H.R. 5741: Universal National Service Act – followup
July 29, 2010
So yesterday I did something I try not to do. I read a bill, full text, and posted about it without doing any other homework. Admittedly it is a terrifying bill. However, upon further research it appears this bill has been introduced four times before, by the same Representative. The press release regarding this bill can be viewed here.
So while this bill is doomed to failure, this bring up another interesting thought. Representative Charles Rangel has been the New Your District 15 Representative for sixteen years. He first introduced this bill in 2003, thus he has been re-elected three times since first introducing that bill. So I have to ask, does this represent his constituency? And if not, why do they keep electing him, and why does he keep wasting time and resources submitting it? Is his constituency that ignorant? Is this representative of the ignorance of the nation at large?
The implications of his continued re-election are just as frightening as the bill itself.
August 2, 2010 at 21:14
More frightening, really, when you realize that it’s probably not an isolated phenomenon. Most people have very little knowledge about who their voted officials are and what they actually do. I consider this to be the fault of both the voting public and the people being voted in.
On the plus side, with communication being what it’s become, this seems to be /slowly/ fixing itself.