A clear message

We, the people, begged your attention via our protests against big government takeovers of the private sector, out-of-control spending and disregard for our rights and the Constitution at Tea Party rallies and town hall meetings this past year.

Our self-serving members of Congress chose to ignore us, denigrate us and brush us aside in pursuit of their self-interests, ideological policies and political and personal ambitions. On the heels of the historic and overwhelming defeat of a liberal Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate by a conservative Republican in Massachusetts (Thank you, Massachusetts), I ask you, can you hear us now?

I have been writing to you for a year or so, expressing my growing anger at the elitist attitude, arrogance and outright corruption that pervades the supermajority Democrat Congress and the current administration in Washington, D.C., and their total disregard for the American electorate in their overwhelmingly aggressive pursuit of a socialist agenda that embraces the ideology of the far left to transform America.

Your responses were polite, albeit dismissive, filled with political rhetoric and party-line talking points that attempted to (condescendingly) explain your support for and legislative action on a bill in question. The implication being that I should understand that you know more about what is best for me than I do. The voicemail box in your Washington, D.C., office was consistently full every time I called in to express my opposition to controversial bills that were heading for a vote on the Senate floor. Your indifference and disconnection was duly noted.

As a law-abiding, responsible senior citizen, I can tell you that I have never in my life feared for the survival of our democratic republic of the United States of America or felt so threatened by our government than I have this past year witnessing the radical policies that have been in play by this administration and, for the most part, a complicit, corrupt Congress to achieve their Marxist agenda as quick as possible before we, the people, awakened to their nefarious misdeeds.

Not only is their agenda so despicable and contradictory to the will of the people, but the closed-door, backroom deals and the obscene tactics suggesting coercion, bribery and arm-twisting to force their unpopular (to say the least), deceptive legislation down our throats, is reprehensible and beyond the pale.

And, may I be so bold as to suggest that you were as culpable as anyone in that process. It appears that you managed to pull off a bit of a sweetheart deal for your "favored" constituents of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach counties to protect their Medicare Advantage plans while the rest of us senior Floridians get the shaft in return for your vote on the government takeover of health care.

You can call it health care reform, but we aren't as stupid as Congress thinks, and we know what this boondoggle is all about; it has very little to do with "health care" and nothing to do with "reform." And, one can only guess what special interest group you represent and what you stand to gain by securing federal stimulus dollars "earmarked" for the Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail project.

Well, in case you haven't noticed, Massachusetts has sent a clear message that we, the people, are angry and will not be ignored and denigrated anymore. With all due respect, we are not going to shut up and get out of the way while our country, our democratic republic and our Constitution are under attack from within. And I promise you, we, the people, are coming.

For what it's worth, based on my own experience and what I personally witnessed as a participant in local Tea Party rallies and the massive 912 protest rally in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12, which the biased, mainstream media totally ignored and about which this Congress chose to remain in denial, we will be at the polls in record numbers in November 2010 and 2012.

Katherine D. Roa

Spring Hill