Transparency

In the 2008 campaigns we heard a lot about "transparency" and how it would become part of the new change being promised. Transparency is one of those fancy buzzwords that is part of today's "hip" culture.

Our political leaders all promised transparency. Transparency meant that the government would be honest, disclose the facts, and promised to publish proposed legislation on the Internet prior to Congressional voting so that citizens could read it.

What We Got
After the elections, America awoke to discover they had voted for a big change. They gave up the power of the checks and balances to give Democrats control over the House of Representatives and the US Senate as well.

We were in a major financial crisis and we were told that we needed to pass the Stimulus bill in order to save the economy and to create new jobs for Americans. The Stimulus passed in record time even though no one read it. It wasn't written by Congress, but rather by special interests and the unions. Now we are finding-out what actually was in the Stimulus. It clearly wasn't new jobs- at least not permanent ones. It contains more waste and pays the special interests for their political favors in the 2008 elections.

Next came the Omnibus bill which was the new budget for the coming fiscal year. Again, no one read it and it was passed without the opportunity for Americans to read it either. Shortly after it passed we began to find-out what was in the legislation. It contained over 9,000 earmarks (pork projects) that had special interests in mind – not the American public.

Same thing happened with the Cap and Trade (alias Climate Change) legislation. Citizens were not allowed to read it while the House passed it in a big hurry. Now we are beginning to discover some of the contents and realize that this is nothing but a huge tax increase on ALL Americans. It taxes energy usage and makes it financially impracticable to generate electricity using coal (which is by the way, the largest untapped resource we have in this country). Cap & Trade re-distributes wealth by imposing energy credits for energy usage. It's a complicated means to try and control the earth's temperature. This of course, remains a theory and the science of global warming is not yet proven – let alone fully discussed.

So why the big hurry? Several politicians, (including Al Gore) stand to gain financially if this legislation passes. This legislation will impose heavy taxes on everything and everyone who uses energy.

It's crazy to do this to the economy when it is in such a fragile state. And yet, Congress is now considering passing it in the US Senate.

Finally, we turn to government health care. What a fiasco. The majority of Americans let it be known last summer during the town hall meetings that they do not want the government to control their health treatment. Congress ignored us and still continues to work on jamming this legislation down our throats because THEY WANT IT!

They meet behind closed doors in secret and make votes on Illegal Aliens and Abortion. They hide in committees and make these decisions. There is NO TRANSPARENCY!

Action To Take
We need to start planning for the mid-term elections – now. We need to support candidates – not for their political parties, but for their political ideology. We need to get rid of the business-as-usual politicians who have lived in Congress for more than 20 years or the ones who have ignored is. We need to find individuals who will support conservative principles and ideas. We need to get rid of politicians tied to special interest groups and elect ones that support OUR INTERESTS INSTEAD!