After almost two years of working against us, after twenty-two months of listening to lobbyists, supporting big business, permitting mega-mergers, running up debt, and eating away at the Constitution – our congressmen are scurrying madly to find some issue or issues they can promote to show how they really have the public’s interests at heart and, hopefully, get reelected.

Returning to work today, September 5^th, leaves just 19 days for the good old boys to pass something meaningful before they take another vacation where they’ll campaign and brag about all of the wonderful things they’ve done for the people.

That’s what we get this time – nineteen days for our senators and representatives to finally think about the American people and come up with something we can all applaud. That isn’t much time.

As William Rivers Pitt of “Truthout” puts it succinctly and more politely; "Labor Day weekend is traditionally considered the starting gun for Congressional midterm races. The work to gain or hold seats has been going on for months, of course, but Labor Day is when everyone is supposed to start paying attention. Only 63 days remain until the votes are cast."

On the other hand, back in 1983 it took only one month to pass a bill and have the president sign a law raising payroll taxes far beyond anything necessary at that time, or even in terms of today’s needs. We’re still living with that one. And it certainly doesn’t take long to vote themselves pay raises. Nor did it take time to enact the Patriot Act without reading it.

But this is different. Today’s problems are so immense and complex they can’t be solved overnight. After all, it’s not like the ease of signing over their constitutional obligation to be the only governmental body capable of declaring war.

1 – Immigration: What should have been of concern five years ago, immediately following 9/11, has just recently come to the forefront and our leaders are not going to do anything about it until after elections, if then. After years of permissiveness, after decades of not enforcing existing immigration laws, Congress is split over “new laws” to stem the flow of illegal aliens crossing our borders daily and keeping track of legal immigrants who often overstay their visas and become part of the underground of lawbreakers. Don’t let the politicians fool you by pretending to try. They dropped the ball a long time ago and are now caught on the horns of a dilemma of their own making.

2 – The Invasion & Occupation of Iraq: While the majority of Americans are fed up with the “war” in Iraq, many because we haven’t had a decisive victory, politicians are seeking shelter in demands for a “timeline” to bring our boys home. They will brag about this in the coming days. Meanwhile, we are building dozens of air bases and other military installations, including the world’s largest embassy edifice, in that hapless nation which will be permanently manned by American troops. Don’t let them fool you on this obvious contradiction either. Unlike Vietnam, we are not going to leave this quagmire without a military force of “advisors” to “support” one faction of the new government or another and it all adds to our Empire’s more than 725 military bases in other foreign countries. Syria and Iran are next.

3 – The Economy: If you believe the propaganda about our “booming” economy, then you belong with the illegal aliens who don’t realize they’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire. With outsourcing, a dwindling manufacturing base in everything but “weapons of mass destruction,” cutbacks in pensions and health care benefits, the disappearance of the American dream and “war on the Middle Class,” wages that don’t keep pace with inflation, a negative balance of trade approaching one trillion per year, bankruptcies and last ditch attempts to reform some of our major manufacturers like the auto and airline industries who are about to join the defunct railroad and steel industries, more people employed in various forms of government across the country than in building anything marketable, and false figures about the job situation (the list just goes on and on). It’s not a pretty picture, especially with the national debt rising more than $600 billion this year while the same government continues to “borrow” our Social Security supplemental retirement money. And we can’t count on a bunch of lawyers to get us out of this mess.

About the only “gift” we can hope for in these final days is a possible raise in the federal minimum wage that hasn’t been raised since 1996 and should be tied to some sort of automatic increase in cost-of-living. Even this is more likely to be in the form of “promises” rather than legislative action. It goes headlong against the interests of big business Bush supports.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings when many of the solutions are so simple. For instance, we could get rid of almost half of the national debt by simply erasing nonmarketable bonds that serve no purpose to anyone but the federal government that uses them to tax and double tax us.