Sam or Me?

Which of us is a better citizen?  Which of us tries hardest to do right by others?  And which of us has the better annual income?

Do you know Sam Clements?  If I were to tell you he is a member of Congress, carried in on the 2010 wave of dissatisfaction and unrest among the national electorate, would that help you remember him?  If I were to give you some salient points about his voting record over his almost two years in office, would that maybe help you place him?

No - none of the above would help you at all to know Sam Clements because the above references are "what if" and are actually meaningless.  There is no such name among our congressional seats.  In a quick Google search, the name naturally pops up but only as a not-uncommon name and in at least one case, a name that is associated with a gay-bashing verbal abuse tirade.  Naturally the search also pointed to the name I may have meant which is Samuel Clemens, aka, Mark Twain. 

But no, the name I actually wanted to check out was Sam Clements after I came up with it out-of-the-blue as someone I do not know.  My point is, you hadn't heard of this Sam either, but could you have said with certainty that he was not among those elected to be in our national congress?  I strongly doubt that you could off-handedly know this.

Of the 535 voting members of our national legislative body (435 representatives and 100 senators), there are perhaps 400 you have not heard of in any overt way.  So I am allowing that about a quarter of the total pool of legislators may be folks we ever hear about.  And far less than that number of names would you or I likely know well enough to list from memory.

My point?  Simply speaking, there are lots of inconspicuous nobodies sitting in offices in Washington D.C. and attending sessions of Congress.  Oh, to be sure, these folks are not unimportant in some small way to some portion of our society - particularly to themselves!  But on the grand scale, they could almost live and die unnoticed.  And every two years, several of these unknowns from the House of Representatives will quietly disappear from D.C. and head back to their former homes or to parts unknown; we will not notice nor care.  Some of them will have been occupying seats in the House for several terms, others merely for that single two-year stint from the fluke election temperament that ushered them in.  Some in the Senate will have managed to stay there for perhaps three or four terms (of 6 years each!) and still be unnoticed by the nation as a whole, and now they can steal away just as unnoticed to wherever they choose to kick back and relax.  Naturally, some will continue trying to perform some manner of service to their fellow man because they are genuine worker types, but most do disappear nonetheless from the national scene.  Many, as we hear occasionally but only when some specific scandal erupts, will go into extremely lucrative jobs where their influence as former congressional representatives can be maximized.

Upon departure from Washington, each of these former public servants takes with him or her an annual lifetime income that would keep three or four families in a marginally comfortable lifestyle.  That self-approved pension goes to the hard-working and devoted few who lost seats after many terms of worthwhile accomplishment as well as to the do-nothings who came in perhaps as hard-line Tea Party types who have sat on their asses over the last eighteen months doing exactly what the House Leader(!) has told them to do, which was nothing.  And if that incompetent and obstructionist Leader himself were to be voted out of office because his Ohio district voters wake up and see what has been going on, along with him will go another extra amount (about 50k more than the everyday nobody congressman) in lifetime pension that could sustain yet another whole family.

No complaints are being registered here for my own situation in life; I live happily in a country that allows me to be at least among the top ten percent of the planet's population, in terms of physical well-being, even though my annual income is roughly 15% of what Sam Clements and his other non-entity departing legislators will enjoy for life.  And many of these folks are beginning this life of ease at the ripe old age of thirty-five or forty, looking at limitless futures of good-and-plenty for themselves.  All the while, they will be witness to some of the most desperate measures being thrust upon our nation and its average citizens just to stay financially afloat.  These former elected representatives have their nests well feathered, regardless of how little they did while in Congress to ease the burden on the rest of us.  And in fact, some of these folks will have accomplished absolutely nothing in two, six or twenty years - or worse; some will have been responsible for helping to destroy our national well-being while enhancing their own.

SHAME!  Shame on this current Congress, and shame on all who take advantage of the many on behalf of themselves.

P. S.
This is just a little added thought.  I would appreciate it if some enterprising journalist were to spend the time to look back over perhaps two or three decades and count the number of people who are our former national elected officials, then post the amount of money being paid out annually for these pensions.  Of course, many associated issues relating to the individuals could be pursued as well (how long had they served, did they ever notably affect any laws, what are their current high-powered employments, etc.), if someone were to be so energetic.  The total amount we pay out for these substantial pensions would naturally not look like a huge amount compared to the amount "lost" each year by the fact that so many of our society are not paying income taxes.  The number of such dependent-on-the-government types (victims) being bandied about right now is 47% of Americans.  Keep in mind that this group includes yours truly along with millions of my near-contemporaries who worked hard for decades and paid into good and well-designed government programs that are now supposed to be allowing us to live in minimal comfort from our efforts.  This is supposed to also be living with dignity, but there are those who see us as deadbeats.  Deadbeats?  And we've come full-circle!