A recent poll shows that only 22% of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing. Similar polls show Obama with the lowest approval rating of any president in memory at this point in a first term. Clearly, the electorate is dissatisfied and a reading of headlines for the last year makes it clear where Congress and the President are failing: the economy, job creation, health care reform, cap and trade, card check, TARP, bailouts, nationalization of private industry, cash for clunkers, Afghanistan, and more.

The level of public cynicism toward congress reached a new zenith this week as noted in a Zogby Poll commissioned by Let Freedom Ring, Inc., a grassroots public policy organization that promotes constitutional government and economic freedom. The poll found that more than 80 percent of Americans believe Congress drafts lengthy, complex bills for the purpose of 1) hiding spending on special interests and 2) to prevent the public from understanding the legislation before congress votes on it.

When broken down by party, political persuasion, race, religion, gender – you name it – the vast of majority of Americans believe Congress intentionally tries to confuse and mislead the public. What is worse is that members of Congress don’t even draft or read the legislation. In most cases our elected representatives outsource the drafting of legislation to aids, lobbyists and special interest groups. Then, citing the length and the obtuseness of the legislation, elected members of Congress don’t even read it before voting. We’ve seen this time and again this year, most recently with the health care reform bills in both the House and the Senate.

President Obama pledged transparency and committed to making legislation available to the public before voting. Ninety-one percent of Americans (that is a huge majority by any anyone’s measure) want all nonemergency legislation posted on the Internet for 72 hours before a congressional vote. There is a bipartisan bill in the House known as the “Read the Bill” resolution that would amend the rules of House of Representatives to require such a posting. Despite 91% of America being strongly in favor of this kind of change, Speaker Pelosi is working to kill the bill in committee and will likely succeed.

The events of this year have shown that congress is pulling out all the stops to reward their friends and supporters and is working hard to secure their power regardless of the job performance. They consistently and willfully thwart the will of those who elected them as representatives. I have to ask myself after a year of hope and change, “Can Congress really be so thick that they think they can get away with ignoring the will of the people?”

Whether they are that thick or not, let us all rise up en masse and make our voices heard so loudly and so clearly on every issue that Congress’ position on these issues stands in stark, painful contrast to the position of the electorate. Then, next November, let us again unite our voices, regardless of political stripe, and eliminate every representative who refuses to represent us, replacing them with committed protectors of liberty and transparency in government. Actually more than vote, let us each campaign actively for such candidates.

Congress has made it clear that our government is up for grabs. Let us take it back before it goes to the highest bidder!

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Lord Christopher Monckton, climate change expert, spoke out on October 14, 2009 against the Copenhagen Climate summit and the objectives of its sponsors. He has explored the draft treaty and identified areas of significant concern to nearly every American. Below is an excerpt from his speech, which you will not doubt find revealing and troubling. Join more than 3.5 million people have heard or read the presentation.

“At Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it because they think they are going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes around the world, like the European Union, will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

“I have read that treaty. And what it says is this. That a world government is going to be created. The word government actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the west to third world countries in satisfaction of what is called coyly a climate debt. Because we have been burning CO2 and they haven’t and we’ve been screwing up the climate. (We haven’t been screwing up the climate, but that’s the line.) The third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

“How many think that the word election, or democracy, or vote, or ballot occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Green Peace, so that my friends who founded it left within a year, because they had captured it.

“Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign. He’ll sign anything. He is a Nobel Peace Laureate. Of course he’ll sign it. And the trouble is this. If that treaty is signed, your constitution says that it takes precedence over your constitution. And you can’t resile from that treaty unless you get the agreement from all the other states’ parties. Because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out.

“So, thank you America. You were the beacon of freedom for the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom, while it is still free. But in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, you president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever. And neither you, nor any subsequent government you elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back again. That is how serious it is.

“I have read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or no. But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire, it is here that perhaps at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and the fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty.

“The problem with this treaty is that there is nothing wrong with the climate, and even if there were, economically speaking there is nothing we can do about it. So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour, before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet, Longfellow.

          Sail on, O Ship of State!
          Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
          Humanity with all its fears,
          With all the hopes of future years,
          Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

——–

Lord Christopher Monckton is chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute and former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He spoke at Bethel University in St. Paul, MN recently on the UN Climate Change treaty scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.”

• Lord Monckton’s entire speech is here.
• Read a draft copy of the treaty here.
• Sign a petition opposing cap-and-trade here.

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