Want to Write Your Congressional Representative? Just don’t use their email address…

I recently wrote Jane Harman, one of the state congressional representatives from California. I got a reply to my original letter – a form response that was dated four months prior to the date I sent the letter.

This bothered me and finally I decided to respond to that form letter with something a bit more direct. It seems that Mr. Harman cares a great deal about what her constituents have to say. So much so that her email address doesn’t even work. Nice. That’s one way to turn a deaf ear to the voter.

I hope you’ll all join me in showing her and those like her like that loud-mouthed do-nothing Nancy Pelosi that have squandered their political capital and our good faith by completely failing to accomplish anything that they promised and for which we voted them into office that we won’t tolerate being lied to and that we don’t give second chances.

When these folks come up for re-election let’s send them packing. It’s just too bad we can’t fire them on the spot. Politics are amazing. There are few jobs on the planet where you can fail so spectacularly for so long and still collect your pay check every month. It seems to me based upon the last few years that we need a new system that gives the voters a more immediate means of removing from office non-performing individuals. Anyone have any ideas?

Anyway, for those that are curious, below are my choice words for Representative Harman:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

CA36IMA.PUB@mail.house.gov


From: Oliver Starr
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:02:15 -0700
To: “Rep. Jane Harman”
Subject: Re: your message

Dear Representative Harman,

Thanks so much for your form letter in response to my original statement of
concern for a number of issues that are profoundly influencing every man,
woman and child in this country.

At this point all I can say is that every one of you should be fired. You
have failed to do your jobs, failed to protect our troops, failed to
regulate wall street and failed to support the working middle class.

Now you are all pushing for a bail out of the richest one percent in this
country simply because they made bad bets and now can’t pay what they owe.

How ironic that those of us that pay our taxes, pay our mortgages on time
and scrape and scrimp to make ends meet and maybe have dinner out or go to
the movies once in a while are being forced – not asked mind you but
required to bail out a group of executives that spend more on lunch each day
than some families can afford to spend on food for a week.

It’s amazing that as a group these executives who ran their companies into
the ground are so incapable of accepting responsibility for their own
actions that they would rather see their companies bankrupted and closed
down then take one dime’s cut in their multi-million dollar golden parachute
severance plans. Don’t people that ruin their companies get fired for
cause? When fired for cause should a person still be eligible to collect a
multi-million dollar severance? To me that seems ridiculous. If I screw up
and mess up my company do I get a severance package? Does the government
come and bail me out?

Does congress hold a special session and try to figure out how to save me
and my business and guarantee that if I have to walk I will do so with
enough money that neither I nor my heirs will ever have to work another day
in this lifetime? Ha! Don’t make me laugh.

Doesn’t it seem strange to you that the person architecting this bailout
used to run one of the firms that has gone bust? Or that his personal
fortune from that firm is in excess of 700 million dollars? Did you not
think that perhaps some of the decisions that actually caused his firm to
blow up were made on his watch? And now you expect us to hand over roughly
a trillion dollars – that is $2300 for every man, woman and child in this
country to this same incompetent idiot who is insisting upon no oversight?

Why is that? What is he so afraid of? What will be hidden from the eyes of
the world if he gets his way? Just how stupid do you think we are? (I guess
that last is a redundant question, after all, collectively we are dumber
than cattle having elected Bush (twice though both victories are highly
questionable), Pelosi (though I don’t think we’ll be seeing her for a second
term) and even you – who can’t be bothered to reply to letters even with a
form letter that is up to date. Pathetic.)

In any case I don’t expect that you’ll actually read this – I’m sure that
you pawn this sort of stuff off to some lackey of yours, most likely a
college intern that knows about as much about the real world as anyone
subsidized by mommy and daddy is likely to.

So if I know that you won’t read this and that even if you do the only
response I’ll get is another piece of crap form letter, just why am I
writing this at all? Because I intend to republish it on several blogs that
get upwards of a million visitors a month. Collectively they add up to
several million unique viewers, certainly enough to have an impact on a
vote.

So now the question you should be asking is “what can I do to make these
people decide not to vote me out of office?” Well, I’m not going to help
you out with that one Ms. Harman. After all, we hired you to do a job you
promised us you were capable of doing. So far you haven’t demonstrated the
sort of competency that we require which makes you look pretty dishonest in
the eyes of most of the public.

At any rate, if you want another term I sincerely suggest that you start
showing us some of the things you promised during your campaign. We’re
tired of this war, we’re tired of our rights being trammeled and the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights being shredded by the President’s
poisoned pen. We’re tired of a limp wristed majority leader that looks like
the biggest liar since Nixon and we’re tired of our money being used in ways
that we never approved and don’t believe is right.

Today if you ask the average person if they feel like their government is
acting in the best interest of the people or in their own selfish well being
and that of their fat cat friends I think you know what most of us would
say.

Once a long time ago people got sick and tired of their taxes being used in
ways contrary to their interests. They called it taxation without
representation. Eventually they got so pissed off about it that they had a
party and started a revolution.

Ask yourself this? How much longer do you think we’re going to take this
crap before we start a revolution of our own? And who’s heads will be on
the pikes first do you think? We are tired of the duplicity and we’re sick
to death of the good ol’ boy war profiteering network. We’re sick of the
lobbyists and the no bid contracts and of handing out our hard earned
dollars to the most selfish and least deserving. We’re tired of a
do-nothing congress that cow tows to an out of control pseudo dictator that
has no respect for the people the Constitution or this country, and we’re
pretty sick of photo copied responses to letters like this.

You have been warned.

Sincerely,

Oliver Starr