Smearing Snowden: The Problem With Government

Dear Mr. President,

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press”, Representative Mike Rogers and Senator Dianne Feinstein, both arch-defenders of the NSA and doing their best to destroy democracy, accused Edward Snowden of being a spy for Russia. Not a shred of evidence to back up their claim but treated as newsworthy nevertheless. Of course, they in turn provide a platform for the likes of Gen. “Star Wars” Alexander and self-confessed perjurer, James Clapper, to lie, distort and obfuscate what they’re doing to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law. But they all take their cues from the Liar-in-Chief who sits in the Oval Office, flies around in Air Force One from one fund-raiser to another, protected by an entourage of heavily armed guards in heavily armored limos and SUVs, local police barricading off his route so he won’t have to see or hear angry protesters and the hopeless and desperate faces of Americans who want him to listen to their pleas to save the environment or their jobs or their social safety net. Moving from one multimillion dollar event to another, politicians no longer are in touch with We the People, if they ever were. The transition is complete: government by the 1%, of the 1% and for the 1%. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that last year more than half of our senators and representatives are millionaires, as are you, with an average net worth for all lawmakers now more than $7 million. And when you’ve got a net worth of $7 million, it’s hard to feel the pain of the average Joe and Jane who’s lost their job and run out of unemployment benefits, had their food stamps cut along with their child’s healthcare program. It’s easy then, to take away benefits from the poor and increase subsidies for your rich patrons and friends. Paul Krugman had an interesting column in Monday’s NYT called “The Undeserving Rich.” How the myth of “rags-to-riches” is no longer valid and how the rich really aren’t deserving at all, but the myth persists, fueled by plutocrats who buy the media and the politicians who do their bidding and keep the myth alive that if anyone fails to find a good-paying job, then it must be their own damn fault. We have class warfare going on in the U.S. of A. all right and it’s the plutocrats who are waging it and winning it and it’s clear whose side you’re on. I want to see a plumber representing me in the House, a carpenter in the Senate and a taxi driver in the Oval Office. That’s when we’ll have representative government again.