CHASTISEMENT OF CONGRESS; CHALLENGE TO RIGHT WRONGS

You, the currently sitting Congress of our nation, are not sitting there on your own behalf.

You are there on behalf of your constituents – that would be We the People of the United States.

Your job is to represent us and to work for us, to do what’s right for us, not your own selves.

Each and all of you know how to read. 

I have here a copy of your job description.

It is the Constitution of the United States with the attached Bill of Rights. 

In front of each of you is a copy. 

I suggest you read it, as you have sworn an oath to support and defend it. 

Does the following ring any bells?

‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.’

We the People of the United States chastise you. 

It’s an old-fashioned word. 

It means you have done wrong and haven’t fixed it, and we’re calling you on it. 

Shame on you.

You blame everyone else. 

You deny culpability. 

That’s another word you might not recognize. 

It means guilt. 

This government does not belong to you.

It belongs to We the People of the United States. 

You have had plenty of time to rectify the wrongs done to the citizens of the United States by you and the ones who sat in your chairs before you got there. 

We want to know how far you’ve gotten. 

The other day a child – a little child, mind you – said to me that we should just start over.  This little child said that sometimes when she’s coloring a picture she goofs it up so bad that she just starts all over. 

Before each of you lies the template.  Use it.  That’s what it’s there for.  It is the final authority and it is meant to be used as such.  Start from scratch and get us back on track.  From the instrument that lies on the table before you is drawn all the authority you need to get the damn job done.

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia took place from May 25 to September 17 back in 1787.

Those guys got their job done in less than four months, and the boat we’re in now isn’t very different from the one they were in. 

So what’s your problem? 

I suggest you get to it. 

Does that sound like a lot of work that you don’t want to do?    

Then what the hell are you doing there? 

Is it prestige, the free ride for the rest of your life, the quality of the medical coverage?

Whatever the reasons you wanted this position, it is now yours. 

It is not mine.

It is not anyone else’s.

It is yours.

You wanted it. 

You got it.

Now you’re stuck with it.

You are accountable to us.

If we haven’t held you accountable, that’s our bad. 

Now it’s time for accountability.

That’s all on YOU.

Why should you care about social security?  YOU don’t have to pay in; you get a free ride for the rest of your life. 

Fix that.

Take away your free ride. 

Your pay for your time in office can be the average of your constituents’ incomes. 

Be stuck with whatever insurance you can afford like the rest of us. 

Social security seems to have essentially been put on the block.  You have told our younglings not to count on it.  You have told them that it’s the responsibility of the individual to provide for their own elder years. 

Fine.

Begin with us. 

Begin NOW. 

Contrary to current trends, it really does NOT take all that baloney, or time, to fix something.

You have the records. 

Each of us has paid in a certain amount.  

Some have also used a certain amount. 

For each of us, take the amount we’ve paid in and subtract from it whatever we may have used.

Give us back the money we’ve paid in, minus what we might have used. 

And don’t you dare try to tax us on it, either. 

Do not try to raise it by taking it from the very people that got robbed in the first place. 

Take the lifetime salaries of all the previous seat-holders, and use that to buy the rest of us out.  They can also have whatever they paid in, minus what they've used.  They had their chance to fix it; let them live with the consequences, too.

Take the premiums we’re paying for their insurance and yours, pay your own, and use that to buy us out so we can also afford our own insurance. 

Someone before your time robbed the citizens of this nation and got away with it.  Does that exculpate you?  NO. 

You assume the seat, you assume the guilt, and you assume the responsibility for fixing the wrongs done by the seat you hold, regardless of when it was done or by whom. 

Didn’t know that, either? 

Now you do. 

Get the job done. 

And we want our sons and daughters, our grandsons and granddaughters, back at home on American soil.

Bring them home.

The ones who are doing trouble-shooting or preventive type jobs – those can stay abroad if they so choose, because we of all people know they are needed. 

But bring the rest home and for God’s sake quit your meddling in other people’s crap.  Have NONE of you read the Federalist Papers?

We want our own back home.  We want them back here and working.

Bring our businesses back from abroad too.  If they won’t come, bid them a fond and permanent farewell.  Don't buy their products.

Develop our own resources and knock off being dependent on outsiders for what we can damn well produce on our own. 

There are over three hundred million of us. 

Do you really think that’s not enough to get done whatever jobs need doing in our country? 

When a hefty hunk of our population is sitting idle (no income, no taxes either), by necessity or otherwise, do you honestly find justification for outsiders doing jobs those people could very well be doing? 

Do you honestly believe that if our businesses came home we would refuse to take the jobs, pay fair income taxes, buy homes for our families, provide for our own futures, get insurance, and educate our young?

REALLY?

If your salary was based on the average income of your constituents, I betcha you all would vote like crazy to bring our businesses back home and give our own people good-paying jobs. 

Anyone who isn’t a citizen, in the process of becoming one, or a student, tourist, or consultant has no legitimate reason for being in our country.  Send them back home, or better yet make their own home countries provide transportation, and let them come back in like they’re supposed to if they qualify.  And for cryin’ out loud set up some reasonable standards for entry!  Like maybe having the wherewithal with which to support themselves, for starters.

You know what? 

A goodly portion of the angst you might be feeling coming at you is nothing new in this country. 

Even before the American Revolution, before there WAS a United States, people took exception to contributing their hard earned incomes and being reduced to poverty to provide luxuries for others. 

Look to the Carolinas in 1765.  It wasn’t a revolution there; it was not aimed at the form of government; it was opposition to the corruption of that form of government.

When the government refuses to listen to the people, the people take action.  It’s an American tradition.

If you don’t know the history of your own country, you don’t belong sitting in that seat. 

The fact that your own countrymen and women are viewing YOU in the self-same light that the colonists viewed their administrators ought to set your skin crawling with mortification. 

You were raised here. 

What the bloody hell are you THINKING?

 We hired you to do a job; we pay you to do that job.

So do it already.   

If you didn’t want to do the work you ought not to have applied for the job in the first place. 

Someone who sat in your seat screwed up royally. 

Fix it. 

Fix it or get the hell out of that seat. 

We are ashamed that we played any part in putting you there in the first place. 

We want to be proud of you; we want to be happy with our choices.

Make that happen.

Just do it.