Dear Senator John Goff

Dear Senator John Goff,

Having personally struggled with this bad economy, it's long past the time that I write you. I'm a middle-aged daughter of second generation immigrants to this wonderful land and my heart is broken by what has taken place in our country. I'm expressing what it's really been like for millions of United State's concerned and united middleclass citizens during this economic recession and the tragic downfall of our country. Yes, I truly mean tragic downfall when referring all that's happened since the year 2000.

Having been born of Eastern European descent, actually, Czechoslovakian on my Mom's side and English on my Dad's side, working hard is a way of life for me and not just my occupation. I held my first paying job at fourteen years old and worked hard my whole life until for the first time I couldn't find a job. Not the way that it used to be, leaving one job one week for a better job the next week, I've been out of work for a very long time. Now with no more money coming in, having begged money from all of my friends and relatives, I've used up all of my unemployment benefits that some malign as entitlements given to the lazy, the users, and the abusers of the government welfare systems.

Being that I'm a sexual incest survivor, the only reason I haven't given up hope is that I'm a survivor. Never giving up is my personal ray of hope and my life's light that never completely extinguishes. Having already been homeless, surviving on the streets, sleeping in shelters, and eating at missions, after a flood took everything that I owned, I've already been through my lowest point. Now the only way is from here is up, that is with the helping hand and the assistance of my government.

Having volunteered my time at shelters before, I've always been a proud woman and have taken care to provide for others' needs as well as my own. It was a real eye opener for me to stand on the other side of the counter. For someone with my ethical and hard working background, it was a humiliating experience to stand in line at the mission while waiting to accept free food when I was always the one donating it. If I hadn't been so hungry, I never would have accepted it. Having so much false pride, I'd think that someone else needed the food more than I did.

I also had to register at a food bank and, when I went there for the first time, all I could feel was shame for being so poor, anger for being terminally unemployed, and desperation for myself and for the others who were there seeking help as well. There were lots of single mothers with small children just as there were plenty of middle-aged men who should be working instead of standing in line and waiting for a free handout. All of us voiced the same issues. Willing and able to work, we all want to work and to earn a living but there are no jobs. Nonetheless with all of us needing to survive to look for work for another day, we all did what we needed to do to endure the hardship by accepting help when we needed it the most.

I'm also without health insurance and haven't been to the doctor in well over three years because I can't afford to have a check-up. The fees and the co-pays are astronomical and testing of any kind is not possible for someone in my dire, financial situation. I'm poor and desperate but more than that, I don't fit the definition of what others think of as a poor person is. I was middle class. Now, without any income, I'm the poorest of the poor and the most desperate of the desperate. There, I've finally said it. I'm poor and desperate.

I've worked temp jobs whenever they're available and whenever they call me. Better than picking up cans and bottles from the gutter, I've never turned down work no matter how little the pay and belittling the job. Only, it's hard to accept work and to pass on jobs to earn some money when I don't have a car and the bus route doesn't go all the way to the mall from where I live in the spare bedroom of a Mennonite woman on her farm. Difficult for you to understand my financial situation when, no doubt, you've never been in my shoes. I don't expect you to understand my medical situation either. As a public servant, now there's an oxymoron, a politician serving the public, unlike the constituents that you represent, you have access to the best healthcare benefits in the world.

If you have the best healthcare, being that I'm your boss, the voter who put you in office and who pays you by my taxes to represent me, shouldn't we have the same healthcare too? Yet, you dare call our meager healthcare Obama care when you public servants have the best healthcare in the world. How dare you! I wonder what we, as average American citizens, should call your healthcare, Royalty care?

Whenever I hear the word entitlements, it makes me want to scream. When the rest of us are struggling, our elected, public servant politicians, refer to the hardworking, albeit unemployed and underemployed middle class as lazy people who refuse to work. How dare they! How dare you!

Our elected officials see us as people not trying to help themselves while holding our hands out for free public programs. It's an outrage that the hard working poor, the underemployed, the unemployed, the elderly, the disabled, and the good, law abiding, retired citizens who have worked so hard to build this great country all of their lives are viewed as no good for nothing money grubbers and entitlement takers. If you were to make your entitlement benefits public and if we were to tabulate all of the entitlement programs of the legislators, no doubt, you'd be embarrassed and we'd all be enraged. Between the free trips, free meals, free gifts, healthcare, doctors that come to see you instead of you going to see them, your private cafeteria and gym, and the extravagant budgets you are given with every Congressional committee you sit on while doing absolute nothing, how dare you call the kettle black.

The vast majority of the unemployed middle class have tried over and over again to find work without success. Yet, after you sent all of the high paying manufacturing jobs out of the country to Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, India, and now China, the only jobs left are service related part-time jobs, jobs with the lowest hourly rate and jobs without benefits. The best I've been able to get is some temporary, part-time work with no benefits that paid slightly higher than minimum wage. Just as I can't survive on that, there's no getting my life back on that low wage. All that it would take to ruin all that I've worked so hard to build, is to become ill.

Sincerely,

Concerned and United Middleclass.

Dear Concerned United Middleclass,

Forget the formalities just because I'm a United States Senator and you're not. Please, call me Jack Goff.

Now, who are you and why do you keep writing me?

Go away.

Senator Jack Goff

Dear Jack Goff,

Now that we're friends, kind of, not really, not at all. You don't have to call me Concerned and United Middleclass. Please call me CUM.

Whether Republican or Democrat all I hear on the news is that the House and Congress is stuck in a stalemate, a standoff of stubbornness that hurts every taxpayer and every voter but you. If you were all sincere about turning the economy around and paying down the deficit, you'd put Americans back to work instead of outsourcing our jobs. You'd pass laws to make it illegal for American companies to shelter their income in countries where they don't pay taxes.

Tragically, the reason why you don't want to put Americans back to work is because there's no money in it for you. There's more money in helping big business make higher profits by taking advantage of the cheap labor overseas. It's not about the recession, the deficit, or about jobs, it's all about money, which is why every politician leaves Washington much richer than whence they came. Unlike the rest of us, we become poorer and you become richer.

It seems to me, with your big budget to run your large staff that cater to your every whim, you've never known what it's like to do and to go without. With your health club membership, free cafeteria food, all expense paid vacations, lease cars and homes, free gifts, and benefits that the average American will never know what you receive for being such a self-sacrificing public servant, we're all duped to believe that we're the ones looking for handouts when it's just the opposite Senator. How dare you say we're not entitled to unemployment benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, after we've all worked so very hard to earn them and after all the entitlements that you, your colleagues, and your family receives. When the rest of us are struggling to pay back college tuition loans, your children are attending the best universities for free by you passing legislation that will favor the colleges in your district. Shame on you for making pacts with the devil. Bordering on extortion, isn't that bribery?

What in world do you think it feels like when we hear that our government is emptying out the coffers to the banking industry without an accounting and/or follow-up for how the money is distributed and/or spent. An open ended, no interest loan, when will that money be paid back when you don't even know how much was given. Just as our loan documents are part of our credit history, shouldn't those loan documents to banks, automakers, and insurance companies be of public record too? When do I get my bailout Senator?

Instead of helping the economy by giving loans to start businesses, buy homes and cars, the banks horded their TARP monies instead and didn't help those who were supposed to get their financial support. When the rest of us were losing our homes, our cars, our 401K's, our future, and our hope, the banks and oil companies were making record profits and giving 8 figure bonuses. When I don't have a job, can't afford to pay rent, buy food, and pay my college loans, where is my bailout?

Sincerely,

CUM

Dear CUM,

Never one to admit that Senator Jack Goff and CUM don't work hand in hand, you stroke me and I'll ejaculate you, I mean, I'll take care of you.

If you'd like to make a contribution to my reelection campaign, please send your check made out to me personally, or cash, preferably cash, should I not win reelection, to Jack Goff.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Senator Jack Goff

Dear Jack Goff,

Here we are borrowing from China to distribute what we borrow to foreign lands. Every year we give billions and trillions of dollars to countries who despise us. It's a waste of the lives of our people and of our money to fight wars we can't possibly win because the people involved have been at war for centuries and do not have any intention of co-existing in peace. Those trillions of dollars that we give to every country other than our own could well served feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless here in our own country. We have too many disabled, unemployed, hungry, homeless, and poor in this country.

Yet, instead of fixing a broken economy, by turning the focus at home to what's happening overseas, we waved the American flag and blamed the war on revenge for the destruction of the Twin Towers. Truly, I don't understand why we started a war with Iraq. President Bush said they had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, weapons of mass destruction were never found. Vice President Cheney's old company, Halliburton, was awarded a no-bid contract to supply our troops. Are you kidding me? A no-bid contract in this time of government waste and watch dog spending, how and why was Halliburton given a no-bid contract?

In the meantime, Angelo Mozilo, a Bush, close personal friend and campaign contributor, the CEO of Country Wide Bank, the bank that gave out so very many fraudulent mortgages to those who lost their homes, was given a free pass. After paying a fine, he was allowed to walk away with 450 million tax free dollars while the rest of us couldn't afford to put food on our tables and gas in our cars. Yet, if a black man stole a loaf of bread to feed his family he'd be incarcerated for twenty years.

Testifying and lying to Congress, Treasury Secretary Paulson assured us that Lehman Brothers, his old company, was sound one month and bankrupt the next month. Being that he was a savvy business man and United States Treasurer, why did he say that, especially when he knew it wasn't true? Furthermore, why wasn't he charged with perjury, arrested, and sent to jail? I'll tell you why. Because he needed to cash in his stock options before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the rest of us found out the real truth about his own company.

Now, I'm not financial wizard, but isn't that called insider trading and illegal to do? He's another one who walked away with 450 million tax free dollars on the pretense of serving the public. Too outrageously disturbing to be true, if I read all of this in a novel, I'd never believe it.

With too many greedy hands stealing from the same pot at the expense of the average middle class American, it's as if our government has gone insane and no one knows where to begin to fix the massive problems. As you know from the polls, the vast majority of Americans do not trust elected officials to act upon our behalf and believe that they are incapable of compromise to effect the appropriate changes needed to save our county from destruction. Aren't you embarrassed to even accept a paycheck when you haven't earned it? If you're not, you should be. Shame on you.

Sincerely,

CUM

Dear CUM,

Thank you for contacting the office of Jack Goff. I've enclosed a tiny American flag and an autographed photo of me with the president. I'm the one way in the back of the room, to the left, in the corner.

Sincerely,

Senator Jack Goff

Dear Senator Jack Goff,

Thank you for the flag and for the picture.

Why isn't it possible to enact laws that will keep our jobs in our country? Free enterprise and competition was a good thing when initiated. Yet, with the advent of a global economy ruling over a national one and our laws against monopolies broken in favor of the United States having one mega bank, one huge oil company, and three select car companies price fixing, the subsequent laws that passed to encourage free trade were done so in favor of big business and against the continuation of unions and the betterment middleclass.

We need tougher laws on immigration, as most all other countries have, and we need some emergency laws passed to stop exporting jobs and to make it more affordable for foreign countries to import our goods. We also need term-limit laws for our elected officials so that they will spend more time working on the people's business instead of spending the majority of their time working on their own personal business of fund raising for re-election. We need to stop pact funding, phony umbrella companies funded by billionaires to push their personal agendas. We need to put a leash on lobbyists so that they can't forward their interests over our interests. We need to take care of the United State's citizens first, secure our borders, stay out of wars unless someone is trying to attack our land, and to stomp out the corrupt greed in government and business.

No one needs to take home a bonus of several million dollars while there is so much suffering going on all over the country. The greed of government officials and corporate business is disgusting. How can those greedy individuals live with themselves? Have they lost their sense of decency? This horrible greed is going to be the downfall of our nation if something isn't done now.

We need serious and thoughtful help now. One only need research the fall of the Roman Empire and see the amazing similarities of their fall from greatness with the way the United States' policies are today. Our society will end just as the Roman's did if we don't quickly make the needed radical changes.

There are so many of us continuing to suffer and the majority are losing hope for their personal future as well as for the country's. Please shake up the other law makers and try to make them understand the seriousness of this situation. Please. Now.

Signed,

CUM

Dear CUM,

Please don't rock the boat.

Now fuck off.

Senator Jack Off