I agree with Bob Schieffer that the main conclusion to be drawn from Brown’s victory is that the American people are tired of the machinations going on in Washington, the behind the scenes political deal-making, and the blatant bribery of Congressmen to get a specific vote on a specific issue. I believe that the American people are sick and tired of electing people to Congress only to have those people continue playing 2-party politics when they are supposed to be legislating in the best interests of the country as a whole. It’s not supposed to be 5th-grade schoolyard competition: the time for competition is during the campaign; once the votes are in and the new Congress begins legislating, they should leave their party label at the door and work together to solve America’s problems.

If I were living in Massachusetts, I would have voted for Brown for a couple of reasons: 1)because Coakley seemed to be taking her supposed assured victory way too much for granted, and because it seemed much too easy for her to glibly characterize a supporter of Brown’s inaccurately; 2)because Brown’s victory would stop the Democrats from being able to deny the possibility of a filibuster and would restore some balance to the makeup of the Congress, and because I would have hoped that Brown’s election would stop the abuse of power by the Democrats. And let me assure you, if the whole scene were reversed and it was the Republicans acting the way the Democrats have been acting in terms of shutting out input from their opponents and being unwilling to listen to, consider and compromise on their legislative proposals, I would have been pushing for the Democratic candidate (in spite of my concerns about her political views and ethics).

Unfortunately, if Dick Durbin’s comment on Face The Nation this morning is any indication, then the Democrats have not learned the lesson they should have from the Massachusetts election. In response to comments by John McCain, Durbin told host Bob Schieffer that the Democrats’ door has always been open, and the Democrats are still reaching out to find those Republicans who can support their health care reform proposal. In that one statement lies the entire problem. . . reaching out should not mean finding Republicans who can support the Democrats’ bill. Reaching out should mean listening to the input of Republicans, their ideas and concerns, and seeing how legislators from both parties can come together to come up with a meaningful legislative proposal on which the majority of both sides can agree.

CORPORATIONS, SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS & POLITICAL ADVERTISING

The recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court eliminating limits on spending by corporations and special interest groups on political advertising has been bemoaned by both Democrats and Republicans. For one of Bob Schieffer’s guest commentators to refer to this ruling as a boon for Republicans because corporations will now be spending money to support them comes across as a knee-jerk response from a non-Republican. First of all, it is unlikely that many corporations will begin spending huge amounts of money supporting candidates from any party because a corporation by nature is an entity whose business is to make money. A corporation’s shareholders, and even its Board of Directors, are likely to consist of many individuals with differing political views on any number of matters. Unless a specific legislative issue directly affects the money-making ability of a given corporation, it is not likely to risk offending shareholders by taking a political stand. On the other hand, special interest groups are likely to begin applying a lot of political pressure via their ability to spend big bucks on political advertising to try to entice legislators of all parties to vote the way they want them to vote. Eliminating these political advertising spending limits is inviting even greater pressure from special interest groups and seems to be directly in conflict to the idea of lessening the influence of lobbyists on legislators’ decisions.

------------

About the author: Barbara Scheidel has spent most of her adult working life doing writing, editing, and proofreading for clients. Now she is spending some time expressing her own thoughts and opinions on a variety of subjects!

Email: robar72@aol.com

Comment on this article here!



------------

All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal).

	Web useless-knowledge.com