Fixing the Government

If you haven’t seen this . . .

Interesting letter written by a resident of WA state.  This is really a great letter. I am most impressed by the fact the gentleman that wrote it signed his name and address to it. 

This came from a Democrat!  I read it and it certainly hits the nail where it would hurt. Google has the letter posted on their web site. This is well written.......and should be read by everyone in these United States ! It will be well worth the three minutes it requires to read this. It is quite impressive.

You can be Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Independent or Libertarian and I'll bet this will hit a nerve. Our country is in real trouble.

Senator Patty Murray
Senator Maria Cantwell
Washington , DC 20510

Dear Senators:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important - honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, 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 my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

  
Last year, the president spent an estimated $1.4 billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $ millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America 's answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the "perfumed princes 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 or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance. (Let's eliminate that exemption and put the Congress under the Affordable Health Care Act)

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (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 get elected, and

(2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerlywilling and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain  economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net" has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps - pretty much all Democrat voters - and the program is absolutely rife with fraud and absolutely no congressional oversight?  

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (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, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?    

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

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest 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 will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $19 trillion national debt for which 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 her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy the country that I deeply love. You have put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power.

For you, Senators, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senators, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits and replacing their retirement with the same Social Security plan the rest of us will receive (if they don't put that program into bankruptcy) . This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,
Bill Schoonover
3096 Angela Lane
Oak Harbor , WA

IF WE SEND THIS TO ENOUGH PEOPLE MAYBE WE CAN START A MOVEMENT TO CORRECT THIS FIASCO!

WARREN BUFFETT HAS DONE IT AGAIN.."THE WARREN BUFFETT RULE' HERE'S HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS

Mr. Buffett said, that if people sent this message to 20 people, in 3 days, everyone in the US would be notified. Here's the message: Warren Buffett is asking everyone to forward this email to a minimum of 20 people, and to ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in the United States will have the message. This is an idea that should be passed around. The BUFFETT Rule Let's see if these idiots understand what people pressure is all about. Salary of retired US Presidents .. . . . .. $180,000 FOR LIFE. Salary of House/Senate members .. . . . .. .$174,000 FOR LIFE. Salary of Speaker of the House .. . . . .. .$223,500 FOR LIFE. Salary of Majority / Minority Leaders . . ..$193,400 FOR LIFE. Average Salary of a teacher . . .. . . . .. .$40,065 Average Salary of a deployed Soldier . . .. .$38,000 Here’s where the cuts should be made! Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling: "I could end the deficit in five minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election". The 26th Amendment ( granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds ) took only three months and eight days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure. Warren Buffett is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. Congressional Reform Act of 2017 1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. 2. Congress (past, present, & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. 3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. 4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. 5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. 6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. 7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 3/1/17. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people, then it will only take three days for most people in the U.S. to receive the message. It's time! THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS! Email from Kathy Fong