Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Comment: #1
Sat Jun 6, 2009 8:07 AM
Sir;...I am certain that my Representative, Mike Rogers, of Michigan goes to every funeral of every soldier in his district...The problem is that he openly embraced the wars that brought about their deaths...He ought to go there with ashes on his face and admit his responsibility, and his failure as a human being that made those deaths possible...This he will not do, and not ever do...I had the opportunity after 911 to tell that man that this is where our support of Israel has led us, and that we should follow that path no longer...I remember his many glowing reports of progress in Iraq after the invasion until I could take no more...They all had the air about them of Autumn in Stalingrad...But if we think for a moment, if we consider the relative differences between the house, and the Senate, we can see in your story how valuable the house is to our government, and how good it is to have at least one part of our government in touch with the people, and responsive to them...But this war is a failure of the house, and every failure of government is a failure of the house...This house of Representatives was meant to be our House of Commons, and as much as it was possible those people have made it a House of Lords...There was no upper limit on the size of the house set by the constitution....No state could have less than one... But we began with districts of 30,000 people, and now have districts of over 600 K...How does anyone meet that many???How does anyone faithfully represent so many???. As much as it is possible, every district is divided to give victory to a certain party with votes to spare even if it means occasionaly giving a district away overwhelmingly to the other party...The house limited its number to make the house managable...As the house has become more tame, our situation has become more wild, more feral, and more deparate... The government, which should give us a measure of control over our economy, and our affairs and our foreign policy does not give us any protection...It is not a source of our liberty, but of our division... It does not empower the people as it was meant to, and to do our will, but it excuses government, our represenatives for doing exactly as they desire...Do you think it would be a zoo if thousands of representatives descended upon Washington to replace the hundreds now not working there??? Why not have the state representatives do double duty???How about ever single one of them asking how this bill or that serves their districts!!!..Get rid of the staff, the aids, the secretaries, the lawyers, and the power brokers, and just have a lot of representatives from small districts representing their own... You can look high and low, but this change, this extraconstitutional change accounts better than any single event for the failure of our democracy... We are not less than our forefathers... We are not at fault... No man once elected to power ever concedes power to another...They will point the finger of blame to every direction on the compass, but to where it belongs...It was choice that made the house so unrepresentative, and it is choice that keeps it unrepresentative...It would take no more than an act of congress to make the house work...Will that ever be the object so long as some power remains on the table for those people????They want to be some bodies...My representative wants to be some body...He used to be an FBI Agent...That should qualify him to find a brain...Thanks...Sweeney.
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