Friday, October 23, 2009

An Open Letter to the Congress

Dear Politicians,

When I get money out of an ATM, I don't care what the serial numbers are on the twenties. It's completely irrelevant. All I care about is whether I get my cash. "Bipartisanship" as a goal is serial numbers.

We don't care whether a health care bill passes because Republicans vote for it, or because Blue Dog Democrats vote for it, or because a coalition of senior Congresspeople votes for it. We care that the bill fixes our health case system.

Please, I don't want to hear any more about bipartisanship being a goal. It isn't that we want you to become bipartisan intentionally. We want things to become bipartisan in that we want you to stop focusing so much on party. When you focus on bipartisanship, you continue to focus on party. Stop it.

Thank you,
Voters

2 comments:

Die Anyway said...

Hey Jon, welcome back. I thought we lost you.

I have to agree about the bipartisan thing. I love analogies so my analogy for this is a family living in Raleigh, NC. Part of the family wants to go to the coast for a beach vacation and part of the family wants to go to the Smokies for a mountain vacation. So they compromise and don't go anywhere. Not only does nobody get what they really want, but now they hate each other for ruining the whole vacation. I'm not big on government-run healthcare; been there, done that, and didn't find it to be very good; but the voters spoke, the Democrats won and it's time to let them show what they can do.

BTW, since you weren't posting on your blog, I decided to post some stuff on mine.

Eat well, stay fit, Die Anyway

Jon Harmon said...

Yeah, I saw that you had new posts on your blog... but I haven't gotten around to reading the most recent 3 lately. I'm not just behind on my own blogging; I'm also behind on everyone else's :)

I just got aggravated enough hearing more about wanting bipartisanship that I had to post. Nobody wants bipartisanship as a constructed thing; it isn't an end, it's a means. Argh, it's so aggravating; if they stopped thinking so much about bipartisanship, there would certainly be bipartisanship, when individuals voted the way their constituents wanted them to vote.