The List of Grievances

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, dividing we fall.”
John Dickinson in “The Liberty Song” (1768)

Unfortunately, our current political climate wants to divide us. We see that in the partisan bickering and poisonous rhetoric that is driving government today. It is intentional. If the policians can distract us with hot button issues like abortion, flag burning, gun control, gay marriage, then the really important issues will never get resolved.

Our grievances are not about politics or issues. It’s about changing the way things are done in Washington. It’s about bringing the “civic” back into government. Once this is accomplished, then we can discuss the political and social issues that interest Americans today.

Americans will never agree 100% on everything. However, before addressing the hot button issues of the day, we must first reform the way business is conducted in Washington. Then we can discuss the other issues of the day … in a civil and respectful tone. There has been too much negativity and politics of destruction in Washington today.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations … evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Indepedence

What are these long train of abuses that our current government is inflicting on the American people? Again, to quote Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence, “… let Facts be submitted to a candid world”. When Jefferson submitted his facts, he used the pronoun “he” in referring to King George. We will use the pronoun “they” in referring to politicians on the local, state, and federal level who have shown “… a history of repeated injuries and usurpations …” (The Declaration of Independence).

They have repeatedly and unashamedly bailed out companies with public money; the very companies whose reckless greed and mismanagement resulted in economic hardships for everyone.
They have consistently ignored that the only thing “too big to fail” is the working and middle class. No company should ever have been allowed to become “too big to fail”.
They have bought into the utterly discredited notion of “private profit, public pain”.
They have recklessly used the scaremonger term “socialism” when referring to a basic human right (i.e., “socialized medicine”) but use no such term when taxpayer money is used to bail out failing companies. The investment of government money into private industry is the very basis of socialism!
They have allowed obscene compensation packages for those very companies that have turned to the public trough for handouts.
They have allowed exhorbitant bonuses to be paid to those very people who have wrecked our economy and responded to all this economic malfeasance with public rebukes and Congressional hearings but little else.
They make laws but do not apply the laws to themselves, such as working only for a few months a year while most of us only get two weeks vacation, allowing its members to serve until they drop dead of senility while most of use are forced to retire at age 65, only slowly raising an unlivable minimum while voting themselves hefty pay raises every year, and enjoying their generous tax-payer funded health insurance benefits while more and more Americans are seeing their benefits reduced or eliminated.
They have developed a sense of entitlement to their position because the election process almost virtually ensures that they will be elected over and over again.
They have disguised the corruption and moneyed influence of lobbyists as “free speech”; if such is free speech, next time you owe the Mafia money and refuse to pay up, tell them it’s your right to say no.
They have allowed basic human necessities to be “for profit”, but not only “for profit” but “for obscene profit”; basic human necessities such as health care, medicine, electricity, water and oil should not be used to gouge the consumer in order to appease Wall Street.
They have failed to pass the tax burden from the very wealthy who have prospered over the past few decades while the working class continues to struggle and the middle class is disappearing under their crushing tax burden.
They have nickel and dimed the working and middle class to near bankruptcy by raising fees on essential services, such as tolls, license renewals, teacher certification fees, court fees, marriage licenses, while congratulating themselves on not having raised taxes.
They have violated with virtual inpunity ethics rules that would have landed most Americans on the unemployment line or in jail; violating the public trust by stealing, lying, and cheating should be cause for immediate impeachment and loss of benefits.
They have allowed civil discourse and intelligent debate to be hijacked by the shouting and belittling mobs who have taken over public discourse, thus creating an atmosphere of hostility and fear in a nation that values free speech for all.
They have distracted and polarized the nation with hot button issues to distract the American people from the rampant corruption, surrender to special interest groups, and willful deafness to the needs of struggling Americans.
They have allowed the election process to become an expensive and mud-slinging affair instead of setting up a system of equal and free campaign time for all candidates, thus forcing candidate to raise obscene amounts of money and opening our elected officials to corruption and being beholden to special interest groups.
They have squandered the taxpayer money through waste, little oversight, no-bid contracts, and perks, perks, perks for themselves, when prudence dictates that public money should be treated with the same regard as their own private funds.