The following piece was a ghost-writing assignment by Steve Plottner which was used as the basis of an editorial and a speech by the client. Used with conditional permission.
The Con-Game on Capitol Hill: The Lawless are Making Our Laws
If I wrote a hundred bad
checks, I would be in jail. But if I
happened to be a congressman,
I would probably be placed in
charge of overseeing the savings and loan bailout fiasco. That's how Washington operates these days, and unless
law-abiding citizens retake our
country from the con men in
Congress, the forecast calls for
a continued increase in hypocrisy from what can now be
called the ruling class elite. And
such a forecast does not bide
well for working men and
women, nor for the businesses
both large and small for whom
they labor.
From the house banking operations to the most recent
allegations against Bill and
Hillary Clinton involving the
Madison Guaranty Savings and
Loan of Little Rock, it is obvious
that our supposed public servants in Washington do not live
by the laws they create and expect the rest of us to obey.
While some Americans can simply relegate the debauchery of
DC to partisan politics or A Current Affair glitz, many are now
coming to realize that both Republican and Democrat alike on
Capitol Hill have gone awry.
This is especially true of those
individuals operating businesses in American and employing people in the process - they
realize more than ever that the
DC deceit is costing them their
livelihoods.
Congress has
passed a plethora of laws to
regulate you as an employer.
These include the recent Americans with Disabilities Act, Tax
Reform Act of 1986, COBRA
Regulations, Rehabilitation
Act, Equal Opportunity Act,
Employee Retirement Income
Security Act, Occupational
Safety and Health Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act,
Equal Pay Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, National Labor
Relations Act - a partial list that
could go on ad nauseam. Yet
every one of the aforementioned laws, as well as many
others, do not have to be followed by Congress.
In fact, the 20,000 Americans
on the Congressional payroll,
including your elected Senators
and Representatives, are exempt from these laws. The plain
truth is that Congress exempts
itself from many of the regulations that they find so
important for private-sector
employers, including those they
propose claiming "basic human
rights" or "equality for all
Americans." The proposed
health care legislation will not
include Congress; those voting
yes on health care for you will
be exempted from the law and
insured by their own private insurance plan.
Yet even when Congress is
not exempt, they will not submit themselves to the same
legal process which every other
citizen must face. And if a Senator is found guilty of a violation
and assessed a fine, the Senate,
as a whole, pays for the charge.
In other words, your tax dollars
are paying for many of these infractions.
As a business owner, you feel
the burden of compliance to
foolish laws. And while some
laws may be well-intentioned,
your operations are severely
limited by them. Yet your own
Congressional representatives
understand the ill effects legislation can have on employers
and they have simply exempted
themselves from various laws. If
Congress had to live with the
rules and regulations it imposes
on the rest of us, the laws would
obviously be more reasonable
as well as practical, otherwise
Congress itself might be faced
with downsizing that leads to
extinction.
There is a song I heard once
that says: "Patriotism is the last
refuge to which a scoundrel
clings, steal a little and they put
you in jail, steal a lot and they
make you king." The point is
this: there seems to be the
ruling class elite in Congress and
then there are the rest of us. It's
time we stop allowing ourselves
to buy into the myth of partisan
politics; it's time we stop allowing ourselves to be hoodwinked
by the so-called patriotism of
our ruling class elite. We have
made these supposed representatives into kings beyond our
control, and it's time we made
our country work for all of us,
not just them. Not only would
it be good for our fellow Ameri-
cans, it would be good for
business too.
Yes is the answer...
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