Office of Congressional Child Supervision

by Rich Miles

Man, I'm tellin' ya, the new formatting on Blogger has given me fits!! I've been trying to make some minor alterations to the following article for over 24 hours, and finally had to delete the whole thing and repost it. Where's the instruction sheet for this bitch?

I'm sorry I've been so long between postings - I've been unwell. I'm a little better, but not what I'd call back to normal. After my stroke - NOT Hashimoto's Encephalopathy, as previously diagnosed - I am a little better, but not totally back to normal. Not sure I ever will be, but at least I'm better than I was right after the event.

Anyway, unwell or no, there are a few matters I want to point up, to wit:

Republicans are an entire herd of one-trick ponies, whose only trick is tax cuts. I mean really, when was the last time you heard of a Republican in Congress proposing, pushing and passing anything BUT tax cuts?

Republicans have gotten away with that trick long enough - since the first few months of Shrub's first term, or approximately 10 years - they've pushed almost literally nothing but tax cuts. And we - the American electorate - have let them get away with it. They've shown their wholesale lack of respect for the intelligence of the American people by behaving as if it were just inconceivable that any American would ever vote against a candidate who was instrumental in the creation of a tax cut.

And with few exceptions, until the last couple of election cycles, they've been RIGHT. We have been just that stupid, to let the Republicans dangle the shiny beads of tax cuts in front of us, and we've followed the Republicans over the cliff of tax cuts.

And now the country is in an absolutely inconceivable deficit mess at almost every level, and America is on the verge of bankruptcy. And because we have a Democratic president, the Republicans are getting away with blaming Obama for debt that could not possibly be his fault.

 And ya know what? I am almost positive that this entire mess is intentional on the part of the Repugnicans.

The song goes like this: tax cut, deficit, reasoning for cutting social services, more tax cuts, bigger deficits, etc., etc.

And we keep letting the bastards do it!!

What America needs to do is to turn its attitudes toward its legislators around: they're not big important men who should be listened to. They're our employees, who should damn well do what we tell them to do!! How do you think that would play, us telling them that they work for us and that there will be no more perks, no more legislative skullduggery, no more insider trading, no more lack of oversight etc. etc.

Because it's true - they work for us, and they must be forced to do what their bosses want them to do!!!

With computers capable of doing feats of data crunching unheard of as recently as 10 years ago, I would favor a system of national referenda counted by computer, and supervised by a Cabinet-level Office of Supervision of the Children in Congress.

In other words, every time a vote comes up in Congress, Americans would express their opinions via national computer poll. And that way, Congress would know what to do. How to vote, how to speak on the Floor, When to jump and how high. You know, stuff like that. And in order to be hired to the Cabinet-level office that oversees all this, one would have to prove that one is capable of really BEING non-partisan!

So if all this went into action, we'd be at our home computers, voting for legislation, once or twice a day or more. Then we'd know what the will of the people really is!

No more leaving these assholes to their own devices, to get the country into all manner of messes. We'd know what they were doing, maybe even be able to reduce the instances of sexual misconduct and insider trading. And maybe the sort of men and women attracted to run for Congress would improve a bit, as having a seat in the House or Senate ceased to be like one big frat party, with occasional classes to interrupt the nonstop partying.

And the beauty of this plan is that, as I have conceived it, it wouldn't even require a constitutional amendment. Floor votes, certainly, but not an amendment.

Of course, all this is so unlikely to happen, because just as with congressional labor laws, and congressional health coverage, and congressional child labor laws, the foxes are the ones running the hen coop. I'm afraid I can't even offer a hint of a solution to that.

But I say again, it needs to be done. Congress is a bloody mess, and no longer serves the American people in any but the most rudimentary fashion. Think it over. Then write me with any addendum to this solution that occurs to you. Hey, I'm enough of an optimist to believe that this could at least become a topic of discussion in our nation's capital.