Join the "Nationwide Term Limits Parade" in November.The only power the people of a democracy have over their elected officials is the power of the vote. You can choose to vote for people who have lied to you, who have stolen and squandered your tax dollars, who have sold the trust you gave them to act as your elected official to the highest bidder, or you can "throw the bums out."
If you're perfectly happy with the status quo -- lies and corruption and incompetence -- stay home and be happy. If you think maybe, just maybe, somebody else, regardless of their party affiliation, might do a better job, then run to the polls the minute early voting starts.If the machine doesn't record the vote you try to make, express your outrage to the voting officials and don't leave until your vote is properly recorded OR your complaint is properly registered with every level of voting officials -- local precinct and county and state. If you see other people at your voting place having problems getting to vote or getting a voting machine to work, make that cell phone call to all the local news media, your county election officials, and your state attorney general's office. Get outraged. Stay outraged until the problem is fixed. Stay watchful until the votes are counted.
And just for kicks, just for fun, this time, leave your party affiliation and long held political and religious prejudices at your own front door. Party names come and go, as anyone who has read their history books know. Red Team. Blue Team. Just labels, not substance. Both Democrats and Republicans can be good Christian or Jewish or Islamic law-abiding, moral, budget-minded, and competent people. Both Democrats and Republicans can be law-breaking, immoral, spendthrifts, and incompetent people. Both Democrats and Republicans can be Euro-American white or African-American black or Hispanic white/black/native or Native-American or Asian-American or.... But those are just labels to divide people. Poor white children and poor black children and poor hispanic children all need the same thing to grow into productive citizens. They need adequate food and health care and a good edcuation and their parents need good jobs to provide them with safe homes and adequate care. A goodly many of us have a "mixed" family origin and we're proud of all those ancestors no matter how they got here, and we're proud that both before and after the vote we're all Americans. So let's not play the party-politics game this time. It's a stupid game where the "party politician" wins and the American voter goes home busted.
What is liberal and what is conservative anyway? The vast national debt that the "Liberal" Clinton Democrats inherited from the "Conservative" Bush I Republicans was turned into a surplus sufficient to keep Social Security and other national health, education, and welfare program funded many decades into the future. That same surplus that the "Conservative" Bush II Republicans inherited was quickly squandered into a debt the American people may never be able to pay off -- and China is our shady loan officer holding this debt (and nuclear weapons, and a population ten times larger than ours from which to draw debt collectors).
So which party is Conservative? Which party is Liberal? Which is the party of true patriots? Which party has made us stronger? Which has made us weaker? Isn't saving for the future a "conservative" action; isn't spending your grandchildern's future earnings a "liberal" action. Is it more conservative to object to abortion or more conservative to object to not providing adequate health, education, and welfare services for the children already on this planet? If our children are our future, shouldn't we care enough about providing the best environment that we can for them as we do about killing Saddam?
Is the moral high ground held by the party of the womanizer or the party of the child abuser? Who is the more cherished in God's eyes -- those who would spend their nation's wealth providing for the wellbeing of its own citizens or those who would spend their nation's wealth providing an economic advantage for the richest corporations on the face of the earth? Are all endeavors equal in God's eyes? In the eyes of the Christian God? In the eyes of the Jewish God? In the eyes of the Islamic God? In your own eyes, are you better or worse off economically and emotionally in how you feel about yourself as an American today than you were six years ago? And with all the loss of your privacy and legal protections under the Constitution and Bill of Rights since September 11, 2001, do you fell as secure as you did on September 10, 2001? Are you as afraid of terroists as you are of homeland security?
Is that guy or gal running for political office doing it to serve you or to serve another master? Is he/she running for office to make life better for you and your family or is he/she doing it to make life better for his/her family? Red, Blue, Democrat, Republican. Just labels. Don't fall for any candidate's self-professed label this time. Don't believe what he says about the other candidate. Listen carefully to what they each have to say before the election. Look at their past lives, both as politicians and as people. Have they cheated on their spouses? Have they cheated on their taxes? Have they cheated their investors in prior business dealings? Have they cheated on the trust you placed in them last election? Have they promised voters one thing and delivered an entirely different bag of compost? Look up their voting records. Look up their address and find out if they live in a neighborhood much better than you would expect someone earning their level of income to live, and ask them how they managed to do that while your real-earnings decreased. Look up their campaign contributors.
Do your research, then listen to what that inner voice tells you about who a candidate really is as a person. Take anything your political party has to say about any candidate with a grain of salt. Your party leaders are collecting high salaries for telling you how you should vote. If you let them tell you how to vote, what will you get out of it? Peace? Prosperity? Clear Concience?
We all have faults. Political candidates are no exception. Some people will admit their faults. Some will lie or hide the facts to keep you from discovering their true nature. Some will make up lies about other people to keep the focus away from themselves. If they will lie to you about who they are, they will like to you about what they will do when in office. Look at how a candidate conducts a campaign. Hold a candidate accountable for any objectionable advertising his campaign uses to slander the oponent. A person of high moral standard would not engage in slander. If a candidate is willing to engage in slander to get your vote, they're willing to lie to you about other things as well.Listen to that voice of reason inside your head. Listen to your experiences and your common sense. If a candidate didn't do their job in the past, why in the world would you trust them to do it in the future. And when you vote for a candidate, watch them like a hawk and hold them accountable for their campaign pledges to you in the years you allow them to remain in office. Keep watching those you won't get a chance to vote on this time -- the senators whose six-year term limit didn't come up this time. In two years, we get another chance to "throw those bums out" and try for a new batch.
That's my new party -- the Throw The Bums Out Party. My new buzz words are "send a message." It's high time voters send a message that lies and incompetence and corruption will not be tolerated. The other elements of this new party's platform are these:
We will no longer tolerate our young people being used as cannon foder in a war that is based on lies and half-truths and that only serves to enrich the military services industry. If our President and senators and congresspeople are not willing to send their own daughters and sons to serve in a war beget with lies and half-truths, then why should we the people send our daughters and sons? We will no longer tolerate bridges to nowhere and social security health-care plans that only enrich pharmacutical companies and health-care insurers. We demand that any politician who proposes any amount of spending put his name on the bill and put his ethics (or lack thereof) disclosure, including a complete listing of any campaign donations from any private sector entity likely to benefit from the new regulation, in the public record. We demand that any politician who betrays the public trust be immediately removed from office and prosecuted for any crimes committed. We will no longer tolerate a "no child left behind" program that does not provide adequate primary, secondary, and college education funding so that our poor and middle-class children who achieve the skill levels to persue that college education will have the ability to compete in a global maketplace. We will no longer tolerate our manufacturing and technical jobs being shipped offshore to China and India and Mexico while US corporate officers grow rich off "outsouring and downsizing cost savings" converted to lavish corporate officer salaries and a growing national debt. We will not tolerate politicians who will not protect our borders from invaders, be they friendly cheap labor or terrorist supporting foe.
It is also time to send a message that every citizen of this country -- young, old, or anywhere in between -- is entitled to health care as good and affordable as the health care our elected officials provide for themselves and their families. State and federal law can be written that require health-care insurance companies to offer health care policies to the general public at no more than the rate charged participants in the "groups of employees" plans of large corporations (campaign donors), and rules can be written to prohibit "pre-exisiting condition" exclusions in health-care policies. Rules can be written that apply deceptive trade practices laws to health-care providers. Health care providers shouldn't be allowed to charge one low "fair and reasonable" fee for the insured and an outrageous fee for the same service to the uninsured -- the people who can least afford the grossly elevated fee. We should all be asking our prospective state and federal officials where they stand on these issue. Even if we have health-insurance today. When our job is outsourced to China we'll loose that coverage, and when we grow older (not old enough for Medicare, but older) we'll be barred from coverage once it's discovered we have a "pre-existing" condition such as obesity, high-blood pressure, diabetes, cancer -- you know, the stuff of life kind of conditions we seek medical treatment for as we age. Aren't the taxpayers of this country at least as entitled to affordable health-care coverage and fair health-care pricing as are politicians and government workers?
Bottom line? I'm getting there. If our currently elected state and federal officials have demonstrated they can't honor their pledges to the voters and can't police their own ethics and can't function as good stewards of the public treasury and can't dilligently regulate the providers of necessary services (such as health care, education, utilities) to maximize the return of tax dollar value to the taxpayers, it's high time that we the people initiate national term limits in this and in every future election until we find elected officials who will serve the voters. It is high-time to let every political candidate know that he or she is an "employee at will" of the voters and that his or her job can be "outsourced" just as easily as our own jobs have been.
Sure, we need politicians who will do the right thing. But we also need campaign pledges honored without any more taxes. We're already paying through the nose for a grossly incompetent investment of our people's capital by those now holding seats of government. We don't need new taxes. We just need politicians who will be good stewards and manage the resouces of the people as wisely as they would if their own jobs depended on it.
Get busy. Do your research. Then go vote November 7, 2006 for Nationwide Term Limits. If anyone can turn this country around it's you!(E-bumper stickers from http://www.InternetBumperStickers.com.)
