Posted on 10/07/2013 8:31:24 AM PDT by Twotone
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. "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.
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 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 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 exalted 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
You were 26 when JFK was elected.
You were 31 when LBJ imposed the great society on us.
Your young 69 year old sibling was a part of the late 60's youth movement that has done so much of lasting harm. You were 35 when Teddy went swimming at Chappaquiddick, and continued to win election after election.
You were 42 when Jimmy Carter was elected.
When you reached retirement age, in your 60's, you were part of the social security focused seniors that helped keep Clinton in office. In short, your generation oversaw the greatest expansion of socialist doctrine in our history, and started the programs and policies that led to the decline of public education, the skyrocketing debt, and the destruction of the family.
I'm not saying that you are personally responsible, but your generation certainly has a lot to to answer for, that you cannot pin on younger folks.
Boy..is he in for the audit of his life.
You were right on with your rant. Too many oldsters do not want to accept responsibility for what has happened on their watch. It’s going to be a long haul turning things around. I just hope the young folks are up to it.
Too bad this letter will only be read by a college intern working in the office and never be forwarded to the Sainted Senator herself.
The “Miss Me Yet?” graphic really needs George Washington’s face, or Paul Revere’s, or some other troublemaker’s face.
THOSE people. Lazy, selfish people who have been bought. They don't care about the damage being done.
Time to wake up, folks. The people on food stamps are not the only ones who care more about their lifestyles than they do about liberty.
The lazy, selfish and cowardly people who keep sending their kids to public schools, are also accepting welfare. The lazy, selfish and cowardly people who pay lip service to liberty while regularly sending their financial support to the protection racket in DC, rather than resist, even safely and legally, because it would crimp their lifestyle -- they are more to blame than the moochers they support.
$600K is a typical suburban tract colonial around here in the Beltway that someone would have bought for 1/5 of that or less 20 years ago
Sorry to bust your theory, but many senior citizens live in very highly assessed houses they have owned for many years and could not afford to buy again
Lots of us “oldsters” did the right things and voted the right ways.
Sometimes it works, it did work in Texas.
I’m amongst the oldsters that did the right thing, voting-wise. But I didn’t really wake up to what the media was doing until the internet started. And lots of people still think media bias is a conspiracy theory. We’ve been lied to for a long time. Many of the oldsters are still not on the internet & not getting any alternative information.
I’m not in panic or apocalypse mode here. And it baffles me why others are.
What we see here is a very casual rehearsal for those ultimate events. We’ll have something far far far far worse (and cleverer) than Barack Obama at the helm of it.
Now a rapture could really upset some applecarts because it would render the world believerless. And we don’t quite know when that will be.
Well yes, the two follies (making it overly easy to game, and gaming) feed one another. I tend to think, from overall observation, that a lot of the intentions are good, but they are not focused on a godly model and thus lead to hell rather than to heaven.
Good post. Makes me wonder why millions of us lowly citizens are not pushing to recall the idiots in charge. If your state has a recall procedure, then get started on recalling the elites. If your state doesn’t have such a procedure, push to get one on the ballot. The enemy is active while we sit and assume our birth given rights will never perish. Bad move on our part. What our government is currently doing to the public is a sham, coordinated with corrupt media outlets. Stand and fight!
Why would it ring false, if a person worked their entire life to build wealth, to save, and to establish themselves and still be pissed at politicians that vote themselves high salaries and pensions on the backs of people like the writer?
The writer's overall disgust would still hold true that while he worked and toiled for his assets the looter class (including politicians) voted for theirs off the backs of people like him.
The writer's words especially ring true in the 1% remarks, considering as the democrat marxist voting base derides the wealthy, and yet the politicians in question are of the so called 1%.
And further, the writer isn't knocking wealth - he's knocking entitlements, nepotism, and graft that is paid for by the taxpayer.
Are you sure you aren’t Senator Murray?
Look at the bright side, Bill.
The Death Panel is going to greatly improve the financial outlook for SocSec and Medicare.
If your grandkids squawk about your premature demise, we may offer them a discount on their student loan debt.
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