A dying senior citizen tells it like it is...

(Excellent email)

This is well written! It will be well worth the two minutes it requires to read this. It is quite impressive. You can be Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Independent or Libertarian and I bet this will hit a nerve. Our country is in real trouble. This gentleman is obviously quite smarter than the two senators he sent it to. All I can say is amen to everything he said. A very articulate letter sent to the two U.S. Senators from Washington State.

April 3, 2013

Senator Patty Murray

Senator Maria Cantwell

Washington, DC, 20510

Dear Senator:

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. "Obama Care," 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.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one per centers," 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 eagerly willing 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 with 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 $17 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 this country I deeply love and 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, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. 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 98277   

Election Day 2012

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By Terry Orr

In the next 24 hours – “We the People” will elect our next President of the United States of America, one third of our Senators and all 435 House of Representatives, many State Governors and their respective elected officials.

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Our friends across the Atlantic recently wrote an interesting article about our upcoming election from their perspective – always nice to view the elephant from a different perspective.  “The outcome of this battle is not only important to America but also to the rest of the world”.  By DR NIGEL BOWLES

The polls can barely separate the pair, who both stand at around 47 per cent – with many still undecided. 

Given the turbulent times we live in, both financially and in terms of international politics — with Iran and Israel rattling sabres, and North Africa increasingly unstable — the outcome is not only hugely important to America but also to the rest of the world.

Despite the rise of China and the rapid growth of other nations, such as India and Brazil, the U.S. remains the dominant player on the global stage. It is still a military colossus and the engine room of the global economy, with its capacity for innovation and wealth creation undimmed.

For Britain, American presidential elections are particularly significant, given the unique ties between our countries. The U.S., for instance, invests far more in Britain than Europe does.

Recently, Mitt Romney was singing the praises of Margaret Thatcher in one of his stump speeches, while world politics in the previous decade was dominated by the bond formed between George W. Bush and Tony Blair during their fight against terrorism.

Given its global importance, what is extraordinary about the presidential election is its complexity, both in the process itself and in the impact of the result.

Because of the federal structure of American politics, this is far from a straightforward contest.

The winner is not decided by a clear majority of the overall national vote, but by individual victories in the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) that make up America. In truth, it is not one presidential race but 51 — and the result will be decided by a few swing states.

Moreover, having gained office, the President is severely constrained by other political institutions, including Congress and the state legislatures.

The whole system of governance, dating back to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, had the ‘separation of powers’ at its heart, based on the idea that the Executive, namely the Presidency, should not be able to control the legislature or Congress.

This separation of powers, though, can lead to deadlock and obstructionism in Washington, weakening the scope of the President to provide the leadership the world so badly needs.

These limitations on the Presidency are sometimes forgotten in the drama of the race itself, when candidates make grandiose claims about their ability to transform America’s fortunes.

Few recent elections have been more dramatic than this one, partly because the race is so close and partly because there are many fewer undecided voters than previously.

The sense of a nation divided that has gripped this election is felt throughout American politics, which accounts for the increasingly bitter tone of campaigning.

In the past, it was not always easy to gauge voters’ party allegiances from their background or region or even political outlook.

But now, as politics of identity and region have become much stronger, the south and the centre have become overwhelmingly Republican. The eastern and western seaboards are largely Democratic.

Evangelical Christians are more likely to vote Republican, while urban voters are more likely to back the Democrats.

Most disturbing of all, in the land that was meant to be the great melting-pot, is the growing racial divide. Integration is giving way to division.

African-Americans now vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats, while the white population increasingly supports the Republicans.

In fact, while such a split might help Romney this time, in the long term it spells disaster for the Republican Party, since the effects of mass immigration and higher ethnic minority birth rates mean that the make-up of the American population, like the British one, is changing rapidly.

So whoever wins on November 6 is going to face a monumental challenge. For all the rhetoric about ‘change’ in this campaign, the reality of division in the population and the partisan deadlock in Washington means that his task could not be more daunting.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2222109/US-Presidential-Election-2012-The-outcome-important-America-rest-world.html#ixzz2B5IddJ6D 

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I believe DR Nigel Bowels has captured the essence of the election fairly well.

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Diane and I hope that all American citizens will exercise their right to vote and let their voice be heard. By all predictions - this election will be very close!