Trumpier than Trump

With our nation's president going on the offensive with everyone from foreign allies, dictators, media, to professional sports and more; we have become accustomed, if not completely numb, to some of the things he says that are deprived of any intelligence whatsoever.

Fast forward to this past week in Alabama, where a firebrand conservative Roy Moore won a Senate seat by igniting the flames of the intellectually less fortunate. We should be concerned with this development, if we are ever to progress our country out of the educational and intellectual decline, or else we risk tumbling ever further into the phenomenon known as Idiocracy.

Roy Moore is a more audacious version of Trump - a Trumpier Trump, if you will. He doesn't do Public Relations remediation of anything he does that is viewed as a negative, because he doesn't believe anything of the kind exists. This is a man who has conviction that all of society's ills boil down to the people forgetting about God. He believes that God incurs wrath on all of us, because of those among us who have strayed from the almighty.

He also believes that homosexuality is illegal, all law comes from God himself, evolution is a hoax, Obama is not an American, reds and yellows are fighting, and Islam is a false religion. He even idolizes Vladimir Putin and likens himself to the character of the Russian leader.

But if that wasn't enough, he was fired from his previous job on the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing a Federal order to remove the massive stone Ten Commandments statue from inside the courthouse. While he believes all law comes from God, it is evident that he picks and chooses which laws to follow on a case by case basis.

While the media and the people here on the East Coast may chuckle and laugh at his election, it is not a reason to laugh. It is a rather sad event that we have to tolerate such people representing any community as elected officials. He is by far not the only one present in the Senate or the House of Representatives. Various representative degrees of the intellectually challenged sit and preside over laws that impact us nationally.

We all are responsible for this. We must take our education system back, enforce separation of church and state, communicate with our representatives, keep aware of legislative news, and vote intelligently. If we brush off the election of the Moores with a chuckle and a laugh, it won't be long before Idiocracy is realized.

Absentee Congressman

We are living in an era when the leaders we elect do not uphold the rights and interest of the citizens at large. Instead, they pursue a path of self-enrichment and corruption at taxpayer expense. Nowhere is this deficiency more evident than the Congress. Here we see elected officials consistently miss votes that are inconvenient for them to participate in.

When we elect a politician, we expect that person to vote against legislation that will harm us and vote for legislation that will benefit us. However, that very politician received money from their party, private donors, corporate donors, lobbies, etc. It is those monetary contributors to their campaign (and back pocket) that they owe their Congressional votes to first, before any of us.

There is a very useful, but severely underused, tool that the government provides us with, which allows an average citizen to track the Congressional votes (or lack thereof) of their Senators and Representatives. Here is the website: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes

Based on a 2015 study, our Congress was rife with Senators and Representatives that missed a significant portion of their votes. To be fair, those dutiful elected officials that cast every single vote they are called upon drive the average absenteeism down to a palatable 4%. However, there are some that reach as high as 30% absenteeism and over 20 officials consistently miss more than 10% of their expected votes. Imagine if you don't show up for work 10% of the time? That's right - the Senators and Representatives play by a different set of rules.

But absenteeism is only a part of the problem. A lot of the time, the Senators and Representatives are present for the vote, but abstain from voting on an issue that may be problematic for them.

Let's suppose you're a Senator in North Dakota and you are asked to vote on the Dakota Access Pipeline regulation. Your voting population does not want the pipeline approved for environmental reasons. But your big money donors have a financial stake in the project and want your vote for approval. You are not going to deny your sponsor, but you will also not want to upset your voters. So you chose neither - you abstain from voting, citing the legislating is lacking, incomplete or some other irrelevant excuse. That way, you remain safe with the donors and most of the voting public.

In order for us to clean up the Washington landscape, we have to turn our votes into weapons. We must fight Congressional Absenteeism and legislative vote abstinence. Your elected officials have an important job - to vote for or against legislation on your behalf.

Take a look at your elected officials' voting record here  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes
And if they're not doing their job, we must fire them. Don't sit on the sidelines - weaponize your votes!