invasion and occupation in Iraq, the thousands of casualties as a result of an illegal (WAR AGENDA), the real unemployment statistics, outsourcing of jobs, and numerous other illegal activities, were either inevitable, or, already a reality; and, have become an acceptable behavior and condition. Perhaps Speaker Pelosi and her collaborators aren’t cognizant of the ‘Peoples’ Will today, and believe they can continue to hold down the fort, without (the People). Could a person be more remiss than this?
Example; and, less we forget too; upon the changing of the guard, in both the House and the Senate, during the most critical event any country could facilitate; a major election, not one United States Senator stood to, i.e., (represent) an entire ethnic group (of people), whom undoubtedly were disenfranchised.
Despite other social ills, this single personal affront upon these US citizens alone has set the United States back one (100) years. All of this, while other countries look-on; questioning, and wondering about our, the United States’ brand and definition of democracy, that, we so desperately want to share with the Iraqi citizenry.
When a country deliberately breaks the legs of, and cripples those within its own society, not only is it defeated from within, it’s sure to reap a similar harvest without.
We are left with few options. We can continue to fumble about in the dark, each doing his/her own thing in the name of what believe to be right. We can march; we can picket; we button and yard sign people; we can petition and walk the streets and malls until we are bone tired and foot weary. We can meet and debate, rage against the darkness, exhaust every legal remedy attempting to impeach; attempting to awaken the American conscience and consciousness to reality; we can author a Third Continental Congress, Convene a new Constitutional Convention, attempt a blow against the traditional electoral process; try to shake loose the media.
We can speak out like a Kucinich, honest to a fault and dismissed by the media as we the peons are.
We can do all this as peace loving, law abiding people…and when all that fails, comes to naught, you know there are only two roads left at that point: The road named Surrender and the road named The People In The Streets.
We are left with few options.
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