Civics Class

In a “true” democracy, everyone votes on every issue. If we need a new road from Athens to Sparta, we all get together in the town square and vote on it. In today’s United States of America, there are roughly 300 million people, and unfortunately, there’s no town square big enough for all that. Instead, we have representative democracy, which entails that we send elected officials who we trust to vote in our interests off to Washington, and we go to sleep comfortably knowing that they are looking out for us.

Or… so we would like to think. A bill was passed through committee that would establish the creation of a public database so that we could search from home and find out where OUR tax dollars are being spent. It looked as though the bill was on the fast track to being passed on the floor of the senate as a whole. I mean who could possibly vote publicly against a bill which mandated that the government reports to its constituents (you and me) what the government does with our money?

Well, as luck would have it, no one has to! Instead, a senator has put a super-secret hold on the bill, not allowing it to come for a vote, and no one knows who placed the hold. Thanks to some actual investigative reporting, we do know who didn’t place the hold. Perhaps after a few more calls, they will have the list narrowed down thereby outing the corrupt senator who feels that pork barrel spending is his right as a public servant, and the yokels who voted him (or her) into office don’t deserve more than the fucking sack of oranges he’d like to beat us with.