ELECTION 2016

[02opida]

Dear Senators:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a CommandSergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly afterhis retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he feltimportant - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of ourvarious governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, workedhard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at mycountry and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmallywrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated thatall the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep theSenate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lippedactuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. Soplease, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated $1.4 billion on himself and hisfamily. The vice president spends $ millions on hotels. They havehad 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives andSenate have become America'sanswer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the "perfumedprinces and princesses" of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a."Obamacare," a bill which no more than a handful of senators orrepresentatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats,and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your owntaxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "onepercenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises whilemaking 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing whileyou (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due tosequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans,anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know - (1) How to getelected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid ofan eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certaineconomy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed andunder-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote) who arelooking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safetynet" has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about49 or 50 million on food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and theprogram is absolutely rife with fraud and absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is theseductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. Itis the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate yourvirtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadershiprole. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldestprofession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 - 1902),English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Powertends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men arealmost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to thefemale sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in thiscountry than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes lessand less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much moredictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a veryfew) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers wecan eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we mustbuy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businessescosting the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my governmenttell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, yourcolleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and theirfamilies will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until youare called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond mywildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff willnot pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might begenerated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe thatyou, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. Thisletter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to readone person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, itsadministration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all thegenerous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, wemust pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $19 trillion national debt forwhich your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum,must eventually try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or hersoul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy the countrythat I deeply love. You have put it so far in debt that we will never payit off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power.

For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House whoconstantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is howpower has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to cleanup this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goosethat lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare tobring it up.