"But regardless of whose fault it is, most politicians today are not human beings. You want to pry open their mouths and shout into the darkness, 'Hello! Is there a human being in there?' Buried under all that lust for office, all that fear of offending a contributor? I know there must be." Charley Reese ("Conservative Chronicle", 8 September 1993, p. 17)
I just got this email and thought I would post here on my BLOG - All thoughts are welcome. What are YOUR views?
This is an article written by Charley Reese, a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper. "545 PEOPLE" By Charley Reese
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices. 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. \
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insolvable government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy', 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you appear to have several choices:
1. You can send this to everyone in your address book, and hope they do something about it.
2. You can agree to vote against everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to run for office yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing, or re-elect the current bunch.
YOU DECIDE, BUT AT LEAST SEND IT TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK, MAYBE SOMEONE IN THERE WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
This article was first published by the Orlando Sentinel Star newspaper
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Charley Reese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Reese
Charley Reese (born January 29, 1937) is a syndicated columnist known for his plainspoken manner and paleoconservative views. He was associated with the Orlando Sentinel from 1971-2001, both as a writer and in various editorial capacities. King Features Syndicate distributes his column, which comes out three times each week.
Charley Reese was born in Washington, Georgia, and was raised in Georgia, East Texas, and the Florida Panhandle. He worked summer and weekend jobs starting at age 11 and at age 13 became a janitor in a printing shop. In 1955 he started out in the newspaper business with a job as a cub reporter for Pensacola News. Later that year, he bought a one-way ticket to England, where he took a job as caption writer with Planet Newspapers Ltd. in London.
In 1957 Reese returned to America and served two years in the US Army as a tank gunner. He then went back to reporting before spending six years in advertising and public relations, even working as an advance man and speechwriter in various political campaigns from 1969 to 1971. hi
Charley Reese is a conservative, with many libertarian views, but has written explaining why he is not a libertarian [1] and has been critical of the existence of third parties.[citation needed] Nonetheless he contributes regularly to libertarian websites such as LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. He is currently a registered Democrat, but has been previously a Republican as well. In his Dec. 26, 2005 column he writes he was a Democrat but went Republican after JFK got in office; he thought JFK was a lousy president and his harshest presidential criticisms are reserved for Jimmy Carter. After the presidency of George H. W. Bush (1989-1993), he returned to the Democratic Party, citing that the senior Bush brought the 'Rockefeller Wing' into control of the GOP.
Although he disavows the term, saying "I am a traditional conservative, not a neo- or paleo- or any of those other buglike classifications" [2], Charley Reese's views are quite similar to those expressed by paleoconservatives. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and in the past has been a member of the League of the South.[citation needed] Defending the South's position in the Civil War is a common theme of his writings,[3] in which he frequently uses Confederate anecdotes as illustrations. His writings have repeatedly praised Robert E. Lee and vilified Abraham Lincoln. He is also a member of the National Rifle Association, and another recurring theme in his columns is a defence of American's Second Amendment rights against gun control. In recent years he has devoted many of his columns to defending a non-interventionist foreign policy. [4] Although he supported George W. Bush for President in 2000, he has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and an opponent of the War in Iraq. In 2004 he supported John Kerry's presidential campaign.
He writes for the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs. According to his latest column at lewrockwell.com Charley Reese has now retired and will no longer be writing. The site had been running his old columns for several weeks stating that he had been on medical leave.
Anti War
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/
Articles By Charley Reese
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese-arch.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese-contact.html
Contact:
Charley Reese
P.O. Box 2446
Orlando, FL 32802
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969–71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column which is carried on LewRockwell.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner.
"All the world's a stage,
