Do We Really Need Congress Anymore?

Alright. You have a bunch of guys and gals who make very good money and get great health insurance and pensions and perks are able to publish books and go on television and parlay connections into making even more money and then we ask them to vote and put the people first and not their own jobs. Right. That's going to happen. Not in this I got mine economy. Those people do not want to fall back into the great unwashed of the sweaty middle class. They got there and they want to stay there and they will vote for what is politically expedient every time. So to hope that the fat cats in Washington are going to pull a Jimmy Stewart and suddenly become Mr. Smith is a fantasy.

So where does that leave us. Well, here is my proposal. Get rid of congress and let the people decide for themselves. In the beginning we needed a representative body because people could not vote on every issue of government. Not so anymore. We have the Internet. We are wired. Why can't the people decide for themselves? Think about it. The American Jobs Bill comes up. Ok the deadline is thirty days from now. The nation votes. You go to the site and click YES or NO. Think about it. A democracy deciding for themselves beyond the reach of Special Interests!

We can do this now. At the end of the thirty days the votes are counted and the people decide. Should the Bush Tax Cuts be discontinued for the wealthy? You have thirty days to decide. Bam. Just like that. If the people want the wealthy to be taxed then they will be taxed. This would be true Democracy because there are too many people to be bought off. Congressman get bought off routinely. Sad but true. But the people would decide what is their best interests and majority rules.

The age has changed. Congress has worked well for over two hundred years but we now have the technology to take representative democracy to the next step. We have to break the Washington Wall street Corporate stranglehold. So why not give the power to the people? It would be the triumph of the people over the oligarchy. So...why not? Just give Congress their walking papers and we become congress.

A Congress of the People. It has a ring to it.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man

Back to the Pony Express

Did you hear the Post Office could close this winter without funding from Congress? Five billion is due to fund retired health care costs and they don't have it. The volume of mail has dropped almost thirty percent and the layoffs will start commencing. They already have with 124000 on the chopping block, but the Union intends to fight it all the way. Saturday deliveries will be done away with in the new austerity program and even more heads will roll ,but lets face it, technology is kicking the postal service back to the days of the Pony Express. That is how low tech it has become.

And it is sad. The postman walking from door to door with our mail. It gives us a sense of community, something America is losing and desperately needs. What is in that mailbox? As a kid I walked down a long driveway to wait for my latest issue of Boys Life or the gadgets I sent away for with the order form from the back of comic books or cereal boxes. I remember vividly the time a crystal radio set came in the mail I had bought for two dollars. And then as an adult with all those rejection letters coming back in after bombing New York with hundreds of partial manuscripts. That one letter always was amazing, the one saying, sure send on the rest of the manuscript.

And not a lot has changed. My kids are the same way. They sent off for live turtles and checked the mailbox everyday. Did our turtles come? Did our turtles come? Not yet I said bringing up our diminishing mail since most of our bills come directly into our online banking account. Mail is certainly becoming as derivative and nonessential as a land line. We still have a land line, but I rarely use it and when it rings nobody answers it. Much like the mail. Yeah, there are things that still come as a surprise, but it is the assumption that whoever really wants to get hold of me will email is really the nail in the coffin of the perambulating postman.

Still, I hope the postal service can hang on. It still processes billions of pieces of mail and is vital, but technology has a nasty habit of making what is vital one day obsolete the next. But a real country should have a real postal service. We lose this one and you really have to wonder about the United States. Although, now that it is the hands of Congress to save the Post Office, maybe we better just start over and  post those signs: WANTED YOUNG MEN TO RIDE LONG HOURS OVER DESOLATE COUNTRY TO DELIVER THE MAIL. MUST HAVE OWN HORSE.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man ...The story of one mans search to find the new American Dream James Frey

The New Guy is going to have to Punch Back

When I moved from Baltimore to Chicago I was the new guy. I had a weird accent and I dressed weird and I had bad hair. And I had no friends. We had moved to a suburb of low tolerance for weird. We had moved into a town of Midwestern guys who wore checkered shirts and blue jeans and boots. I dressed like a refugee from the seventies and grew my hair to Afro length. A clash of cultures. My parents were Kennedy liberals and we had moved into a red enclave of button down Yankees. But I was a kid, what did I care?

So I walked into the lunchroom past a group of football players when one of them calls out. "Now there goes a real faggot." I stopped, dropped my lunch, and saw the blond haired blue eyed Captain of the football team. I didn't know he was the Captain, but I also knew from Baltimore days that you had one chance to set your line. So I threw my lunch on the ground and walked up and pinned "Randy" against the wall, not knowing I had just grabbed the most popular guy in the senior class. "Who are you calling a faggot?" I screamed.

Randy turned red and struggled against my grip. Hey...Hey! He finally got free with his face burning and told me to get my lunch, but his homeboys were in shock. Somebody had pinned the Captain against the wall. This is what the President has to do now when he gets back.  He has to pin anybody who tries to bully, extort, or blackmail him again against the wall. He has to set a line for these guys. A funny thing is once you take down the leader, then all the other guys slink away. But he has to do it now.

A week later I saw Randy in an empty hallway. I had not seen him since the lunchroom. We walked past each other and then he nodded to me. I nodded back.

Rocket Man Has Been Released

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Kindle Download of Rocket Man

The funniest serious novel since Richard Russo’s Straight Man, rich with the epic levity of John Irving and salted with the perversion of Updike." - Chicago Sun Time

"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." - James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning