What Did He Say?

A reliable truism in crisis management is to get things back to 'normal' before trying to correct the problem. Think of it as reduce the fever from 104 to 99 then try to see how you got sick.

So, Congress has reopened the government and passed an extension to the debt ceiling to prevent economic suicide and now let US, the people of the United States, consider steps to repair a very broken situation in DC.

The first symptom was beautifully presented by the terror who championed this most stupid of crises - Sen. Ted Cruz (R). Ole Ted criticized his colleagues for not listening to "the American People." That's in quotes because when one considers the poll results below, I am confused as to who Sen. Cruz is referring to.

1. As a result of the government shutdown, Congress' approval rating fell from merely horrible to an abysmal 10% with 82.5% of the American people disapproved.
2. 53% felt that the Republicans were more at fault and 31% blamed Democrats more.
3. 65% felt that the shutdown hurt our already fragile economy.
4. Mr. Cruz's power base known as the Tea Party had their approval fall to its lowest point at 21%.
5. 70% felt that Republicans were putting politics ahead of GOVERNANCE.
(I relied on the analysis of national polls at the web site Real Clear Politics for these numbers.)

Since it appears overwhelming that the American People are dissatisfied with our current representation how do WE correct this?

Vote da bums out!

I agree with that but we need another tool to keep them honest on a daily basis. In this age of instant information we need a more immediate way to impress ourselves on Congress to keep them from these flights of disconnected fancies. The second most impressive thing to an elected official is public opinion (I hope I don't need to mention the first most impressive thing.) Numbers. How many people do you represent.

I propose that we all send our Government officials: President, Senate Majority leader, House Speaker, and individual representatives a weekly review. The President accepts e-mail at whitehouse.gov; Senators at senate.gov; and Reps at writerep.gov.

I do not advocate anything diabolical, no more than we all use the internet to take a step closer to our government officials so that each might think twice about creating some mythical "American People" that conveniently 'say' exactly what that rep could use to accomplish his/her own personal agenda rather than the needs of our country.