Congress Ignores the Will of the People

Who Do These People Think They Are? In short, they think they are our rulers and we are their servants, instead of it being the other way around. We elect them to serve their country and its people. Instead, they represent their own best interests and those of the wealthiest one percent. The fact is that most of them care much less about the country's welfare and much more about their own welfare and that of the richest among us.

Do We Have the Right People in Congress? Absolutely not! Members of Congress are the select few (535, to be exact) chosen from our entire population of 307 million who have been elected to represent the best interests of the entire country. Each House member represents an average of more than 700,000 citizens, and each Senator represents an average of more than 3 million citizens. That's a pretty heavy burden to bear, so it stands to reason that these representatives should be selected from among the cream of the crop of the political elite when it comes to intelligence, creativity, leadership, and the ability to accomplish meaningful legislation on behalf of their. Based upon the performance and achievements of the both the 112th and the 113th Congress (so far), we and they have failed miserably.

Who Are Their Constituencies? As stated elsewhere in this blog, Congress members have multiple constituencies, interests, and priorities. Often, these conflict with one another. That is when their priorities come into play. Here is my summation of the priorities of typical politicians at the state and federal levels.

• Once in office, their first loyalty is to themselves and doing anything they can to ensure that they get reelected. One of the greatest fears of any Congress member is to get voted out of office.
• Next is their allegiance to their political parties to ensure that enough of their members get elected to push their political agendas through their legislation. This will also help gain party support when the officeholder seeks reelection.
• Third are their financial backers – the corporations and the super-rich who contribute heavily to Congressional campaigns, and who run ads supporting their anointed candidates while excoriating their opponents. This includes lobbyists, PACs, Super PACs, 527 Groups and other special interest groups. The ;politicians have to give something back to these entities in order to secure their financial support for reelection. Money talks, and politicians have perfect hearing – especially whenever the words “contribution”, “donation,” or “check” are mentioned.
• Fourth come the people who voted for them. In public, most Congress members say these people are their constituents, but you can see just how high they come on their priority list. During election years, you will see them pandering to those whose votes they need to get reelected. In other years, they will do little for their benefit. However, when they do something for them, they will trumpet it from the heavens as though they are the second coming of the Messiah.
• And dead last come the rest of the people in the country whose best interests they are also supposed to represent. This group represents the overwhelming majority of us. This is supposed to include voters and non-voters alike, whether children or adults, and whether they are eligible to vote or not.. However, most legislators tend to consider their state or district constituencies to be only those who voted for them prior elections.

Why Do They Ignore the Will of the American People? The simple reason for this is “because they can.” They know that they can thwart the will of the American people and still get reelected. They can do this for the following reasons:

1. There is a built-in bias toward incumbents. Poll results released in October, 2011, showed that Congress had an approval rating of only 9%. However, another poll released in December, 2011, showed that:, although 76% of the people feel that most members of Congress don't deserve to be re-elected As a result, in 90% of the races, the incumbent gets reelected.
2. Incumbents are able to raise more money than new office seekers. And it is well known that in more than 90% of the elections, the candidate who raises the most campaign funds wins the election.
3. Electoral districts in most states are determined by politicians. As a result, the party in power generally secures a redistricting plan that is designed to keep party incumbents in office. Gerrymandering may be a dirty word to voters, but it is a Godsend to incumbent politicians because candidates from opposing parties are generally helpless in opposing this process.

This is by no means an all-inclusive list of why it is so hard to unseat incumbents. With the deck stacked so heavily in their favor, it is little wonder that politicians turn a deaf ear to the people of this country.

What is the Effect of Incumbent Bias? When the same people get elected to Congress again and again, we get the same old ideas, the same old practices, and the same old cronyism . In essence, we have a stagnant Congress, but one that has a stranglehold on our country . These politicians don't care much about the will of the people, and they don't care at all about public opinion, whether expressed in letters, e-mails, tweets, or polls, because they have rigged things in favor of their election, term after term after term. This is certainly not to the advantage of our country.

People First. The people must come first, not last, and those who do not see that, agree with that, and legislate to that end do not represent the people and deserve to be voted out of office. That includes virtually every member of Congress, and it is almost impossible to determine the few who are the good apples in a basket of rotten ones. So, we might have to sacrifice a few of the the good ones for the sake of our country, its citizens, and our democracy.

Use Your Clout and Vote Them Out. It is time for us to muster our collective elective strength and vote as many incumbents out of office as we possibly can. We need to send a very strong but clear message to the remaining representatives that we are “mad as hell and we aren't going to take it any more.” At the same time, however, we don't want to vote in party politicians who are going to fall right in line with their cohorts and work for the same priorities as their predecessor. We don't just need new blood in Congress. We need a new source of that blood, and it preferably won't come from either the radical right or the extreme left. We need progressive populists who know the Constitution and what it stands for, and who will to restore to this country once again a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

We Must Drive Big Money Out of Politics!

Fundamental Reasons Why We Must Do This To Save Our Democracy.

Words of Wisdom From Two Great Republican Presidents

Introduction. The thoughts expressed herein are a reflection of my personal interests and beliefs. They are the reason for this blog. We have a great country, but it is not as great a country as our forefathers envisioned. The problems that beset us today are not new. We have faced them and conquered them before. We must once again regain our democracy or forfeit it forever.

Popular Government Must Triumph. "Our country -- this great Republic – means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him."

Promises Without Action Are Empty.  “… words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life."

“In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will."

Duty of Humankind.  Theodore Roosevelt referred to Abraham Lincoln as “the man to whom we owe (the) most,” and cited a couple passages from The Great Emancipator:

"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

Labor Is Superior To Capital.  And again:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Special Interests Are Entitled To Justice ...”Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today."

… But Not To Political Power.  “... every special interest is entitled to justice, but not … to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.”

The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.”

Control of Corporate Political Activity. “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done”.

“It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”

Corporate Accountability. “I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”

Duty of Congress. “The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration."

Change Is Needed. “The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.”

“We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”

Government Intervention Required. “This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

The Path To Ruin. “Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.”

Government Responsiveness To The People. “If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary.”

Removal of Non-Responsive Representatives. “I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases.”

Government Should Serve People, Not Special Interests.  “One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests.”

The Bottom Line.  “The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.”

The Moment Of Truth.  Although I agree with and embrace all the statements made above, I cannot claim authorship of any one of them, Although we are at a time in history when these statements and observations are extremely appropriate, they weren't made in recent times, but they were made to address the same type of situation such as we now have. The people who made them were both Republicans who saw the same kinds of problems for our country that beset us again today. The bulk of the comments were made by Theodore Roosevelt, with a couple of additional comments from Abraham Lincoln. These are all extracted from a speech that Roosevelt delivered approximately 100 years ago. His message is just as pertinent today as it was back then. The full text of his speech can be found at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501.

It Is Time To Reclaim Our Democracy.  The past has repeated itself inasmuch as big financial interests (private, corporate, and political) have once again wrested our democracy away from the people and usurped it for their own gains. Can we also repeat the past and rid ourselves of their stranglehold, thereby restoring democracy to its rightful place with the people of America? Our country's fate is in our hands.

Coming Next:  First, Let's Define Democracy.