My LTTE

This is the LTTE which will included the letter I sent to my senators. Representative from the paper called me for verification, may be published tomorrow.

Editor:

This is a copy of the letter I sent to Senators Nelson and Martinez. I think the time has come for a general house-cleaning of all the incumbents in Congress. We have come to the point where our elected representatives no longer represent us. Instead, they appear to succumb to the siren song of gifts, pleasure trips, contributions to their campaign funds by lobbyists and special interest groups. They give themselves lavish pay raises while the new budget calls for a penurious 2.2% increase for our military members - those same military members that this Congress and President have sent away to be killed or maimed. I suggest that in future elections we select anyone who is not an incumbent. Surely by now all of them have benefited sufficiently at taxpayer expense. Letter to senators begins now:

Is there ANYONE in Washington who is watching what happens to MY tax dollars? Let me rephrase that - Is there ANYONE in Washington who is making even a modest effort to keep MY tax dollars from going down one rat hole after another? From all appearances, there does not seem to be.

I read the following recently, online, and have provided the link so that your staff member who may or may not read this will be able to read the entire article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/national/nationalspecial/14katrina.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

<snip> Mobile homes worth hundreds of millions of dollars are deteriorating in a muddy field in Arkansas and may never be used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina because of a dispute over where to install them, federal officials acknowledged Monday. <more at link>

I find it most disconcerting that I read this only a couple of days after reading about billions of dollars gone (including just plain missing) through fraud in the Iraq debacle - with little chance of being recovered from the perpetrators. Doesn’t this bother the people who (ostensibly) control the purse strings?

There is a huge trade deficit, the national debt is at an all time high, thousands of American service people have been killed or maimed in an ill-begotten conflict, even more thousands of civilians (most of whom were probably not guilty of any wrong-doing) have likewise been slaughtered or disfigured, no-bid contracts continue to be given, some members of Congress want to sell our ports to foreign entities.

Surely you must recognize that “we the people” are beginning to wake up, are beginning to be more enlightened, and are becoming increasingly unwilling to return elected officials for another term of the “same old same old.” You are there now, you can fix this. I am counting on you.

Respectfully,