~a column by ColleenO’Brien
I just read one more pundit telling me, voter, that until I demand that my representatives work for me and that they are not above the law, nothing will get done. Since when is it not just Congress’s (or our state legislatures’, county supes’, city councils’) job to work for me and obey the law?
Why do I have to be their conscience? Aren’t they supposed to have one of their own? This ubiquitous point of view that it’s up to me to force my elected reps to be honest? It makes me a little testy.
I know as much as I can learn from the media, which is about the only place I get my information, since I have yet to figure out where else I can get it (Facebook? My neighbor? Chalked messages on the sidewalk?). So I rely on the free press amendment, Bill of Rights No. 1, to inform me — radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, TV news; this is the free press. What they don’t tell me equates to what I don’t know. And if I don’t know, I can’t tell my representative. So when commentarians from those entities shake their fingers at me and say until I force Congressman or Assemblyperson to stay within the law it’s all my fault . . . . Aargh.
All I can tell Mr or Ms Representative is: Represent me. The little citizen out here still working and still trying to keep myself informed. It’s not easy when a lot of the media is owned by big corporations who are satisfied merely printing the press release from my representative and not digging for the information that might help me. I really need to know about the latest bill passed through Congress or my State house and how it affects me — the whole story, not the sound bite. Do they know how little I care about the Kardasians? If I need to know about them, can’t I just go to some celebrity fauxnewsplace, like Fox or something? Why is the second page of USA Today full of celebs instead of legislative news? Didn’t that kind of Hollywood stuff used to be in a section by itself?
I have many bones to pick with Congress and my local legislators, and I’ve been a fairly regular bone-picker over the years, asking them this and that in letters and emails. Because within the last few years the response is invariably a form letter thanking me for writing, I’ve backed off annoying them; I’m just annoying myself because I don’t think they ever read my letters anyway.
For the talking heads demanding that I, voter, demand of my elected representatives both an agenda that works for me and a person of integrity to make it happen, the following — mostly economic unfairnesses (a big part of the anger of Americans having to do with the 1 percent with the money and then the rest of us) — are a few of my demands:
Why can’t we choose the cable stations we want besides the network channels that often are pointless in their offerings? I don’t like the packages that the Comcasts and other gobblers of my money offer. I want HBO, PBS, Discover Channel, AMC movies. That’s all. I don’t need 52 weather channels and 15 sports channels. I’m sure somebody does, but let them order ’em. If the legislators were actually working on our side, we’d be able to cherry pick our favorites.
Why can’t we have insurance companies that are honest, willing to make a buck, yes, but not an 11 percent increase in supplemental insurance premiums each year, as I have seen with EMC? The media says the Affordable Care Act is foundering; if this is so, it’s not because of the plan itself or the designers of it but because of the insurance companies who charge too much, leave the program if they can’t make obscene profits and skip town when I get sick.
When the media tells a story about the failing ACA, why don’t they tell the whole story? After the major hurricanes of 2004 in Florida, dozens of insurance companies left the state. They didn’t want to have to pay out again for the coverage their clients had been paying premiums on for decades without claims. They’re back now, most of them, because we haven’t had serious storms for a decade or so. But I bet they’re packed and ready to flee each hurricane season. It was not the media but my own search for an insurance company that led me to the knowledge that most of them had fled the scene.
Why aren’t my representatives protecting our college students from monumental debt? How dare they ignore this outrage? If we can’t educate our next generations without piling any debt at all on their thin young shoulders, who are we?
Why aren’t my representatives protecting our babies, our kids, ourselves from lead in our water delivery systems? Have we become a Third World country?
Why not turn a deaf ear to a supposed non-profit named the National Rifle Association and start doing what a majority of citizens keep asking, which is: Pass gun laws that prohibit ownership of weapons that mass kill with one squeeze of the trigger.
Why can’t we put a lot of people to work and upswing the economy as well as our transportation safety by reinforcing our infrastructure — the hundreds of bridges about to fall down, the decaying streets of so many big cities and (again) the water systems of this wealthy country. FDR did it and there was a sudden upswing in the economy in the middle of a depression. It seems that my Greene County and city of Jefferson do a good job at keeping our streets and bridges and sewers and water in good order; what’s wrong with the state and federal responses?
Why is it exactly that we can’t direct more of our tax monies to health, education and welfare than to the military budget? We have a military budget equal to the military outlay of the next 10 countries combined. (This stat comes from the Peter G Peterson Foundation which works to bring Americans together to find and implement sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides. What a concept.)
When will you, Congress, remember what you’re getting paid for? Do you think when you get up in the morning that your job is to uphold your oath and protect this country and us — from bad federal dams, greedy corporations, lying lenders, arrogant banks (how can 25 percent interest on credit cards be allowed? Isn’t that usury? Is that word passe’?) Or are you too busy picking out your best suit for lunch with a lobbyist to think of those who you’re supposed to be working for?
How difficult is it to be harder on doctors and HMOs (health medical organizations) that cheat Medicare than you are on pot smokers?
How can I get as much time off each year as you folks in Congress do? Plus a piece of your insurance that is as good as it gets? And why is it that if a bunch of you elected pretenders doesn’t like the other political party, you don’t feel obliged to show up, vote, try to work out a compromise for the good of the country?
Why is it that we allow a Supreme Court to make a corporation a person if it wants to give millions to a political candidate but we can’t sue corporate cereal, like General Mills, if we have downloaded or printed one of their coupons, joined one of their online communities (their Facebook) or subscribed to one of their email newsletters? Really, all it’s doing by this sneaky move is protecting itself from all accountability: “…even when it lies, or say, an employee deliberately adds broken glass to a product.” ( Julia Duncan, arbitration expert at the American Association for Justice).
Why do airlines get away with charging more while installing seats that are so slim, short and close together that not even skinny people have a place to put their arms?
Okay, the rant is over for this run, and, political columnists out there, I am saying what you advised for a change of direction in legislative America: “It will only happen if voters demand it.” I’ve demanded. Again.
