If you haven't seen this, Harvard conducted a survey of "Millennials" to determine their impressions on Washington, especially Obamacare.
In order to best interpret my impressions of the survey, please note the following statement taken from the article: “Overcoming today's bitter partisanship and governmental gridlock is essential to showing Millennials and all our citizens that Washington, D.C. – and our democratic process – can still work and make a difference."
http://www.joegilbertforcongress.com/
Therein lies the base of the problem. The federal government has become so bloated and powerful, that citizens just assume that Washington is supposed to solve all our problems. They can't. That is why in the Constitution, the federal government is trusted with only 18 enumerated powers. 536 people (435 in the House, 100 in the Senate and 1 president) cannot run every aspects of the country and the lives of 330 million people. They were never supposed to. But, over the last 100 years, since Woodrow Wilson, there has been a steady concentration of power in Washington. So, today, everything from trade, employment, the minimum wage, roads and bridges, the education of our children and now our healthcare has by practice fallen under the purview of the federal government.
There is nothing they run, except the military, that is cost efficient and effective. The Postal Service, AMTRAK, Department of Veterans Affairs or healthcare.gov are all failures. Two other aspects of the survey are worth noting as well. First, at long last, a major part of the base that supported the president in his election and reelection are waking up to the truth of what centralized power really means. They are directly feeling the effects of how the government lied to them to get their support, then are now using them in their redistribution plan that is Obamacare. The Millennials are the ones that are being counted on to pay the much higher premiums to fund all the subsidies, pre-existing conditions and elderly that will be actually using their health insurance. Now they know. It may be too late, but they know.
Secondly, and more troubling, is that more of them are becoming discouraged and not taking part in politics at all. Instead of being angered to the point of action, they are being angered to the point of inaction. It should be the other way around. But, as stated above, when power is unconstitutionally concentrated at the federal level, a feeling of helplessness can take hold where people feel like they really can't make a difference and their one vote doesn't count. This is a major theme of my campaign. People need to feel empowered again. The United States is no longer a true representative republic run in accordance with the Constitution. We have a political ruling class of elitists that exempt themselves from the very laws that they themselves pass. This is wrong and it needs to be turned around. Every member of Congress and the president take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States then violate that oath on a regular basis.
http://www.joegilbertforcongress.com/
A majority of those surveyed said they would recall every member of Congress and the president. Good. This really comes back to my last point. We were never intended to have a ruling class. Instead, we have representatives making 35 year careers out of 2 year terms. And, they'll spend $$$ Millions in a single campaign to get a job that pays $174,000. For the majority of politicians, public service no longer matters. It is all about gaining and maintaining power. Elections strongly favor the incumbents and it is virtually impossible for grassroots campaigns to take hold, because in the end, it is all about how much money a candidate can raise and significantly less about the issues. There is a political machine at work in Washington that only wants to hold on to power, not solve problems. In every case, their answer is more government, another program, another agency or bureaucracy and more spending. It can be easily mathematically demonstrated that is a flawed formula. Our national debt is $17,208,550,000,000. There are more than 91 million Americans no longer participating in the workforce and not even counted towards our unemployment number. There are 49 million Americans on food stamps and the poverty rate is 16% (the same exact rate as it was in 1964 when LBJ launched his famous "War on Poverty" on which we've spent more than $16 Trillion).
Obama's numbers are down on international affairs as well. The latest "deal" with Iran does nothing to stop their nuclear weapons program and he pressed for military intervention in Syria's civil war. As of Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013, at least 2,153 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan.
Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 19,496 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department. We're still in Afghanistan and when we do leave, what kind of Afghanistan will we leave behind? We left Iraq with our tails between our legs too - where I served 3 tours. There is nothing in this administration to feel good about. Nothing.
I know the survey really focused on Obamacare as it should. Obamacare is, in my opinion, the single worst piece of legislation passed in Washington. It will destroy our private health insurance industry. It will drive doctors out of practice and by extension wreck medical schools (who is going to spend $300,000 to become a doctor through 10 years of school, residency, etc only to be forced to accept Medicaid and Medicare patients for whom you'll only be reimbursed 40 cents on the dollar forcing you to operate at a loss?), drive full time workers into part time jobs, force up to 100 million Americans to lose their health insurance, and those that will have insurance will pay way more than they are paying now for better care, and in the end, by the government's own estimates cost the economy $2.7 Trillion and still leave 30 million with no insurance at all. Oh, and by the way, the website is a disaster and people who do log on are explicitly told they can have no expectation of privacy of the plethora of personal information they are forced to provide.
Given all of this, the results of the survey are really no big surprise. The only surprise here is that it took so long for the Millennials to wake up to what's going on. But, instead of withdrawing from the political process, we need these Americans involved and engaged to change the system that they are so fed up with.
I can be reached either on my campaign website: http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/ or on my facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress.
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