Looking at the people being appointed to the debt committee in Washington DC, we can get a good idea of how little those who are responsible for running this country care about running this country.
Take a look at one of the people our so-called "leaders" are putting on the panel:
Patricia Lynn Murray (D-Washington).
She will serve as the Democratic co-chair of the debt supercommittee.
She is currently chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Her job is to try to figure out a strategy for the 2012 elections that will see to the largest number of elected Democrats after the next election.
In doing this, her committee is studying every Senate election in 2012. They are marking some as safe Republican or safe Democrat. They are marking others as vulnerable.
If the state has a vulnerable Republican, they are looking for a competitive Democrat, and working out a strategy to get that candidate liked by a majority of the voters. If the state has a vulnerable Democrat, they may discourage the Democrat from running for re-election to make room for a more viable candidate, or look at how to make the candidate look better to the potential voters in that state.
Most importantly, her committee is responsible for raising money - and spending money - to implement this strategy.
Now, the debt supercommittee has been made a part if that strategy. I can think of nothing that screams, "Let the bidding begin," than to put this person on the debt supercommittee - let alone appoint her as a co-chair.
Perhaps she is a qualified legislator well suited to co-chair this committee. If that's true, then have her resign her position as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Give that job to somebody else, so that Murray can give her whole and unconflicted attention to the debt issue, which is what we deserve.
It would be a demonstration of good intentions. This committee has control of trillions of dollars in spending. By law, their proposal - the whole package, assuming it comes up with one - will get a straight up-and-down vote without amendment. Never before in American politics has so few been given so much power over so many dollars.
And they give this power to somebody whose job is to solicit huge quantities of money and other forms of support from special interest groups for the benefit of vulnerable Democratic senatorial candidates.
Like I said. Let the bidding begin.
Alonzo, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism, if I may.
ReplyDeleteI love a lot of your posts and I think you put out some terrific content. But the typos are a real distraction - and a correctable one, at that. I'm worried that these minor inconsequential errors can serve as a stumbling block to interacting with your written work. That would be a real shame.
Something is completely screwed up in America right now.
ReplyDeleteYou have old ladies living in squalor, surviving on cat food, living in run-down shacks, too poor to afford oil-heating, while spoiled little brats play X-box on metre-wide plasmas in air-conditioned, $350,000 cubby houses bought for them by rich parents who work three days a week and spend the rest of their leisurely hours lounging poolside in their high-end mansions, collecting weekly dividend checks from their butler.
Now Capitol Hill is saying that this situation is nowhere near far enough. The Old Lady does not deserve Medicare; it's time to get her off the government tit. The bitch can choose between getting bilked by private insurance companies or starving to death. This is America. If you can't take care of yourself, so much the worse for you.
Meanwhile, if we don't give Richy Rich and his trophy wife more tax cuts, they won't be able to buy their second private jet, and that $60,000 gazebo they have been wanting to buy.