Caveman Home Companion

The Tea Party brews up another pot of herbal tea and tells us to sit back, relax and wait another 14 months for the next election before we can even think about  buying our kids a pair of shoes. (If I can’t afford to feed them I suppose their feet won’t grow?)  Otherwise, here in America, sending my kids to school barefoot just doesn’t seem like the perfect option.

Meanwhile the Coffee Party is saying “Wake up America!” OK, I’m awake, but what can I do today?

As an old used car guy, I drank a lot of coffee, and most of the time I was pretty much awake.  I’m reminded of the old used car guy saying, “If you can’t run with the big dogs, sit on the porch”. Guess who the big dogs are? You and I are the big dogs. That is, if we get up off of the porch. Otherwise, we become the little dogs with barefoot kids.

Congress has an approval rating of 12%. To me that’s shocking. Who are those 12%? I suppose congress, when they got back from there month long vacation, got to vote on that poll. There is always a statistical deviation in any poll and then there is the 2 or 3 percent of people who control basically 90% of everything that are happy. So, the other 95% or so of us are wondering, what the heck is going on… and what can we do about it?

Sometimes there is power in creativity. (Well, there is probably always power in creativity.) Anyway, I once knew a gal that was the manager of a small Mitsubishi dealership. She didn’t sell a lot of cars, but she made a ton of money. When I asked the dealer why she was so well paid, he replied,”Her customers love her so much, I’m sure business will soon get better.”

True, her customers sent her flowers several times a week. She always had fresh flowers on her desk with glowing “thank you” cards. Also,  she had huge amounts of fan mail. After all, who sends flowers and fan mail to a car dealer? It wasn’t until a few years later that I found out that she was sending the flowers to herself and her secretary was sending out the fan mail.

This was obviously deceitful, but it does prove a point. Sometimes with a little creativity and a little effort, a lot can be accomplished. We can do the same thing. We can get the attention of our elected officials. We can tell them to stop playing politics and start working together to get something done.

WHAT CAN WE DO NOW?

We can offer to vote out every single one of them, regardless of party, and start over. Think that might get their attention? Also, we don’t have to wait 14 months. We can VOTE today. (Actually, you can VOTE as many days as you wish.)

Here is all you need to do. Address an envelope to:

John Boehner

Office of the Speaker

H-232 The Capitol

Washington, DC 20515

On the back of the envelope write the word “VOTE” and below that write I’m gonna Vote Out The Elected. You can also put a personal note inside if you want. By writing your message on the outside of the envelope, everyone between you and The Speaker gets a chance to read it.

Emails can be deleted and ignored. Phone calls can be re-directed to an answering machine. 14 million snail mail letters piled up in a mail room are pretty hard not to notice. (This might also help out the US Postal Service a little.)

If you can find an envelope and a stamp, you can be part of the Coffee Party. You can offer to VOTE out everyone, regardless of party, and start over.

If they can’t work together to fix this great country, we have the power to VOTE them all away. The solution is obvious. The “Big Dogs” either learn to work together, or the rest of the pack kicks them into the litter box.

I sent my letter today. I’m only one small voice. You are only one small voice. Together we are two small voices. All together we can fill someone’s mail room up with about 50 tons of VOTEs. If that doesn’t get there attention, I guess we could mail them our kid’s old shoes that don’t fit?