Ok, Einsteins. Here is the amount of taxes we pay to our federal, state and local governments through wage deductions and taxes. We’re going to forget the enormous federal, state and local deficits for the benefit of this exercise.
Now take the amount that goes to you and all your trips, your staff, your mistress, and all the “pork” you vote for to aid yourself and fellow legislators. Now consider cost per voter in your district.
Factor in how many times your office doesn’t answer the phone, or respond to an email or letter from a constituent. Add the number of times someone answered the phone and was told “I’ll get back to you” and it never happened.
Another wrinkle. Working with other government agencies and actually talking to your constituents. We pay you for this. In the end we pay you to serve in a representative democracy to serve the people. We are the people. When we get in touch with you, few of us ever do because most people are afraid to deal with authority figures, please get back to us and help us solve the problem.
We’ve had issues over the years and brought them to our representatives and got nothing. They’ve asked us to work on their campaigns promising they believed in our issues and the minute they were elected, imagine my surprise that they changed their minds and were against everything we stood for that helped them get elected. Oh, my.
Here’s my analysis. Business brings not the best and brightest to the top echelons. They may look and sound good but it’s media hype nowadays.
Non-profits take the people who want to change the world, pay these idealists nothing for their passion and hard work, and burn them out in a couple of years.
Politicians take smart kids like me, place them in the trenches with no helicopter in sight, pay nothing and expect 24/7 service. The Bureacracy runs the government. They just wait for the current President to die or leave office, leave things on their desks and whether at any level of government there are divided houses they just wait.
Witness Bill Clinton. In his first term he had a Democratic legislative branch and couldn’t get anything done because he brought in all his own people from Arkansas and First Lady Hillary pushed a health care bill and said she didn’t make cookies.
Twenty years later First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw some of the best parts of her health care bill passed and may be our next president.
Compromises are made. Serious ones, in which I thought I was a policy wonk doing the right thing, but didn’t want to be a politcian. So I was washed up, my choice, to lobbyist. But that’s another note to you.
If there’s a dead animal on your street call someone. They’ll pick it up but it may stink for a week or two. We pay all these people. On April 15 those who owed (I owed $100) paid. But we’ve paid billions each year to elect people to represent us who would not even consider picking up a dead raccoon from the street.
What was the Revolutionary War? I wonder if some elected officials even know what it was about. Now we have the Patriot Act that monitors this blog, all my emails and phone calls and there was a government of part-time representatives who included teachers. Now it’s all well-funded lawyers who want a lucrative career and even better dollars when they retire.
As of now there are few representatives of the people in our democracy, and fewer who believe in our Constitution and that spying on your citizens and voters without a warrant is not warranted, at least in my version of that document.
Freedom! Freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Expecting no less, Dee
Cooking with Dee 