Backboneless chicken farm: Throw the cluckers out!

On my prairie walk today, I got to thinking: What's driving America into the pit? The better question I ASKED MYSELF is "Who" is shredding our economy, environment, healthcare system, education system, safety net and justice system? 

Corporate fat cats gorging on tax loopholes? Billionaires stashing cash in Swiss bank accounts out of the taxman's reach in an historic moment of record deficits and program cutbacks? Chronic slackers working the unemployment and Medicare systems at the expense of hard-working neighbors who've fallen on hard times for the first time in their lives?

I found the answer, of all places, scratching around in the dark shade of an old weather-beaten cherry-red barn. Chickens.  Clucking chickens.

Remember the Gary Larson cartoon "Boneless Chicken Farm"?  Sagging chickens stretched out flat as pancakes in the barnyard. No backbones to hold them up. In other words, "congress."  A self-serving legis-fighting body of backboneless chickens. Great if you're frying up a nice Sunday dinner. Catastrophic if everything you've worked for is being eaten away by backstabbing, posturing, get-re-elected-at-all-costs, me-first-and-to-hell-with-my-ignorant-constituents chickens. No, congress isn't the only group that needs fixing. But when they're bought by and beholdin to business, they're where the whole mess starts.

Today's congressional chickens have neither the will nor the backbone to stand up for "we." 

WE WHO pay our taxes and fret over every deduction line. 

WE WHO hold down three part-time jobs to feed our families. 

WE WHO comb Craig's List every day for a job--any job to help us fend off the foreclosure man. 

WE WHO live on mac and cheese six days a week and the cheapest excuse for meat in the grocery case for a treat on the seventh day. 

WE WHO live paycheck to paycheck and can't get out from underneath the outrageous credit card penalties imposed on us because we missed one measly payment. 

WE WHO fall between the cracks and can't afford to see a doctor because we're above the national poverty level ($1,837.50/month for a household of 4) which is total bull when that's the better part of your entire rent payment for a two bedroom slum house in a crime-ridden city neighborhood.

WE WHO live in our cars, wash in a Denny's bathroom, tell our friends they can't come over to play after school--because there's no TV, no snacks and no backyard in the back seat of our 200,000 mile beater we can't afford to gas up because Mid East revolutions are the latest excuse for jacking prices to a point that jacks the tax relief we would have spent to make life a little more tolerable.

We can't allow the elected house of backboneless chickens rule the roost this way anymore.  It's time to replace the cluckers with real representatives committed to exactly that--representing the common interests and needs of We The People, not the special interests of pay-to-play lobbyists, defense contractors, big oil, pharmaceutical companies, insurance corporations and Wall Street bankers who hi-jacked our financial future.  We're better than that. We're bigger than them. We're outraged.  

We will no longer tolerate elected officials who are the agents of interests as hostile to the American people as an invading army could be.

 

The first step to taking our country back is a Congressional Reform Act that begins a new era of congressional representation, oversight and accountability...and 86s The Senators from Chevron Oil, Pfizer, Bank of America and Goldman Sacks.

The facts speak for themselves

• Over the past five years, the number of Washington lobbyists (35,000) and their annual campaign contributions ($2.3 billion) has doubled.

• The health insurance industry alone has 6 lobbyists for every member of congress--more than 500 are former congressional staff members with good 'ol boy influence.

• Insurance companies spent $380 million on Capitol Hill in just the first 3 months of 2011 to ensure that the uninsured buy for-profit policies from them. $1.5 million of that went to Healthcare Legislation Committee Chairman Senator Max Baucus of Montana. $1.5 million!

•  A landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling reversed decades of law restricting corporations and unions from spending unlimited funds on ads supporting or opposing candidates (meaning unbridled influence over the election process, and hence, the elected representatives who vote on legislation affecting those same corporations.)

So, what can WE do? The same thing we've done TOGETHER for more than 200 years. 

Unite as a nation of We The People to demand change.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact 

Ask whoever you can to storm the Whitehouse with emails asking President Obama to reignite his May 2010 push to reform of congress. We ask only two things:

1. Make it illegal for anyone in congress to accept any goods, services or financial contributions from any non-governmental organization

2. Change congressional pay and benefits to be representative of what the American people earn, meaning: Salary increase based on the consumer price index--not a pay increase vote; Salary (currently $174,000--anybody out there interested?) ends when they are out of office; No pension other than what they contribute to their own retirement fund; Must participate in Social Security like the rest of us; No special healthcare coverage--they must select from the same healthcare providers as the American people. 

That will weed out the cluckers and encourage true citizen-representatives to replace them. It's not a silver bullet. It won't fix everything. But it's a start.