I just received an e-mail with the following article authored by one Charlie Reese. I could not find him on Snopes, so I don’t know for sure if it is his. The piece does make sense, however. The sender added his comments at the end with his recommendations. My own thoughts are posted after the recomendations.
Sorry for the radical formatting, it’s just too much work to straighten it out.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
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? 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 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!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
The e-mailer’s recommendations
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you appear to have several choices.
1. You can send this to everyone in your address book, and hope they do something about it.
2. You can agree to vote against everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to run for office yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing, or re-elect the current bunch.
Grumpa Joe’s Add:
I agree with the Reese essay on the problem in Washington. I also agree with the e-mailer’s recommendations for what to do about it. I have one reservation, however, each one of these people can be voted out, but how do we know that his replacement won’t be even worse? It seems to me that we all tend to vote for the lesser of two evils. If we the voter can determine who the most honest, ethical candidate is, then we could vote the present evil out.
We have to demand that these guys make laws that allow us to fire them. If they fail to maintain fiscal responsibility, their paychecks should be used to make up the difference. They have to write laws that will require them to give a complete declaration of all personal income, and taxes paid. They have to begin living by a code of ethics that will make us trust them again, as we did in 1776. Only then can we vote them out, and expect to see “change” for the better.
Recently, Governor Rod Blagoyavich (Democrat-Illinois) vetoed an ethics bill. His reason was “it didn’t go far enough.” I’m sure, had he signed it, as lame as it might have been, he would have been on his way to jail just a few weeks later. If these guys don’t start somewhere, how will anything better ever come about.
I would be happy to run for office as a matter of civic duty. I would serve one term, and then go home. It should be that way. That means we need another law that limits a person from making public service in the congress or senate into a career. Vote ’em in, have ’em get it done, and send ’em home.
Here is something else to think about. Make it illegal to use private (your own or another’s) money for campaigning. Give everyone who wants to run, a fixed dollar amount from the public coffers to campagin. Let the candidate decide how creative he can be with this money to get elected. The idea of spending two hundred million dollars campaigning for a job worth two hundred thousand is insane. We all know the candidates don’t do it because of their desire to “serve.” Its more like they do it to see how much they can “steal.”
Write me in for President.
Filed under: Characters I knew, Election, family, Memories, Motivation, Writer | Tagged: Blagojovich, Charlie Reese, Congress, constitution, Democrats, Election, ethics, federal budget, Iraq, loss of confidence, Orlando Sentinel, politics, recall, Republicans, Senate, tax code, term limits | Leave a comment »
