The following email is making the rounds. Figured I’d share.
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, why do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red .
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq , it’s because they want them in Iraq .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Sounds good, but alas … who the heck do we replace them with? 😆
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
We have a similiar situation on the Peninsula, where Republican Delegate Glenn Oder(94th) is running on the premise that he has been “fighting” the payday lenders for the past couple of years.
Fact is, Oder voted YES for HB940 in 2002 that let the payday lenders into Virginia. Oder is citing work “eliminating” payday lenders as his major accomplishment in office.
Oder sponsored a weak law in 2009 that did little, and the RTD describes that it was “created in league with industry lobbyists”(RTD-2/26/09) And on 2/24/09 Oder described his own legislation as “it’s not perfect”.
But the most damning fact, is that Oder has been taking big campaign contributions from the very payday lenders he proclaims to be “fighting”.
TitleMax, Community Loans of America,
Consumer Lending Alliance Inc, Anderson Financial Services/LoanMax and QC Holdings Inc, have all given campaign contributions to Oder.
Oder create’s the problem of Predatory Payday Lenders by letting them into the state, takes money from them for his campaigns but wants voters to believe he is ‘fighting’ them!
Oder also voted YES for HB3202 which created the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority, but now sends out mailers taking credit for “abolishing” it, because it was a ‘burden’ on taxpayers.
Here is a prime example of a politician creating a problem, then spending the rest of his time pretending to “fix” it!
I would really be concerned if elected officials were taking people’s money for votes. If anything this shows that you can make a contribution but it doesn’t mean I am going to vote the way you want me to. What you are talking about is a form of bribery and that would be wrong. don’t judge an elected official by the money they receive, rather how they voted and, by the way you are going back to a 2002 vote that was made on the belief that Payday lenders would act in good faith and now that they have not, Oder and others are working to hold them accountable and put measures in place to protect the people. twist it anyway you want but i hope people will research for themselves to find the truth.
I’ve been saying that stuff for years. At the top both parties are controlled by the same people, those who know the truth call them the Illuminati, or the illuminated ones. Light has to do with intelligence, the intelligence to fool the masses into believing the lies they spit on a daily basis. The parties are merely two different courses to the same end-game. Two false choices. None are more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they are free. We can never have progress with two parties, for if they turn about success they would have nothing to campaign against. If they work together they have nothing to contrast in order to retain power.
The world is not as simple as the writer of that e-mail and some of the commentators think it is. There are such things as unintended consequences. The people we elect to office, although most are trying to do the job they were elected to do, aren’t perfect. In fact, some of them are dumb as rocks, which makes you wonder how they ever get elected. I guess it makes some people feel all warm and fuzzy to say that “we the people” aren’t to blame for any of the problems that we face, that it’s the politicians or the Illuminati….we do most of this stuff to ourselves. Why do we have deficits? Because we want things we aren’t willing to pay for and our representatives know that the best way to keep their jobs is to give them to us. By and large we get the government we deserve. If our government is greedy, stupid, lazy and corrupt, that probably says as much about the electorate as about the politicians.
NIce blog. Enjoyed it very much. It is appreciated,
“Sounds good, but alas … who the heck do we replace them with?”
I have a suggestion. Go to randomly chosen Waffle Houses at 6 AM in each state, in the number of Congressional delegates each has. Pick any patron at random who is reading a newspaper with his breakfast.
Anyone up that early for work who stays even minimally informed would represent us better than what we now have.