CONGRESS…HAS BECOME A COLLECTIVE OF SELF-SERVING FAILURES
(…proving that –democracy- lets us vote mostly dumb…rather than smart)

There they go again! One would think that after a previous episode 18 years ago, when another bout of political gridlock brought the government to a halt, the tax-paying voters of this country would have learned a lesson, which is: that over the years, since WWII, they’ve allowed a caste of career politicos to progressively take over the entire machinery of the political process (much like how that noxious Kudzu weed takes over waterways), which is why little, if anything, useful ever results inside the Beltway these days.

Both parties are infected with greater concern for their political positions rather than what is best for the country as a whole, and thus, equally at fault for this current situation. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are playing it straight with their so-called constituents. Congress…has become a collective of self-serving failures…proving that democracy lets us vote mostly dumb…rather than smart.

Members of Congress may take umbrage at this…as some have reacted with indignant exclamations of…How dare you! How dare you!… for which our response is…we not only dare (to call you all self-serving failures…), we categorically declare it. If they were not…we wouldn’t be in this fix…it’s as simple as that.

To be blunt about it…coming up with a rational and workable budget, in a timely way, is Congress’ primary reason for existence. Everything else…is secondary. Attempting to piggy-back a political agenda in the process, to derail an existing law some members dislike is not only idiotic…it’s dishonest. It’s dishonest because it is being used to cloak their latent racial antipathies, which are the subliminal factors driving their opposition to –Obamacare –

There never was much of a question that-Obamacare-, beyond obvious benefits to some of its intended beneficiaries, is also an overly complex and costly piece of legislation. The fact that it required some 2000 pages to explain all of its complexities is proof of that. And based upon the few figures we’ve seen about what individual insurance premiums for it are expected to be, its claim to be an “Affordable Care Act”, is more than likely to be a case of false labeling. All of these factors, combined with the way it was steam-rolled through the Congress at the time of its enactment (when the Democrats ran roughshod over the then Republican minority opposition), set the foundation for today’s situation; and so, since the 2010 mid-term elections when the Republicans became the majority again, it has been a tit-for-tat payback time…with the resulting gridlock on Capitol Hill…and the rest of us left hanging…slowly twisting in the wind.

The question is…have we learned anything at all from all this, and do we now understand that continuing to blindly support such career politicos from either party, is not in our  best interest…and it is more than ever necessary to abandon such traditional party allegiances? From the look of things…perhaps not….because we still hear the same old ideological mantras, and continue to let ourselves be conned by the same tired old calls for “fairness”, without any thought about practical realities.

We need to replace this special caste of perks and privileges (not to mention exempting themselves from the laws they foist on us), whose only purpose in life seems to be to feed at the trough of public service for as long as they are able to…at our expense.

 Our country deserves better.

CENTURION