If I hear one more political speech or political ad, I’m going to scream! No, not just the kind of scream a child might make on the playground, I’m talking about a real Tarzan scream that will petrify the wildlife in my neighborhood. November 6th, election day, can’t come soon enough.

I am convinced politics is a beauty pageant for ugly people. Each day while watching the evening news, I have to listen to reporters interviewing legislators with the charisma of a toad stool.  I see our elected officials spout daily how they’re frustrated at the other side, the other side lies, or “my esteemed colleague is misguided.” None of us have fallen off a turnip truck recently and I think all of us can smell a rat. The problem is, we’re losing count of all the rats. Members of Congress remind me of young children. One child will hit or poke the other and cause major mayhem, yet moments later stand in front of you and deny with the picture of angelic innocence. “Who me, they ask? No that’s impossible, I would never do anything wrong!” “I take my difficult job seriously.”

When I was in my teens I worked in a furniture plant. I ran the shipping line. I’d pack pine furniture and send it down rollers to a waiting cart for delivery to the loading docks. It seemed each hour, the foreman would love to come and yell at us, “Speed it up, get to work”. I don’t think I could have made him happy if I had as many hands as an octopus has tentacles.

Americans for decades have been the most productive workers on the planet. Proof is in the amount of McDonalds restaurants dotting the landscape. People are so busy they don’t even have time to boil water for macaroni when they get home. The typical day for most of us, is we wake up before our eyes do and we return home like a salmon. Uphill battle all day swimming against the forces until we drop our load and die. So imagine my anger when I learned recently that our “hardworking legislators get 23 1/2 weeks of vacation per year. Yes you heard me right, 23 1/2 weeks! Yet even in comparison with past legislative bodies, our present Senate has proven to be (no surprise) the least productive in history.

Take the $174,000 a year each legislator makes (notice I didn’t say earn), divide it over their 28 1/2 weeks of legislative work and it represents an average of $6,105.26 for every week of work.  That’s the equivalent of $317,460 for full time production.  Adding insult to injury, the above numbers don’t even include the full health benefits and retirement benefits they “earn” even after serving for as little as one term. If there isn’t a cleaning of the so-called rats in Congress at this next election, I’m making a phone call. “Hello Terminex, you’re Pest Control specialists right? Good, I found a House that needs your attention, and it’s a doozy.”