Originally posted by: ayabe
I wasn't going to post on this topic but alas I have taken the bait.
Apparent anger isn't confined to "Libs" and the only people that think so are Rush zombies. I see a lot of angry people and to be honest I don't see how anyone who is informed could not be up in arms about what is going on right now.
This crosses all ideological bounds, our government at all levels has completely failed us, meaning all Americans of all political spectrums. They are not working in our best interests, but rather their own or their corporate sponsors. It's an affront to our Constitution; our very way of life itself.
Most importantly of all, it's a threat to Democracy as a form of government.
The list of failures is too long to list, but I would encourage you all to read this Rolling Stone article:
Worst Congress Ever
Here are some of my favs:
"Despite an international uproar over Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During the Clinton administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the president's alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list."
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"From the McCarthy era in the 1950s through the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995, no Democratic committee chairman issued a subpoena without either minority consent or a committee vote. In the Clinton years, Republicans chucked that long-standing arrangement and issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to investigate alleged administration and Democratic misconduct, reviewing more than 2 million pages of government documents.
Guess how many subpoenas have been issued to the White House since George Bush took office? Zero -- that's right, zero, the same as the number of open rules debated this year; two fewer than the number of appropriations bills passed on time."
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"But let's take just one bill, the so-called energy bill, a big, hairy, favor-laden bitch of a law that started out as the wet dream of Dick Cheney's energy task force and spent four long years leaving grease-tracks on every set of palms in the Capitol before finally becoming law in 2005.
Like a lot of laws in the Bush era, it was crafted with virtually no input from the Democrats, who were excluded from the conference process. And during the course of the bill's gestation period we were made aware that many of its provisions were more or less openly for sale, as in the case of a small electric utility from Kansas called Westar Energy.
Westar wanted a provision favorable to its business inserted in the bill -- and in an internal company memo, it acknowledged that members of Congress had requested Westar donate money to their campaigns in exchange for the provision. The members included former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin and current Energy and Commerce chairman Joe Barton of Texas. "They have made this request in lieu of contributions made to their own campaigns," the memo noted. The total amount of Westar's contributions was $58,200."
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"In 2000, Congress passed 6,073 earmarks; by 2005, that number had risen to 15,877."
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AKA "Pork".
Anyways, it's a long read, and if you aren't pissed off by the time you read it, then there's something wrong with you.
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