OPINION:
Too many incumbent elected officials met their demise to think that the performance of the current administration and Congress had nothing to do with the Nov. 2 election results. Spending that must be ranked somewhere between reckless and insane certainly was responsible for much of the anger and fear felt by the electorate. The taxes that will be created because of this spending irresponsibility will likely not come due until 2013, but the fact that they will ultimately be assessed has not gone completely unnoticed. The debt load for our country is something our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will probably be dealing with long after we are beyond worrying about such material concerns.
Regulations, rules and laws that can and probably will prove to be stifling to individual initiative have been created and will likely have an adverse impact on every U.S. citizen. Our Constitution has been skirted, tweaked and ignored by too many elected officials for too long. Achieving self-actualization has been made much more difficult (if not impossible) as a direct result of the restrictive controls put in place.
Elected officials have misinterpreted the meaning of a representative form of government. They have repeatedly represented the leadership of both political parties, rather than the will of the majority of their constituency. Seeing our elected officials in bed with every lobbyist to come down the pike has become commonplace. Special-interest groups have demanded pork-barrel projects so frequently that it is difficult to remember when a bill last came out of Congress without such projects buried somewhere in it, each ultimately costing every U.S. citizen in some way.
The bottom line is that “we the people” want our elected officials, regardless of political-party affiliation, to understand that they must stop the ridiculous political infighting, the absurd quest for power, the ever-present greed and begin to work together for the average U.S. citizen who elected them. Whether or not they will recognize this desire and act accordingly remains to be seen. If they fail to take advantage of this second chance, movements such as the Tea Party and Coffee Party will almost surely gain momentum, resulting in an avalanche of incumbents from both parties being shown the door in 2012 and again in 2014. It could possibly even result in the end of the two-party system as we now know it.
ROBERT M. COLLINSWORTH
Harrisville, N.H.
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