Thursday, June 19, 2008

Elected Representatives: Working for Us or Themselves

Our Public Servants
by Nancy Morgan

Typical Congressional Budget Committee meeting



As millions of Americans are adjusting their lives and their pocketbooks to the new reality of exploding gas prices, our elected representatives continue toiling endlessly on our behalf.

A house subcommittee last week voted down a GOP led measure that would allow the U.S. to open up off shore areas for oil exploration. "The United States can't drill its way out of this problem", our servants endlessly intoned, as they effectively denied Americans the apr. 86 billion barrels of oil that lie off our coasts. Oh well, they're the experts. And after all, based on the latest Rasmussen poll only 67% of voters are in favor of drilling.

As ethanol mandates imposed by these very same experts continue causing some very serious unintended consequences, like global food riots and starving people, our elected servants astutely ignore this crisis of their own making, focusing instead on other vital issues of the day.

The House was busy passing an extension of jobless benefits for unemployed Americans, knowing full well that this measure had a very slim chance of passing the Senate and virtually no chance of surviving the promised White House veto. Their intentions were noted.

As the Supreme Court handed down a decision that effectively hinders the war on terror by allowing foreign terrorists the constitutional privilege of habeaus corpus rights, our dedicated public servants responded in various ways. A group of House Democrats kept busy petitioning Attorney General Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture. Meanwhile, Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee is busy holding his own hearings on torture. Hoping, no doubt, to determine if using panties while interrogating terrorists violated their rights.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich took time off from his strenuous efforts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq to introduce another resolution to impeach President Bush. And Congressman Weiner (D-NY) had his hands full trying to fix what he perceived to be a shortage of fashion models in New York by sponsoring a bill that would give foreign models "of distinguished merit and ability" their own visa classifications.

Two other of our public servants, both openly gay, and of course, Democrats, were busy recruiting 50 of their colleagues to officially join them in promoting the homosexual agenda in Congress. Thanks to their tireless efforts, we now have the new House Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus. I, for one, will sleep better tonight knowing that the GLBT crowd will now have an official venue for their input.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) took a brief hiatus from their relentless search for the culprits responsible for the mortgage meltdown in order to spin the fallout from their very own 'sweetheart deals' extended to them by bad boy sub-prime mortgage lender Countrywide. Both Senators expressed frustration over 'the people's' inability to appreciate nuance and context.


Congressional cafeteria


We, 'the people,' are resting easier, knowing that our servants are experiencing the same spiraling food prices the people are. Apparently, feeding our public servants is getting so costly that the Senate dining concession needed another $250,000 of our tax dollars in order to continue providing the level of service to which our servants have become accustomed. Rather than allow this to happen, our servants in the Senate took a brave stand and voted to, gasp, privatize its failing restaurants. It was agreed by all that the fact that this government-operated food service lost about $18 million of the people's money over the last 15 years was unfortunate and unintentional.

Not to worry. Privatization is a desperate measure of last resort and our public servants assure us they will not consider this solution when addressing the people's business, like health care, social security, and education. After all, our servants are well aware that their primary job is to save ordinary Americans from the consequences of their own choices.

Oh, the travails of our noble, hard-working public servants. Selflessly toiling on the people's business, enriching their, oops, our lives and solving all the problems they create. Having to get by with less and less national appreciation and adoration as the media switches its focus to getting Obama comfortably installed in the White House. But they toil on, putting their own needs last as they fight to save America from itself.

As one of 'the people' whose business these selfless public officials are serving, I'd like to propose a big round of appreciation for these guys and gals. I think they have earned a long vacation and I'd be more than willing to allocate a portion of my 'investments' to see them get it.

Reuters wire: The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor in Sunday's municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent.



by Nancy Morgan

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com
She lives in South Carolina.
Article may be reprinted, with attribution.

images:
* Right Bias

* sixbucksamonkey.vox

No comments:

Post a Comment