About eight months ago Frank came to me with an idea for a new column. It would be called “Despicable Politicians” and would list those politicians who have, in our opinions, used their positions to screw their constituents and country while benefiting themselves. Now most of you out there are probably thinking that list must be pretty long since the word “politician” has come to mean:
A person who acts in a manipulative and devious way, typically to gain advancement.
Actually our list has only 9 names on it so far but will be increasing very soon. It always seems that Congress manages to shoot itself in the foot thereby giving us more names for the list. So let’s just start at the top with John Boehner, the 61st and current “Speaker of the House”, the leader of the Congress.
With the approach of mandatory and quite possibly damaging across the board budget cuts he has taken the position of, wait for it……doing nothing. He has decided to allow the Senate and the White House to come up with legislation. Then he will look at it….really?
When asked why he is now taking a “hands off” approach he simply replied,
“Frankly, every time I’ve gotten into one of these high-profile negotiations, you know, it’s my rear end that got burn. I’ve got to tread carefully but there’s nobody that has more guts to take on his own party than I do.”
That’s funny I thought a leaders job was to take risks and to set an example for those that follow him. I guess politicians operate under a different set of rules than the rest of us. What Boehner has done is fall into yet another Democratic trap and this time he has a lot of company. With the automatic budget cuts less than two weeks away from being implicated do we find Boehner and the rest of the House of Representatives burning the midnight oil to try and come up with a way, palatable to both sides, of avoiding this? Nope instead they decided to recess for a week’s vacation. If this wasn’t so irresponsible it would be laughable. Then the Senate decided if the House wasn’t going to stay why should they. Without the House they can get noting done anyway.
It is obvious they just don’t care and that makes perfect sense if you think like them. Why should they care? The draconian cuts set to fire in a little more than ten days would have virtually no affect on a single politician. Their salaries won’t be cut; none of them will receive pink slips and have to file for unemployment; they won’t have to worry how they will feed and clothe their families or pay for doctor’s bills or gas for their hummers. They saw to that themselves. They can decide when to work and when not to; when to take a “Business Trip” to Fiji or Monte Carlo; they can give themselves raises and secured pensions, don’t contribute to Social Security and receive top of the line medical care for them and their families till the day they die with virtually no cost to them. All paid for by…you guessed it…us.
Despicable to say the least…bordering on criminal is more like it. We are supposed to be represented by our peers but our representatives have seen to it that that description has now become a misnomer and a very sad truism. So I say HR should add the complete House of Representative and Senate to the list and let the chips fall where they may and in two years we should start handing out the “pink slips” by the hundreds and party be damned.
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why should anyone in the house when everything they send to the senate never gets voted on. The senate has gone more than four years without submitting a budget.
Why would you start with Bohner when there are so many, mostly on the left, that I can think of. Pelosi, Reed, Schumer ,etc. Yes there are 100′s of corrupt politicians , but most are on the left.The lefty democrats ,long ago, decided that freedom and liberty was not what they wanted for the regular American citizen, and set their course to dismantle the free market system. I dis like many Republicans but the failure of America sits squarely on the shoulders of the corrupt Democratic Party.
Karen:
This is not a starting with Boehner. The column is not part of this article. The column is on the right hand side and already has nine names on it. Boehner is not one of them. If you go to the right hand side of the main page, you will see “Desicable Politicians.” Click on that.
Why start with Bohner, why not start with him. He’s is a RINO, he isn’t working for the good of the people he’s working for the good of John Bohner. Trust me when he comes up for re-election we the people will remember.
When we look to others to blame, to hold accountable and responsible, we miss the foundation of our Republic, We the People”. If we are anything, we are the mirrors of our culture; we elected them, those “Despicables”, and then we complain, as they are in our image. “”The (electorate) doth protest too much, methinks”, paraphrased from “Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act III, scene II.” Are we angry, at whom? ” Do we insist so passionately about something not being true of others, a self-diminished electorate, or that people suspect the opposite of what we are saying.”
We expose of little of what and who we are by the objects of our condemnation. And I include myself in that criticism. An analysis of almost anyone other than a fallible but good person, John Andrew Boehner would have laid compassionate concern, not censorship, twisted and tortured trepidation, at the feet of Renaldo Magnus’s 11th Commandment.
The Eleventh Commandment was a phrase used by then President of the United States Ronald Reagan during his 1966 campaign for Governor of California. The Commandment reads:
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
An analysis of David Axelrod’s superb execution of Sal Alinsky’s malevolent essay “Rule for Radicals” would have served us demonstratively better. Is it a choice between Hitler and the dreadful timidity of the Jews and we choose to criticize the “good” guys for their imperfections? The genius of knowing, analyzing and learning about the enemy is the deconstruction of the “uninformed voter”, we the people. David was the “change he sought, Are we? General Patton, outmaneuvering Rommel, referring to Rommel’s book, ‘Infantry Attacks’ or ‘Infanterie greift an’, “Rommel… you magnificent bastard, *I read your book*!” What can we learn from Patton?
As we devour our own we are doing the work of today’s opposition. Is it not the strategy of the opposition to turn us against ourselves? Do we no longer have to search for the enemy? Is it us? Do not join that army.
If Adam Smith were alive one hopes he would say; The statesman, any politician, the electorate, who should attempt to direct private people as to how they ought to employ their fundamentals and principles, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no counsel, White House, Congress, or Senate, whatever, and which would nowhere be more dangerously as in the hands of any politician, nay, any, man, who had folly and presumption enoughto fancy himself fit to exercise it.