True Representation
As critical issues are coming to a head, America confronts that ugly issue of who do the people on Capitol Hill truly represent. The given is that they are in Washington to do the bidding of the people in their district or state. That usually translates into their abject supplication before the large financial interests – corporations, organized labor, powerful civic groups – who put millions into their campaign warchests.
That does not mean that they are actually doing what’s best for the people who elected them, although all too often the justification they use as a firewall is that insidious four-letter shibboleth, j-o-b-s. Of course there are employment issues behind their stated positions but they use the term as a cudgel against reason.
For instance, on the energy issue, you have the Michiganders, West Virginians, and Texans, among others, voting against any plans to get us off of fossil fuels because they’re constituents are generating revenues based on oil and coal.
In North Carolina, where they grow tobacco, the Democratic and Republican Senators are fighting against a measure that would put stuff that kills 400,000 Americans a year under the jurisdiction the FDA.
There are plenty of other examples, of course; 535 of them, people those don’t want their local ox gored. And on the one hand it’s understandable. On the other, however, it is beneath contempt.
What about our health? What about the environment? What about the enormous debt that is being produced for generations of Americans to come who will have to provide health care and suffer the loss of productivity from the cigarette smokers and carbon destruction of the atmosphere?
Of course there are some true leaders in Washington, but unfortunately most of the people on Capitol Hill are focused exclusively on their re-election and the future of our nation – not to mention their obligation to our great legacy – has slipped silently off their radar screen.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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