A Congress of Cowards

Rob Kall
OpEd News
December 20, 2011

Congress is punting again, this time on the tax cut extension. This pattern, which has led to the lowest approval levels since measures of approval were taken, has become chronic. It’s really about the bulk of the members of congress being cowards who are intentionally destroying the balance of powers between legislative, Judiciary and Executive, so they can save their jobs.

Recent conversations with folks like Bruce Fein and Thom Hartmann have convinced me that the congress is staffed, predominantly by cowards who, in failing to make tough decisions, are destroying the three way balance between the executive, justice and legislative branches. Cowards who hand the decisions to the SCOTUS or the White House so they can save their jobs through the next congressional election cycle.

They avoid making tough economic decisions by creating bogus committees which also fail.

They defer on making hard votes on going to war, handing the power over to the White House.

They let the Supreme court ride roughshod over decisions made by elected officials. The despotic corporatists in the Supreme court were not elected. At least several are unethical and the congress does not impeach them. The congress could easily slap down the Supreme court and its excesses. It could even impeach those Justices who have sold out to corporations and foreign interests.

It is time to end the idea of serving in congress as a career. Members of congress should be elected for one term and no more. Rotate the elections so all members, senators and House members have four year terms. Replace 25% each year. American can no longer afford waiting six years to replace a senate whore who sells his vote to corporations. American cannot allow an entire house to exist for a full two years before the legislators who manifest as whores or idiots are replaced. So we also need recall processes at a federal level.

Congress is profoundly broken. The people in it cannot fix the problem they are creating.

There are a few brave souls in congress who have attempted to retain the powers they were given– Sanders, Kucinich, Paul. But I say that we-the-people must take whatever steps are necessary to end the current life career system that congressional jobs are based on. It will probably take a revolution of some sort to do it. Let’s hope it’s more like what happened in Tunisia. The non-violent Occupy Movement could do it. We’ll see. But there’s no doubt in my mind that America needs big changes, much bigger than the gutless, corporate sell-outs in congress are willing or able to do.