New Rule: From now on, anyone running for U.S. Congress and Senate, cannot have an annual salary more than, oh I don’t know, $100,000. ? Sound good? Still unfair? No more than $75,000? Something that would put him or her in the league of regular folks, maybe no more than $40,000? Come on now, there are a lot of people in this country who earn salaries like $30,000 and $40,000 a year and even raise kids. But the point I’m trying to make is NO MORE MILLIONAIRE POLITICIANS!! Yea!!!!!! Rahhhhhh!!!
With our usual federal government shut downs, it seems it’s not so much a liberal-conservative fight as a disconnection between millionaires and regular folks. Millionaires have never cared about poor people (and for them that includes the vast middle class), what the Millennials used to refer to as the 99 percent (of us). Remember when the kids protested on Wall Street just a couple of years ago? Then we elect a self-promoted billionaire as president? What’s up with that? How did our nation change on a dime? Just wondering what happened to the collective rage against all people rich.
Only millionaires play chicken with people’s lives and livelihoods. Regular folks would never do such a thing. We have more empathy toward our fellow man, sort of. I mean, we are Americans, and since the Reagan ’80s our national motto has been “I got mine. You get yours.” Works out great for some folks, maybe even most Americans with the wherewithal to earn a college degree or born with business savvy and ambition or tech or high-paid trade acumen. But not everyone does well in our great land. There are all kinds of reasons: physical disabilities, chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, low self-esteem, low intellect, anti social personality disorder. Then there are issues dealing with race, color, sex, religion and ethnicity. People of color have been saying for decades there are points against them in our great nation when it comes to who gets the jobs and promotions and why. It doesn’t matter how many bi-racial family ads are on TV now. The nation as a whole hasn’t let go of discrimination.
Billionaire Boys Club
So now really we have a billionaire club infiltrating politics. And since politics is about governing people’s lives, I’d say it’s unfair and I’d go so far as to say non-Christian. Wouldn’t you? OK, let’s leave the issue of religion out of it. Let’s not ask “What Would Jesus Do?” when it comes to a government shut down. After all, the great majority of our nation’s millionaires and billionaires and Congressional representatives proclaim to be Christian.
The first time I was ever aware of our government’s money problems was in 1981. That was the first time I heard our government was broke. And we’ve been broke ever since. Well, there was that shining moment when President Bill Clinton proudly announced our new national debt was $0. That’s zero dollars. The politicians, especially the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ had convinced us concerned Americans the budget could never be balanced. Shame on them. Clinton was lucky he rode the perfect wave of the telecom boom … which turned into a tech and dot.com bubble that eventually burst. Nevertheless, he did prove our national debt could be resolved.
Now I’m just thinking out loud, but does anyone else think our entire federal budget is just a house of cards? We’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul? If we are truly unable to keep our government financially operating time and again, then something’s, like, major wrong with our nation.
The one person I would never trust to fix our perpetual federal debacle and international embarrassment is a millionaire. Wanna know why? Because I know that millionaires never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever spend their own money. Trump never did contribute faithfully and willingly and lovingly to his own presidential campaign. He’s got to be the first in American history to not gamble on his own presidential bid.
And the likes of him, billionaires and millionaires, are in charge of our federal budget? Something’s out of whack. And it’s been out of whack for too long.
Roll over Tom Jeff’rson
Our nation’s Founders in their wildest dreams could have never imagined the vast financial mess of our great country, supposedly the greatest and richest on earth. How could a nation built on democracy, free will, equality, and even everybody’s pursuit of happiness go so profoundly astray financially? Maybe it is the guaranteed ‘free will.’ Humans don’t do well with free will. We have a tendency to put off tomorrow what we don’t want to do today, like pay the electric bill. We get credit cards to take care of our needs then our wants, then we can’t pay them either, blaming high interest rates. Over a period of five decades—our prime working years—life becomes a series of calamities: illnesses, job losses, home and car repairs, spouse death, divorce, stock market crashes, loans, inflation, recessions, raising kids, college, etc. We find we aren’t any better off than when we’d first begun to work. The future looks bleak.
That’s the kind of thinking that got Trump elected.
The bottom line about governing is very simple: THE BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID. That’s how families do it as well as cities and states. In government jargon, it’s called a zero budget, where they figure out the money coming in over a year or two and budget it. We don’t dip into money that does not belong to us like Social Security, Medicare, education and the military. We don’t borrow from nations to fight our wars, because those nations may turn around and use our debt against us.
The real shame about being an American is how we allow millionaire congressmen (a few of whom, by the way, have nothing better to do than show us their junk on the internet) to play Kick the Can with federal financial obligations. Why do we allow them to do this? Too much trouble to get involved? We don’t want to be thought of as old coots firing off phone calls, letters and emails to our elected officials in hopes they actually will be persuaded by our angry words to change their ways? Why are we afraid of people we elected into office? Who’s really in charge of this country? We’ve forgotten: The people have the power.
For a couple hundred years, our form of government has allowed us to elect others to govern, to run the business of America. And if the ones we’ve elected can’t govern, then we the people are going to have to start doing it. A change in qualifications for office—especially banning millionaires—would be a good start. I think the constitutional framers never intended for a bunch of rich men to run the United States of America forever. Our 18th century American forefathers, those who lived during the Age of Enlightenment, who were free thinkers and fans of Western philosophy, knew a democratic government could only work and last if it’s tended to by all citizens including farmers and laborers, and not just and only by educated dandies.
Trump’s doing for the USA what Lee Iacocca did for Chrysler; The Donald’s serving for free, and Lee actually charged a struggling Chrysler one cent back in the eighties. But there’s always a catch and fringe benefits shouldn’t go unnoticed. It would be naive to ever believe politicians didn’t accept gifts, contributions, etc. from special interest groups, lobbyists, foreigners or what have you. Perhaps their real pay might need to go through a Swiss bank or some other form of laundering to deceive us into believing things were legit. They’re beyond redemption in my book.