Offsides

Dear House Speaker John Boehner,

Let me ask you a simple question, and I think you can handle this inquiry without consulting your 10-man staff to come up with a two-sentence answer. I also understand brevity is not part of a politician's lexicon, but try not to disappoint me as you have done in the past.

Why do members of congress take SIDES when deciding the fate of this country's future? Aren't we all Americans seeking common ground when it comes to making decisions for the Greater Good? Aren't we all covered under the umbrella of the American flag - or is it just the rich?

Can you answer these questions, Mr. House Speaker, or is a simple explanation beyond your comprehension?

Let me help you out, sir, because you and the rest of the Keystone Cops obviously require hand-holding when it comes to making a tough decision and doing their job. 

The duty of ALL 435 officials, who could easily double as the Marx Brothers, is to conduct the people's business! That's what you were all hired to do. You were not elected to work for special interest groups or your party. You are living proof that George Washington was ahead of his time when he admonished his countrymen that political parties would impede the progress of this infant nation.

Sir, you have the privilege of working inside that great big marble dome because your constituency believed in you, but I know I don't — especially the way congress has conducted itself for the past month.

America's leadership is becoming an embarrassment to the world and congress has the look and feel of the latest episode of "Jersey Shore." Right now, I would put all my money on "Snooky" to call the ball on the debt ceiling.


Your trademark is your insincere and incessant crying. In just a few days, we will be balling our eyes out when America defaults on its loans. Of course, you will still be getting your paycheck, but seniors and veterans won't be receiving their benefits.

I thought we are all on the same SIDE? Apparently not! Forget this polarization nonsense or America is a divided nation. 

No kidding! 

But that didn't stop the framers of the Constitution from hammering out a document that guaranteed "all men are created equal." Our forefathers had the temerity to work around their differences and create a nation from scratch.

Today, thanks to poor leadership, greed and stupidity, the nation is looking like a ghost town as businesses vanish and the growing poor line the streets.

What would Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin think about all this shenanigans?

I do know that you have gone out of your way, along with the rest of your party, to sideline a nation with party politics, back-biting, arrogance and insolence. I know the other side has done the same.

Do you understand what is at stake here? All of you are making decisions that will affect the quality of heath of Americans and their future for generations to come. You are messing with the world's wealth. Schools are crumbling, and local budgets and good paying jobs are drying up while of you babble on —about nothing. We are back to the year 1933, and all we are missing is the Great Depression, Hitler, Mussolini and a global conflict.

You are a sad lot with axes of grind instead of helping America stand on its own two feet again. We are involved in three conflicts in the Middle East, poverty flourishes, education suffers and we are all indentured servants to foreign governments while congress prolongs our agony with its adolescent behavior. Good men are dying on battlefields and citizens are losing their homes as our leaders engage in daily finger pointing.

Do you really understand what is going on around you. You are supposed to be making decisions for the Greater Good. You work for us — not the GOP or the DNC.

How can any of you be taken seriously!

Thanks to both parties, I have become an independent who is hoping someone with a sound mind and the ability to lead will suddenly materialize in the nick of time to resurrect a floundering nation.

But I do have you and the GOP to thank for helping me make the switch to independent. I just hope those of you who vote won't forget these leaders with feet of clay when the next election rolls around.

I know my memory will serve me well when I cast my vote. 

A political party of none

  

Several days ago, members of the United States Congress, for some absurd reason, spent an hour and a half on the taxpayers' dime reading aloud the U.S. Constitution, and they screwed that up, too.

According to the Associated Press, our illustrious leadership omitted key paragraphs when they discovered two pages were stuck together, and "original sections that later were amended, including references to slaves, were left out of the recital."

In that hour and half, these guys should have been discussing solutions to joblessness, the wars in the Middle East, the housing debacle and the Great Equalizer - education. But both political parties decided to one-up themselves by brandishing their patriotism on the house floor instead of conducting the people's business and resuscitating a government buried in debt.

Thanks for the reading lesson, guys. It is comforting to know members of Congress can still sound out the words and have their priorities straight. This demonstration of political showmanship also indicated that perhaps Congress wasn't so sure what the Constitution contained until they read this unique document aloud.

Congress's needless reciting of the Constitution is a perfect example of why George Washington, our first president, and one of those rare Commanders in Chief with common sense, warned his countrymen about the pitfalls of political parties in his 1796 farewell address to the nation.

Just listen to Washington's priceless words that still hold water today:

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

Mr. Washington's admonitions concerning political parties are not unfounded. Just take a look at the buffoonery that transpires in the hallowed halls of the nation's capitol on a daily basis. We have been mired in a recession that has blindsided the middle class and elevated the ranks of the poor since 2007. This is the nation that put the plane in the air, stopped Hitler cold, and made other countries envious of our industrial might for decades. But for the moment, corporate shills, who occupy those seats in Congress, look the other way as American companies create middle classes abroad, while a majority of U.S. citizens face a decline in their standard of living in a nation that was once considered the land of opportunity.

It should make us all shudder with frustration when politicians show more loyalty to their parties than to their constituency. We elected them to Congress and they should be beholden to us, not to a bunch of money-grubbing lobbyists or the RNC (Republican National Committee) and DNC (Democratic National Committee). 

Our leaders should be focused on the Greater Good. But apparently politicians enjoy battling back and forth over their party ideologies while the nation is caught in financial quicksand. Congress's first and foremost concern is the American people. Some where along the way, our leaders have forgotten the meaning of the preamble's opening words "We the people."

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."

Washington was obviously ahead of his time when he stated that political parties "open the doors to foreign influence and corruption." Just take a hard look what is going on now around the planet. Thanks to this political in-fighting, nothing gets done or well-meaning bills are derailed for the sake of opposition by one party. We all suffer the consequences when well-educated man can't find common ground even though this nation's survival might be at stake.

We are all in dire need of a reality check.

So what are the options for the American voter who just lost a job and a house? Abandon both parties? That is certainly tempting when it comes to "who cares" is running for office.

Perhaps, it will require an independent candidate with no ties to any one ideology or party and will put citizens first and ignore the temptations of special interest money. This is truly a great nation born from a rebellion against tyranny and matured into a world power, but it up to us - informed voters - to elect responsible leaders who have credibility and the ability to compromise and bring about positive change in a country under financial duress and fighting terrorism throughout the globe.