You
will be amazed by the things that a dying military veteran wrote in a
letter to the two U.S. Senators that are representing his state.
Like so many other Americans, this elderly vet is absolutely
disgusted by the corruption and the incompetence that he sees coming out
of Washington. In the past, I have also
written about how $1.4 billion is spent on the
Obamas each year and about how Congress isliving the high life at our
expense, but in this letter this dying military veteran puts things
much more eloquently than I did. The name of the vet that wrote this
letter is Bill Schoonover, and it was written on April 3rd, 2013.
Even though his representatives in Congress will probably never take the
time to read this letter, I think that you will agree that the emotions
that Mr. Schoonover has expressed in this letter are shared by millions
upon millions of other Americans all across the
country…
Dear
Senator:
I
have tried to live by the rules my entire life. My father was a Command
Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly
after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt
important – honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of
our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked
hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and
artifacts.
Today,
as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my
country and my government. I shall only point out a very few
things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have
calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life
cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only
Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining
room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on
us.
Last
year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on
himself and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels.
They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become
America ‘s answer to the Saudi royal family.
You have become the “perfumed princes and princesses” of our
country.
In
the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act,
a.k.a. “Obama Care,” a bill which no more than a
handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs,
crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it
substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care
insurance.
You
live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the “one percenters,”
consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times
the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well
as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for
which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).
You
understand very well the only two rules you need to know – (1) How to get
elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an
eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of
the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and
non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote ) who are looking for a handout
rather than a job. Your so-called “safety net” has become a hammock for
the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps – pretty much all Democrat voters – and the program is absolutely
rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional
oversight?
I
would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the
seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It
is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate
your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a
leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the
second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong
resemblance to the oldest.
As
the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834 – 1902),
English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, “Power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are
almost always bad men.” I’m only guessing that this applies to the female
sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than
Congress?
While
we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less
and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more
dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a
very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or
hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what
health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations
strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every
day.
As
I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government
tell me “You’ll just have to take a pill,” while you, Senator, your
colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and
their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars
until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement
beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we
pay for.
The
chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will
not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be
generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe
that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares.
This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the
chance to read one person’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this
government, its administration and its senators and
representatives.
I
only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all
the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by
law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17 trillion
national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and
ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the
tab.
My
final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or
her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to
destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in debt that we will
never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your
power. For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House
who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is
how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to
clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the
goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would
dare to bring it up.
Sincerely,
Bill
Schoonover
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