Congress ratings reach new low and it’s no wonder
American Police Beat
February 2012 edition
It’s official- the United States Congress has reached a new low. The most powerful law making body on the planet Earth has an abysmal five percent approval rating. You read that right. Just five people out of a hundred think that the House and Senate are doing their job.
For context, it’s important to note that Congress has never been particularly popular with the vast majority of Americans. People generally hate Congress but like their Congressman. But a public approval rating of five percent suggests something different is happening now. Or does it?
Sure a lot of people that got played in the real estate market would like to see at least one elected official take a stand and demand some hearings. Some might even expect to be thrown a bone or two in the way of a couple of Wall St. prosecutions- just for appearances sake even.
But the things that politicians do, the backroom deals, the outright lies, the blatant self-serving that is endemic to American politics, that really get under our skin are as old as the hills.
Consider the case of outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. Known as a tough-on-crime conservative, Barbour touted the following accomplishments as his crime-fighting legacy:
“We’ve given our highway patrolmen record pay increases. We’ve passed the Castle law to make sure you can protect yourself in your home. We passed new laws to crack down on felons who commit crimes with guns and longer, mandatory sentences for gun crimes.”
Some people might get the impression based on such statements that Mr. Barbour actually cares about criminal justice and crime victims.
And he does care. Right up to the point where he gets friendly with convicted killers doing work on the governor’s mansion to get time off their sentences.
Pardoning one guy locked up on a possession with intent to distribute who’s changed his or her ways in the pokey is one thing.
Letting four killers walk because you found out they were actually really great guys when they were doing all that free work on the house is something else entirely.
In the executive order Barbour signed that freed the murderers, he wrote each "proved to be a diligent and dedicated workman."
It’s hard to imagine that made it any easier for the victim’s families who were notified over the phone by state corrections officials that the governor had decided to let the convicted killers of their loved ones walk. Barbour even said that springing killers that had failed to serve their time was a tradition in the Mississippi Governor’s office.
This is what drives people crazy about elected officials and the political class. It’s not just the fact that they don’t care about the people they’re elected to represent. It really has more to do with the fact that they don’t have a clue why anyone would be upset about pardoning four killers just because they felt like it.
