Most of Congress are already millionaires, and if they can not find housing that's not my problem... maybe instead of having to live in a 10,000 sq. ft. residence, do what most of us have to and buy themselves a god damn 1.000 sq. ft. apartment. I have no sympathy for millionaires bitching about wanting a pay raise.
Call it what you want, but you are mixing issues. Everybody agrees that Congressmen should not be insider traders. On the other hand, salaries are something different and you get what you pay for. But you posted the article suggesting that the average Congressmen has a total worth of a million dollars and is some sort of scandal. I'm actually surprised that it is not higher. The real villains are the 1%'ers, the guys who make a $million a year. And the billionaires, who make a million dollars a day. The influence buyers. Which is why I think that lobbying should be outlawed and campaign contributions limited so that elections and politicians could not be bought so easily and legally. But I'm not bitching about their salaries, which are fair.
Whatever happened to the congressman that used to sleep on the floor in their office? Hell why not use their pension to build barracks they can sleep in with bunk beds. 50 rooms separated by states, shared bathrooms. Maybe these rich fucks would stop running. If that's how we treat the men and women who sign up to die for this country it's damn sure good enough for the ones who run to ruin it.
Your anger is misplaced. Stop the lobbying and stop the unlimited campaign contributions if you want to stop corruption. Paying them minimum wage and housing them in barracks is just ridiculous.
I do agree that the job they are "supposed" to be doing is worth what they are being paid or more.....if they were truly doing the job they are supposed to be doing. Maybe I am not quit understanding what you say by the anger is being placed in the wrong direction. It seems that the anger is towards the congressmen. So to say that the anger should not be directed towards the congressmen makes no sense to me. You say stop the lobbying and limit campaign contributions......well just who exactly is it that has to pass laws to stop and/or limit these things......of course that is the congressmen. So that leads the blame squarely back around to the congressmen. Those lobbying for whatever purposes are not going to stop trying to sway things in their favor so long as it legal or least loop-hole legal for them to do so and it is only the congressmen that can pass the laws to put an end to it all. Again I may be reading it a little wrong or something is being referenced further back in the thread that I am not connecting.
I am talking about We The People. The Congressmen and the corporations, the political parties, and the lobbyists will never change such a cozy system. With approval rating for Congress at an all-time low, there has never been a better time for citizen constituents to start demanding some changes at a grass roots level. The best interests of the nation should be Congress' number one priority, followed by their constituents wishes, then distantly followed by corporate interests and no professional lobbyist would have special access to our representatives at all. Let the special interests lobby We The People and then WE will tell out representatives what to do. The citizenry must demand this, but the politicians have distracted us with this polarization that has citizens pitted against each other for trivial partisan reasons, while the foxes continue to plunder the chicken house.
We need a group that will strive to eliminate excessive taxation and start working towards spending cuts that would balance the budget and start paying down the national debt. One that would protect the free market, reduce the size of the government, and force Congress to abide by the Constitution and return the power back to the People. In order to get that you have to have a large enough group that believes in civic responsibility and working together at the grass roots level. And hopefully they could take some of the lobbying power away from the big money corporations and embrace the ideas of hard working Americans that are willing to respect and debate everyones views, and still believe that this is the best country on earth.
The system is set up to prevent the emergence of a third party. The winner-takes-all primary system and the electoral college must go.
Though he was concerned with a salary being paid to the executive, Benjamin Franklin saw many of the evils we're now dealing with back in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. http://www.bartleby.com/268/8/12.html
