While we weren't looking...

There is a tactic in this country and finally my fellow Americans, you are catching on. I have known the political machine for a long time. Here's how it works.... get people very passionate about something and then pass a law that we don't want or need. The most recent example of this was passage of the new Health Care Reform Bill. No one wanted this. We "the American people" passed this message on loud and clear to our representatives in the Congress and Senate who clearly didn't listen. They did what they wanted to feed their own special self-interest.

So for those of you who weren't paying close attention, this is how they fed us what we didn't want. Look back to the time immediately before passage of the Health Care Reform Bill and the country was up in arms at the threat to reduce the number of allowable mammograms for women of certain ages, specifically if there was no breast cancer history. The media and all of us were so focused on that hot topic we were fighting in the streets for ourselves, for our families and for all of the people we have known that have either had breast cancer and survived it because there was early detection or those that didn't win their battle.

While we weren't looking, the parties involved were feverishly working on the bill they really wanted to sneak through... the Health Care Reform Bill. This is just wrong on so many levels and I get so irate about the fact that it got through, because we weren't looking. It was only when there we deals made behind closed doors that this bill passed.

The time before that was when they touted the Credit Card Reform Bill as a consumer protection endeavor. Yea, finally something for the consumer! After all they had bailed out all of those banks, this surely was something to help bail us out, right? So wrong. Anyone that had his or her pulse on this bill knew what I knew. The part they didn't tell you. From the time that bill was drafted until the day it was passed they put no protection for the consumer against the credit card company raising your rate to any interest rate they wanted before the bill became effective. The sky was the limit. I had 3 credit cards that in spite of my great credit history and owning my house for 7 years, my interest skyrocketed to 29.99%. At that point I realized that I would have been better off borrowing from a loan shark. Credit Card companies were my loan sharks and this "sharking" is sanctioned by the federal government.

Every state has laws on what is considered usurius interest rates but not the feds. There is no state that wouldn't consider 29.99% usurius so why can the credit card companies get away with it? We weren't looking. Our federal government has done nothing to bail out the American people. Do we not see this? I know for a fact that Lady Justice wears a blind-fold but do we have to?

Wake-up!!!! Wake-up!!!! Wake-up!!!! If you don't, we will be exactly where we now (or even further behind) for the next several years. If we continue with this "regime" and yes, I relate it to a dictatorship because that's where we're headed with our current government. To borrow a quote, "America is about we the people, not me the President."

Make believe for one second that a vendor has ripped you off. Would you just stand there and let them or would you fight back? If the scanner at the supermarket gives us the wrong price on a scan we fight with them to correct the error. Why aren't we willing to fight as hard for a leader in our country? We need to fight back now before the next election and make it clear that if our next leader isn't willing to "bail-out" the people then he/she is not an appropriate leader. Making the banks better has done nothing to help you and me. In fact, it has made our life harder than ever before. Republicans give us a candidate that can win! Tea Party, Independent Party, anyone willing to step up to the plate? Giving us candidates that can't win the electoral votes that truly represent the people is the same as no choice at all.

So I say again, Wake-up!!!! Wake-up!!!! Wake-up!!!! If you don't then what will they do next while you're not looking? Are you willing to take the chance that the next thing they take away will be something that you and your family really need? That's what Health Care Reform does. You get services when they decide you get services, regardless of whether or not you've got the money to pay.

Picture the supermarket scanner and it is charging you 10 cents an item more on every item scanned. Would you be mad? Yet, most people are looking the other way right now and while you're not looking our government will be passing through the 10 cents on a dollar federal tax. I don't know about you but I think we have played "blind" for too long. FIGHT back!!! Call (or email) Congressman and Senator offices. Do it once a day. Document it. You can do this by creating one email draft and sending it every single day. Program their number on your cell phone and call while we sitting on packed roads not being developed with state stimulus money. If there's no answer leave a voice mail. The next time something happens while we're not looking at least we'll have evidence of our representatives ignorance.

Don't close your eyes. Look! Always keep in mind one of the first lessons you learned as a child... STOP, LOOK, LISTEN...and I will add the ending... ACT!

~D