The Wrong Lilies

The Wrong Lilies

Thursday, August 11, 2011

The summer of our discontent

It seems to me that in the jobs I’ve had from teen-age candy girl to running an elevator to working with fairly complex government software, my understood and undertaken responsibility was to do what I was paid to do.  Occasionally my thoughts or opinions were sought, but certainly not always.  Usually the assignment was given and I was expected to complete it, in the manner described, in the time allotted, and with the desired results.  Period.

On the other hand, our national Congress has acquired members who have their own agenda, and while there seems to be no lack of willingness to accept payment for their positions, they have decided to pursue what only a part of their constituents wish.  Obviously none of these newest representatives, certainly none of the other members of the House of Representatives or the Senate, achieved their positions with a 100% vote from the areas they ostensibly represent.  So now we have members of both parties, in both houses of Congress, who are making choices and decisions that many of their electorate do not like, or are even extremely upset about, all the while insisting they are doing what they were elected to do.  Huh-uh.

So instead of listening to serious debate and gathering facts and trying to find common-sense solutions, many of them on both sides of the aisles are blaming the President, the economy, Europe, and their electorate for their choices and behavior.  Amazing.  I wouldn’t have been allowed to behave in that way as a fourteen-year-old candy girl in a neighborhood movie theater.  The element which is ferociously defending the tax rates for the wealthiest among us from paying approximately $30 for every $1000 earned above $250,000 are trying to persuade everyone who will listen that levying those particular taxes (or actually merely rolling the rates back to the nineties, those golden years when there were surpluses) would destroy jobs.  To which I would disagree by pointing out that Walmart didn’t become successful because of the patronage of wealthy men. Walmart, Dollar General, and other similar shopping destinations are where unemployment benefits and Social Security benefits and military pay checks are spent buying groceries and school supplies and clothing.   I know because that’s where I shop and I’ve never, ever encountered a millionaire or billionaire there, nor seen a Rolls, a Mercedes or a Beamer in their parking lots.

So I plan to fire up the old printer and send letters to every senator and representative I can, to the effect that I have a list of concerns, at the top of which is the request that they should do their jobs without embarrassing us, put our country first, and remember what their mothers hopefully told them:  “Be nice.”

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