As the Chief Executive Officer of the United States of America you are responsible for submitting a budget proposal to Congress for the coming Fiscal Year. Under normal circumstances, Congress has no obligation to adopt your budget. However, they would be “reluctant to completely ignore” your budget priorities since you can approve or veto bills they propose.

However, the 112th Congress—the least productive in history—is not normal and has not produced any significant legislation this year. It also has the distinction of being the most despised in American history—boasting a “9% approval rating” in July. And no wonder; when you hear Mitch McConnell smugly say before The Heritage Foundation, “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

What has Congress done to deny President Obama a second term? Nothing, Mr. President, and that is exactly what you need to tell the American people over the next three months.

CBS News’ Bob Schieffer says this “do-nothing Congress heads home for a five-week vacation…without passing one single piece of significant legislation” this year. “It would be hard to do worse than that, but this crowd may actually manage to do it.”

It is time, Mr. President, for you to tell the American people to send this pack of freeloaders home permanently. You have the ammunition—the jobs issue, education, the foreclosure crisis, the farm bill, the Bush tax cuts, and most importantly, the $1.2 trillion Sequestration Transparency Act. This Congress is cleverly requiring you to lay out the painful spending cuts. If they “do nothing,” you take the heat—while they sit back and chortle that you should be a one-term president.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the unified budget. Americans need to understand what really is happening to their Social Security funds. It’s not too complex for them to understand, considering that each month payroll deductions referred to as FICA appear on their paycheck stubs. Let them know that in early 1968, President Johnson had a budget deficit of between $2.1 and $8.1 billion—no one knew for sure. So he made a change in the budget presentation by including Social Security and all other trust funds in what he called a “unified budget.” This is how Social Security became part of the yearly presidential budgeting process, and this is what happened to the Social Security trust fund.

This change took effect for the first time in the President’s budget proposal for fiscal year 1969, which President Johnson presented to Congress in January 1968. “Understandably, arranging all of this so Congress would accept it took some negotiations. So just five days before leaving office, President Johnson sent his 1970 budget message to Congress, using the revised accounting procedures. He was projecting the budget for 1969 to be in a net balance of $2.4 billion—a cool $4.5 billion to $8.5 billion coup d’état. So went the first systematic rip-off of Social Security by a president and Congress.” Every year since then the president has been sending Congress a budget that has included our Social Security funds.

A week after his 2005 State of the Union speech, Bush bluntly put the Social Security Trust Fund in perspective: “Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund—in other words, there’s a pile of money being accumulated. That’s just simply not true. The money—payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They’re spent on benefits and they’re spent on government programs. There is no trust.” In other words, our Social Security funds pay for wars or any other cockamamie idea a president or Congress comes up with.

That makes me angry!

Then there’s the US Postal Service, which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have been ripping off for years. The USPS, unfortunately, has been a cash cow for the federal budget since 1969. “Contrary to legislative protections afforded the USPS, the OMB and the CBO have managed to consistently raid postal funds to reduce the deficit. The effect is to make our elected representatives appear better capable of managing the national finances.” The result is to make the USPS look like a loser and have to raise rates and close down post offices.

The most recent insult started in 2006 and extends over the next ten years. “The Federal Office of Personnel Management has required the Postal Service to make overpayments of between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion annually to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. However, the Postal Service is not allowed to tap the funds to pay actual retiree health benefits. Though these funds legally belong to the USPS, Congress does not allow it the use of the funds because it would adversely affect the federal budget” and the electability of its members.

Paul Ryan has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” and in a sense he was right. Social Security and the Postal Service are a Ponzi scheme that makes a “do-nothing” Congress look as if it’s really “doing something.”

Mr. President, if you want to ensure your re-election, you must level with the American people and vow to reverse this monumental “rip off.” You can warn Congress, in your next State of the Union Address, that you will veto any budget coming to you from Congress which includes Social Security or Post Office funds. That would be “change we can believe in.”

Dick Armey, former U.S. House Republican leader, has openly expressed his ambitions “to elect tea party-minded conservatives to Congress to force the White House on a far-right path. “We’ll build a legislative wall… We’ll either be walling a Republican president in, or walling a Democratic president out.”

Mr. President, you are our last hope to prevent Dick Armey’s ambition from coming true—for you and the American people.

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Ignorance is a choice: Money is power—Knowledge is more powerful.

What can you do—you are only one person? True, but you are only “six degrees of separation,” on average, from any other person on Earth. You become powerful when you share information with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends—it becomes a global revolution. As Stephen King suggests in The Long Walk, when these “society-supported sociopaths” come, step aside, and find the strength to run…

Americans are a thrifty lot—and we have the expressions to prove it. Ben Franklin coined what is probably the best known: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” And if he were to appear on the current scene, he would be the first to agree that the American people are being robbed by their government.

In irony, it has been said that we have the best government money can buy. But that is true only for the lobbyist. The public at large is painfully aware of what our government is costing us—programs, wars and tax cuts that have driven up the deficit, and a refusal by Congress to come to a budget agreement, causing the first ever downgrade of our national credit rating. And that is not to mention our government’s culpability in the failure of our regulatory agencies to foresee and forestall the failure of our banking system, causing the average American citizen the loss of 40% of his net worth. “The stunning drop in median net worth—from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010—indicates that the recession wiped away 18 years of savings and investment by families.”

There is public outrage. Such grassroots movements as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have given voice to widespread concerns, but the message goes largely unheeded. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a voice crying in the wilderness. His message is sound, but few of his colleagues are listening. Perhaps the problem is that enough of us aren’t listening—or at least responding.

Much has been made of the fact that following the 2010 Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United, the airwaves have been dominated by political messages, most of which are negative and many of which are also misleading. Yet, they have been shown to be effective in influencing people’s opinions and actions.

But we know better! Few people are so naïve as to take as gospel truth something solely because it appears on their favorite news channel. What doesn’t happen enough is for citizens to spend the time and effort to read and watch a spectrum of print and electronic media as a basis for political judgments. There is a reason why freedom of the press is guaranteed by the First Amendment and why democracy is so slow to take root in countries where news and commentary are controlled by the government. Do we ignore a freedom so sacred that men and women in different parts of the world are willing to die to maintain it?

Money undeniably equals influence in our society. But powerful as it is, we still have access to reality—maybe not in the mainstream media, but certainly in the multiplicity of independent blog sites and print media. Yes, it’s time consuming, but it provides the basis to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth—virtually our only weapon.

An old friend told me he believes in term limits for elected officials—one term in office followed by a term in jail. I thought he was a bit extreme—but our current political stalemate calls for extreme measures. The focus of this website, has been on corruption and inaction in our government, particularly in Congress, where legislators spend most of their time raising money to finance their next elections. So, they get reelected (most do), but their constituents get the shaft—read about the Political Theater of the 112th Congress—a tragedy, not a comedy. Why do we keep returning these guys to office when they take their instructions from billionaire lobbyists?

An election is before us. Let’s shake things up! If voting somebody out of office is the only way to get his attention, let’s do it! I’m thinking primarily of men and women in leadership positions who arrogantly dictate party policy with no concern for the needs of their constituents. If we send Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan packing, it has to get the attention of not just the House but also the Senate. None of our elected officials is beyond the reach of the voters! Let’s take back our government now! When the 113th Congress opens, let’s see that we get more bang for our buck!

This is the first of several articles, titled The Perfect Storm, dealing with how our government is failing the American people. The average American citizen lost 40% of his net worth in the 2008 recession as noted above. The next few articles will explore how the checks and balances established between the judicial, executive and legislative branches have been eroded and what can be done to restore them.

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Ignorance is a choice: Money is power—Knowledge is more powerful.

What can you do—you are only one person? True, but you are only “six degrees of separation,” on average, from any other person on Earth. You become powerful when you share information with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends—it becomes a global revolution. As Stephen King suggests in The Long Walk, when these “society-supported sociopaths” come, step aside, and find the strength to run…

Surely I am not the only American who looks at how the current budget battle is shaping up and shudders, “please, let’s not do this again.” It would be nice to think that our elected representatives have learned something from last year’s debacle—the death-defying game of chicken with our nation’s credit rating—but so far: not. In fact, with the election looming, it is likely that we will see even more grandstanding, more political hype, and more damaging consequences than last year.

Front and center is “The Blame Game.” One could write a book on the ugly charges leveled at persons and parties involved—if one had nothing better to do. The chief target, by all appearances, is the President. He has been blamed for everything from a slow economic recovery, to the downgrade of the U. S. credit rating, to an uncertain business climate, to high gas prices. And the Democrats come right back, blaming the country’s woes on the Republican-controlled House.

Any hope that this year’s debate will proceed in a somewhat more civil manner was shattered by a leading Republican’s opening salvo: Using sharp rhetoric reminiscent of last summer’s fight over the issue, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Obama “needs to become the adult” in discussions with congressional leaders on spending and debt. By “becoming an adult,” we surmise that McConnell means Obama must accept the inevitability of the Republican business model as exemplified by the Ryan budget—slashing public services for the most needy while maintaining defense spending and perks for the wealthy.

Then there are the threats. These surfaced early on, putting the President on notice that the Republican’s first order of business would be to make him a one-term president. To that end, it is obvious that the basic Republican strategy has been to block every presidential initiative that would lend credit to his presidency.

Republican nominee apparent Mitt Romney epitomized his party’s approach to the administration in a victory speech he gave last month in New Hampshire. In response, Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times, opined, “As soon as Mr. Obama took office, the Republican Party announced its intention to destroy the new president by denying him everything he wanted. Mr. Obama tried to appease the opposition by making damaging compromises, but this strategy failed. The obstruction only worsened, especially after the Republicans won control of the house in 2010.”

The stage is now set for a replay of everything that went wrong last year—but on a grander scale.

In a New York Times editorial May 15 commenting on John Boehner’s pronouncement on the debt limit debate, we read, “An official who actually wanted to help the country rather than appeasing the Tea Party might have remembered what happened a year ago, after Mr. Boehner first made that extortionate demand. The bond rating agencies said the country’s credit and reputation had been seriously damaged, and the government lost its AAA credit rating. (Mr. Boehner shamelessly blamed Mr. Obama for that on Tuesday.) The Federal Reserve warned of “catastrophic” and “calamitous” effects if Republicans carried through on their threat to default. The stock market sank, and Congress’s approval rating has never recovered.”

There are just a few days left before the August recess—and much important business to be transacted. Forget reforming the tax code, immigration, Social Security and Medicare, and all those other crucial issues that need fixing. It’s the debt ceiling, stupid!

The approval rating for Congress has sunk to a record low. America is paying attention, but Congress itself seems to be tone deaf. The members seem to be living under a sense of entitlement that separates them from their constituents and any sense of responsibility to them. We might well ask, “Who are the grownups in that room?”

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What can you do—you are only one person? True, but you are only “six degrees of separation,” on average, from any other person on Earth. You become powerful when you share information with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends—it becomes a global revolution. As Stephen King suggests in The Long Walk, when these “society-supported sociopaths” come, step aside, and find the strength to run…

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