Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, most of us agree that Congress is not serving us well.  I wrote to my senators to complain.  I received a plain vanilla impersonal response from Ben Cardin, the junior senator representing Maryland.

This is how I responded:

Dear Mr. Cardin,

Thank you for your reply.  But you should tell the person who put it together that it is totally inadequate and completely disconnected from the letter I wrote.  If you believe that you can serve your constituents with this "one size fits all" approach, you are mistaken.

The main point of my letter was that I do not believe that legislators who do not legislate should be paid.  You were paid during the shutdown.  That is a problem.

Second, Congress wields weapons of economic destruction and inflicts suffering on the country by using these weapons against the American people.  I want you to work on taking those weapons away so that a shutdown cannot happen again.

Third, I want Congress to be held accountable for the damage they do to the American people.  The cost of the shutdown ($24 billion) is totally unacceptable.  Who is going to pay for it?  The taxpayer?

Finally, I always vote Democratic.  I voted for you.  I do understand that the root cause of this fiasco was the intransigence of the right wing of the Republican party, and a person like Ted Cruz is about the most vile piece of vermin who ever walked on this planet.  The difference between you and me is that you applied for a job in which you need to deal with these dreadful people.  I didn't because I am unable to do so.  With my vote, I hired you to deal with him and his kind.  The fact that the shutdown happened demonstrates that you were not effective in limiting the damage that these people inflict.  Simply stated, you are not doing what I hired you to do -- and I want to see improved performance.

I wonder if this letter will trigger a personal or just another generic response.

Yours,

Louis Biggie