I drafted the following letter to Speaker John Boehner on the plane to San Diego last night after visiting his website: Dear Speaker Boehner: While I realize that you have been extremely busy on the rubber chicken circuit in an effort to expand your power base in Congress and make that post-Congressional lobbying career even more lucrative, I was wondering if you could be bothered to share your positions on some of the critical issues that are currently threatening the country that you are supposed to be serving. Since you haven’t been seen or heard from publicly in months outside of the aforementioned fundraising circuit, I decided to check your website to refresh my memory on your positions on some of these issues. When I visited your official website (Boehner.house.gov) today, I navigated to the “About John --> John Boehner on the Issues” page, and found a list of issues that at least broadly covered most areas of importance to the country (this is in contrast to the Issues page on the Congressional website of my Congressman, Andy Harris M.D., who has a published position on poultry farming regulations, but none on foreign affairs, national defense, or immigration policy). However, when I looked at the details of your issues platforms, I found them to be a bit lacking in substance. Following is the complete list of your positions on each issue, with the exception of Education: JOBS AND THE ECONOMY: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. DEFENSE: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. AGRICULTURE: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. RETIREMENT SECURITY: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. IMMIGRATION/LAW ENFORCEMENT: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. HEALTH CARE: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. HOMELAND SECURITY: COMING SOON: John Boehner on the Issues If you have a question about where Congressman Boehner stands on a particular issue, you may e-mail him directly, or please call our Washington DC office at 202-225-6205. Sadly, this is completely true and not satirical. I am guessing that “SOON” means “sometime after the election”. To your credit, you do actually have an issues page for “Education”, presumably the result of an oversight on the part of your staff. I won’t copy all of it here, but your education position is best summed up in the famous motto of Faber College: “Knowledge Is Good”. I am curious whether you feel any guilt at all that, while you occupy the third most powerful position in the most powerful nation on earth, you refuse to articulate coherent, comprehensive, unambiguous, and consistent positions on any issue of importance to the nation. The position of Speaker of the House was granted considerable power and stature by the Founding Fathers as the primary constitutional check against an over-reaching executive branch. In the four years of your Speakership, the country has endured an unprecedented existential threat from the lawlessness, corruption, and gross incompetence of an arrogant, delusional, and lazy President and his administration of self-serving progressive intellectual sycophants. In your role as Speaker of the House, it is your sworn duty to check the blatant and ongoing abuses of power by this President, a duty at which, up to this point, you have failed miserably. Rather than exhibiting the leadership that is expected of your office, you have abdicated your responsibilities and proven at every turn that you are every bit as disengaged, self-serving, and politically opportunistic as the President. The Constitution provides Congress the remedy of Impeachment to thwart a runaway Executive Branch, and it is your duty as Speaker to bring articles of impeachment against this President (and against the outgoing Attorney General). The fact that you have no control over whether the Senate will convict the President on articles of impeachment, or how the 18-to-35-single-female-of-color demographic polls on the matter, does not absolve you of the responsibility for drafting them, stewarding them through the House, and bringing them to the Senate. It is your sworn obligation to do so. While you are at it, maybe you could jot down some coherent, comprehensive, and unambiguous positions on topics such as: • the imminent threats posed by ISIS and Ebola • looming cold wars with Russia and China that we are entering from a position of weakness, ignorance, and delusion • growing Islamic extremism • uncontrolled illegal immigration • expanding illiteracy and dumbing-down of public education as a generation of kids are sacrificed at the altar of political correctness • the need to re-equip and restore the military to its primary purpose as provider of national defense, after years of being appropriated by the Obama administration as a jobs program for illegal immigrants, social experimentation laboratory, source of involuntary Ebola aid workers/test subjects, and purveyor of climate change lunacy • Providing first-class medical care for the veterans who have sacrificed for this country It is probably asking too much to actually turn those positions into a legislative agenda, but that would be a good idea too. While we are discussing your positions on the issues, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on Congressional term limits. Is it your argument that the public is better served by politicians experienced in the nuances of Washington politics, even if they are not willing to own positions of substance on any issue? If you and the other testicularly-challenged members of the Republican Congressional leadership really want to make a positive impact on this country, then have the courage to introduce a Constitutional amendment mandating Congressional term limits and returning to a congress of citizen-legislators, as the Founders intended, rather than perpetuating an entitled class of political aristocrats. Ideally, it wouldn’t be necessary, but the good people of the 8th Congressional District in Ohio have demonstrated that it is. Frankly, the country would be better served if they picked their Congressman at random from the phonebook from now on. Sincerely, Bill Bruns Jr. North East, MD
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 03:15:41 +0000
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