When we talk about how our Government is corrupt and decadent to the core, it is items like the following in particular that raise our ire.  I received this as an e-mail with the suggestion that I recirculate it to 20 others. I’ll recommend that you do so by copy-and-pasting it to friends.  Here’s the message**:

“No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women who serve in the U.S. military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, only get 50% of their pay while politicians who hold their political positions in the safe confines of the Capitol, protected by these same men and women, receive full-pay benefits after serving just one term.

“It just does not make any sense.

“From Fox News on Monday, we also learned that the staffers of Congressional family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks broadcast it. When you add this to the facts noted below, you wonder where it will all stop.  Thirty-five states have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government for imposing various, unlawful burdens upon them.  It only takes 38 states to convene a Constitutional Convention. This will take less than a minute to read. If you agree, please pass it on. This is an idea that we should address. For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws.

“The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform… in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn’t seem logical. We do not have an elite that are above the law. I truly don’t care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever; their self-serving ways must stop. If each person who receives this message forwards it to 20 others, most Americans will see it within three days. This is one proposal that should be circulated: a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution, written as follows: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”

**A subscriber who checked the facts in this message has written to inform me that members of Congress do indeed have to pay back student loans.  As far as I am aware, however, all other facts are correct as stated.