Demand Integrity

Why are politicians allowed to lie to us? Why do we put up with it?

Right off the top of my head, I'm seeing Barak Obama explain that perhaps someone, somehow, must have slipped in provisions into the health care bill that might, perhaps, not allow you to keep the doctor and health plan you wanted. That after being on TV time and time again saying that people who say otherwise are simply fear mongers that should be ignored. Oops, turns out they were right. Sorry. No promise to strip those provisions out, just a lame, "oops".

Then there is Pelosi [ADHD moment: someone must really council her that there is only so much plastic surgery one can have before you start to look like the animated work of a mortician] who stands in front of a camera and essentially tells people that politicians say things just to get elected. To paraphrase her, "a lot of things get said on the campaign trail." Translation: we say what we think you want to hear (and then under her breath, I'm sure I heard it, or perhaps she wanted to said it, "stupid").

Bill Clinton feels the need to legalistically parse the word, "is". Give me a break.

How these people can get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me. Whatever happened to your word being your bond? It seems like the days are gone when a man can shake the hand of another and know that something will be taken care of or carried through. No contract or lawyer required.

When Clinton was in office, my co-workers would talk about how slick and clever he was, that he could be caught cold and yet still squirm his way out. They never really considered that this is the President of the United States of America. The same position held by the likes of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and Reagan. The man sullies their honor by occupying the station.

Leadership descends from Character. A person is shaped by their upbringing, moulded by what they see and hear around them as they mature. They draw lessons, both good and bad from those more mature around them on a daily basis. Some they reject since they have seen what happens when one sees the results of such behavior, and others emulate, seeing that you can get away with quite a lot in our society today.

I want a president who will do the right thing, regardless of politics or party. A president who says what they mean and mean what they say. When I see Obama stutter and stammer off 'prompter trying to explain to people that he can't quite figure out how someone may have slipped something unseen in a 2,500 page bill I just want to cringe. Then, after telling us that there may indeed now be provisions that he promised would not be in there; he makes no move to remove those things in order to honor the many, many promises that he made to the American public. No character, no honor, no morals, and therefore no trust.

The other day, Pelosi said that Health Care will get passed no matter what. If the gate is closed she will go over the wall. If the wall is too high, she will pole vault it, if she can not do that she will air drop into the yard. This is madness of an unimagined scale. This 'wall' that she speaks of is the will of the American people. A huge majority of people do not want this "reform". Do you understand this? The will of the American people is to be ignored.

She is a representative from California. She is supposed to represent the people from her district. Her role is not to decide what is best for the rest of the country. It is immoral for her to stand there and tell us that our will is irrelevant. That our wishes are ill-informed and unimportant.

Politicians of integrity would recognize the majority resistance to this bill and make an attempt to better explain what this is for and why. They would do this until enough people felt that the bill was a move in the right direction. Instead, they plow forward, sure and arrogant in their righteousness. The reality is that this health care reform has nothing to do with health care and everything about control.

Our Founders warned us about integrity. They felt that our government would rot and collapse if, 1) god were removed from our culture, and 2) people could no longer trust one another. Our constitution could function only in a religious society. It was written that way. It assumed a basic level of morals from its citizenry.

All over Washington D.C. there are images of Moses and many, many other religious motifs. They are so common that they have all blended in with the back ground, almost completely unnoticed. It is a shame that people don't actually stop and look at what they represent any longer. The Founders also knew that once you started playing games with the rules and interpret them any way you wish then you simply legalize criminal behavior on the part of the government.

When 60 out of 100 Senators are lawyers and 158 out of 435 representatives are lawyers, then you get laws written by and for lawyers. Written in ever increasingly obscure script that can only be interpreted by other lawyers. A quick scan of the Internet shows me that there is one lawyer for every 262 citizens. To compare, there is one doctor for every 375 citizens. The legal profession is vastly over-represented as a ratio of the population. No wonder the medical profession is under assault. Congress is supposed to reflect the will of the people, not the will of the Bar.

Do lawyers lack integrity? I think that as a general rule they must have that part of their personality suppressed or removed. How can a defense lawyer represent a man that admits to them that they committed the crime for which they are accused? Any lawyer that attempts to get their client off via a 'loop hole' is automatically suspect. Their client should stand or fall based on the facts of the case. Any law that needs to be "interpreted" is a law that is not written clearly enough.

Any Congressman that passes a law and then exempts either the Congress as a body or any other group of citizens automatically fails the integrity test. A law must bind everyone high and low or that law becomes, at best, meaningless, at its worst, a weapon.

Character, Integrity, Honesty. Everything descends from those qualities. No one is perfect, and we all slip from time to time. If we are man enough to admit our mistakes and mature enough to seek help when we need it then things will always work themselves out.

If my daughter makes a mistake, she fails a quiz or loses points for homework. When I make a mistake, someone may not get paid on time, or I will lay off people who would otherwise not have been let go (had a better person been calling the shots). All of those are localized events that everyone can learn from. When a politician makes a mistake (intentional or otherwise), the effects are felt for generations and affect hundreds of millions of people (in America's case, billions around the world). Those 535 formal representatives of the American people treat their positions without the proper respect or basic understandings of their responsibilities to the generations alive today and those yet to be born.

Educate yourself and vote the bums out and replace them with people of integrity or all we will do is rotate one loser out and rotate another one in.

--Zavost