What have the rats been gnawing on?

Fellow Arkansans (and other Americans too; we are all in this together):

For too long now we have elected people to carry out our will in Washington (or Little Rock), and then promptly turned our minds to more pressing matters such as earning a living. Maybe we occasionally wonder how these Senators and Representatives are looking out for our state, but our busy lives preclude much more serious thought and our wondering fades from our minds. Then something will happen. Our attention will suddenly and in a quite focused manner turn to some proposed piece of legislation which will have impact on our lives, or perhaps some law maker is caught with his/her fingers in the till--or worse. We are awakened from our political slumber.

Such is the case, I believe, with this health care initiative, which isn't really about health care at all. It is about assuming power of a huge portion of our lives and a large slice (1/6 or 1/7, depending upon the source of the numbers) of the entire national budget--not the government budget--the national budget. The politicians want to control our national medical expenditures as well as what they already control.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 67% of Arkansans do not want this legislation to go forward, but our Senators and our Representatives are moving "hell bent for an election" to hop on the bandwagon and cram this down our throats. They are selling out their constiuencies to partisan political pressure.

Even though they are Democrats, I believe that OUR REPRESENTATIVES--paid for out of our pockets, and serving at our leave--MUST be held accountable to us. We must demand a higher standard from OUR representatives than those espoused by the likes of Chuck Shumer, Barbara Boxer, or Al Franken.

My point is this: We can no longer afford--and probably never could have--to let legislators, no matter which party they claim--have a free reign. They are, after all, our employees. No boss would let his/her hirelings behave in such a way as to be detrimental to the boss. Why should we? We must pay very close attention to what our elected members of Congress and state legislatures are doing. Yes, I understand that it is just another responsibility we must commit ourselves to, while trying to keep food on the table and the mortgage paid. If we do not keep a close vigil, we will wake up some morning to discover that the rats have gnawed away our Republic.