The I.R.S., the Esperanza Fire Fighters’ Families, and the “Rump” Congress

ã Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, December 10, 2006

In customary fashion the “Rump” Congress, controlled by Republicans, came to an ignominious end early Saturday morning, when House Speaker Dennis Hastert gaveled the House of Representatives to the close of the 109^th Session of that august body.  The Senate “limped” to a close a little over an hour later.

Left on the table is an enormous amount of work to do when the 110^th Congress convenes in January.  The new Congress, albeit it, by the skin of their teeth, will be controlled by the Democrats for the first time in 14 years…God help us!

Among the list of “goofs” that the members of the 109^th Congress will have numbered on their “roster of shame” will be that they did not pass a “private act”…in fact, to my knowledge, they did not even introduce one…to exempt the families of the five Esperanza fire fighters,  killed earlier this year, from an Internal Revenue Service rule that will make it impossible for these families to receive the $1 million in contributions that have been donated from private citizens to help them in this time of need.

To make a long story short, Riverside County, California asked the local United Way to handle these contributions as they began to pour in after the tragedy.  That was a sensible thing to do, as the United Way has the machinery to deal with such issues.  However, because the donations in this case were limited to the families of the five fire fighters, who died, the I.R.S. stepped in to point-out that this was a violation of rules governing tax exempt organizations, like the United Way.

Now before everybody gets mad at the Internal Revenue Service, I have to say that they were just doing their job…sort of like cleaning a septic tank…nasty, but sometimes necessary.

The “snot” in all of this, again, is the “do nothing but help the corporatists and sit on your rump” Congress.  A private act would have handled the matter in short order, but Hastert, Frist , Kennedy, Pelosi, Reed, Boehner and the rest of that bunch had better things to do…like making sure they will receive an average of a $3,300 pay raise next year!

As for me, I have voted for my last incumbent.  If they are in office, I am against them.  The only way to ever change America for the better is to end dynastic terms in Congress.  One term is preferred…two terms at the most…three terms only if their opponent is a Muslim fanatic or a neo-Nazi!

I suspect that the issue of “global warming” is real.  Perhaps it is not as much of a threat as the environmentalist would have us believe.  Perhaps we don’t need to have all automobiles destroyed and all coal-powered factories shut-down.  At the same time, perhaps there are sensible steps that individual citizens, as well as the corporate world, might take to make things better.

Oh, well, we have to remember that politicians are in charge.  That is an environmental disaster in itself.