Whenever my “representative” Tim Burchett posts something on social media, I resist the urge to respond in social media and instead email his office. This is today’s email:
As a constituent of Tim Burchett’s, I am writing to request he raise his level of professionalism. I write to remind Mr. Burchett that he represents all citizens and not just those of a single political party.
On October 29, 2023 at 11:13am, Mr. Burchett Tweeted, “As the radical left continues its wringing of hands and bed wetting over @SpeakerJohnson I am convinced we made the right choice.”
This antagonistic rhetoric is unprofessional and more on par with something I would expect of a middle school teenager rather than a Congress person.
Allow me to rewrite your Tweet in a non-confrontational way that does not leave your constituents feeling attacked or underrepresented. You would have kept my respect, what little I have left of you, to simply write: “I am convinced we made the right choice with @SpeakerJohnson.” Read your original then read that line and see how you could convey your meaning without stooping to childish bullying tactics. Plus you even get to keep a sneaky double entendre with your poor English “right choice”.
Learn your job. Grow up.
Burchett’s response:
Dear Mr. McCaughan,
Thank you for contacting me about my recent tweet. It is an honor to serve in Washington on behalf of the Second District, and I appreciate you taking the time to write in to voice your concerns.
The tweet you referenced was posted by me to my personal, unofficial Twitter account. Like many Americans, I use social media to express my views and opinions. While I never intend to offend, I will continue to use social media as a way to communicate, both in my official capacity on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as well as on my personal Twitter account, where you saw the tweet you referenced.
I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your views and opinions when you feel compelled to do so. Your messages enable me to better understand the priorities of East Tennesseans, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as I work with my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to produce legislation that addresses the needs of the American people.
Please let me know if you have additional questions about this legislative issue or if I may assist you with any issues in the future. If you would like to receive updates from my office, I invite you to visit burchett.house.gov to sign up for my newsletter.
Sincerely,
Rep. Tim Burchett Member of Congress
My reply:
Thank you for your response. I appreciate the desire to have a professional and a personal representation of yourself. As a sitting member of Congress, you do not get the luxury of such a division. As an employee of a large company, I do not get the luxury of saying whatever I want on the Internet without risking repercussions from my employer and possibly making myself unhirable. The People do not see the distinction between your personal and official accounts.. You represent us whether you are publishing from an official account or a personal account. As a public figure, you are held to a higher standard than the rest of us. You gain nothing by belittling the democrats or Joe Biden in an antagonist message. You serve yourself as well as your constituents better by keeping your messaging more neutral and to the facts. We sent you to congress to represent us. Your behavior reflects directly on the people of East Tennessee.
If Al Franken can be held accountable for something he did decades prior in his youth, then you can be held accountable for what you publish regardless of it being an official account or a personal account. Regardless of where you place your messaging, you are still messaging as a Representative and we the people expect a level of decorum and professionalism from you. Rise up. Be better.
At 1:43pm on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, Mr. Burchett Tweeted: “Steve Bannon asked me if I thought East Tennesseans would support cutting funding for some of these alphabet agencies that aren’t doing their jobs. I told him absolutely, because they’ve told me so.”
1) Nobody cares one iota about Steve Bannon. Why do you surround yourself with criminals?
2) Please be professional and speak with less ambiguity. Part of your job is to inform your constituents. I am a constituent. I do not want dog whistles and sensationalism from you. I want details and clear explanations. Do your job.
3) Please tell me which agencies you propose cutting funding.
4) You say they are not doing their job (funny coming from someone who does not do his job). Please cite specific examples for each of the agencies you mentioned in #3. I will be posting this email and your reply to several social media cites so please fact check and be thorough.
5) I am a constituent and kindly ask that Mr. Burchett stop misrepresenting me. You claim we have told you to cut funding (to what?) I have suggested we build one less aircraft carrier and fewer bombs to fund education and health care. Our country drastically overspends on defense while neglecting important services such as education and the health of its citizens. For example, give the Department of Education more funding and watch this country become great again. Support a universal single payer health system and watch our GDP rise as healthy people will be more productive members of society longer.
Every time Tim Burchett sends a tweet, I email him a response. Ok, not every time, but as frequently as time permits.
I am a constituent of Tim Burchett and want him to stop embarrassing Tennessee. On March 31, 2023 at 12:12pm Mr. Burchett tweeted “Americans of any political party should be scared. The rule of law doesn’t exist when a former President is indicted like this. Bragg made his intentions clear before he was in the DA’s office- and this will take a toll on our country.”
Mr. Burchett is wrong! The rule of law exists because no one person stands above the law and a criminal like Donald Trump must be held accountable for his illegal activities. The reason we should be scared is that people such as Mr. Burchett work in positions of power within our government while clearly not understanding his own responsibilities. What is scary is that Mr. Burchett lacks the moral integrity to see to it that the criminals of the previous administration are prosecuted including the January insurrectionists which includes Mr. Burchett.
Tennessee House Rep. Julia Hurley (R-Lenoir City) said, "I don’t understand why it’s news, and I don’t want to talk about the desk."
Tennessee House Rep. Julia Hurley (R-Lenoir City) has confirmed that she carved her initials into her desk in the state legislature. … this childish display is indeed pretty disappointing — and she isn’t the only one who’s done it, as there are other initials and dollar signs carved into the House’s desks.
Representative Hurley, allow me to explain. Your vandalism of public property is news. It demonstrates your lack of respect for your position and your standoffish, it doesn’t matter, response is suggestive of how you may chose to ignore your constituents.
I was twelve years old, not 29, the last time I carved my initials into something. It was a hand rail at a Disney World ride during an excruciatingly long wait. But after being scolded, I felt bad and was apologetic. I realized the wrong I had done in choosing to vandalize. Perhaps Representative Hurley would do well to learn from a child that we accept our wrong doings and apologize.
Why does this matter? Because as an elected official, she reflects upon every person of Tennessee. When people outside of TN learn that I am from TN, their first impression of me is established by the news of Representative Hurley’s, or Stacey Campfield’s et al, actions and legal decisions. Also, if Rep. Hurley does not approach her job with more professionalism, and let’s face it–carving in desks is something middle schoolers do, how can we expect her to approach legislative decisions?
I’m thinking of starting a business in Tennessee with the sole purpose of hiring homosexual staff. Here’s the business plan:
Mission statement: To snub our noses at the Tennessee GOP
Objectives:
Hire employees based on their qualifications and not sexual orientation
Provide healthcare to employees and their significant others even if Tennessee will not allow them to be married
Show the Tennessee Legislature that a business can operate and profit while respecting an employee’s personal choices in religion (or lack thereof) and relationships
Provide the same opportunities to the gay and lesbian, transvestite, transsexual, and asexual communities as the heterosexual community
We can worry about a product or service later. Investors? Angels?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage…Harry Weisiger gave him the bird and rammed into his vehicle, after noticing an Obama-Biden sticker on his car bumper…"He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute." [Source, WRKN.com, Road rage, accident centers on Obama bumper sticker]
Question:If you, Republican Joe Wilson, show a utter lack of respect for the office of the presidency, a breech of protocol, a total lack of decorum, and a complete disregard for the level of professionalism expect by your elected position, what happens?
Update: 20 hours later, 4531 people have donated $155,362.
Update: 24 hours later, 5832 people have dontaed $203,070. Along with other Rob Miller campaigns on ActBlue, volunteers have donated a total of $592,075 to see Democrat Rob Miller displace Republican Joe Wilson in South Carolina’s 2nd district US House Representative.
Update: Rich points to a youtube video of Democrats applauding during a state of the union address about blocking a bill as an example of Wilson like behavior. I understand their message in applauding goes against the President’s desires but it matches the excepted decorum on the Senate and no one outright demeaned the President.
"It is a clear violation of the rules of the House, and it needs to be resolved on the floor of the House either by an apology or by a resolution," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
House rules and precedents provide substantial guidance on how a House member can and cannot refer to the president while speaking on the floor, and the guidelines state that it has been found impermissible to call the president a liar. The House was in formal session at the time of the speech.
However, in 2003, Wilson voted to provide federal funds for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent. [Source, OpenCongress, Joe Wilson Voted to Provide Taxpayer Money for Illegal Immigrants’ Healthcare]
The misleading part of this is that the bill was "a much larger bill that contained many Republican priorities." Our bills should not be large bills with unrelated or concession type riders that force our lawmakers to let things slip through. I do not think this serves the people as much as it opens doors to serve the politicians and lobbyists with back scratching. "I’ve vote YES to your bill if you add this minor section."
Apparently on April 15 from 3pm-6pm, Republicans and Conservatives alike (perhaps Democrats and other parties) will be meeting at the World’s Fair Park for some tea bagging. As much as I enjoy a good protest, this just doesn’t sound like my kind of thing:
Teabagging is … an erotic activity used within the context of BDSM and male dominance, with a dominant man teabagging his submissive partner, either a woman or a man, as one variation of facesitting and/or as a means of inflicting erotic humiliation. [Source, Wikipedia, Teabagging]
Just sounds like someone’s going to get themselves arrested.
the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. [Source, The New York Times, Tea Parties Forever ]
We don’t need a nanny state! We need better education. IF we would teach people how to use T-9 then they could text without looking at the phone! er, I mean if we taught people the importance of not texting behind the wheel. You know..give a man a fish..well if he were eating fish while driving that would probably be bad too. Maybe we need a law to ban eating fish behind the wheel. Yes! Definitely. And fishing licenses. When the police pull cars over they should check for fishing licenses because he might be planning on catching a fish to eat while driving and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s important. Important enough that we need to set up road blocks and check everyone’s fishing licenses!! But then people might send text messages warning about the road blocks. No, we outlawed text messaging behind the wheel so that would never happen of course neither would the eating fish behind the wheel because we outlawed that too so why do we need the road blocks? You know, the radio stations will pick up on these quickly. We should outlaw radios in the cars. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a time when legislatures feared car radios would cause too many accidents and deaths. What happened to outlawing radios? Wait another minute. At least 2 people died in his district while text messaging behind the wheel. I wonder how many died tuning their radio?
Things we need to outlaw to keep people alive:
spiders, aids, diving, earthquakes, buildings, sports, suicide (wait, that’s already illegal), alcohol, lightning, steps, cold, heat, cancer, tall places, bees, surgery, and sharks.
http://i28.tinypic.com/5v0v1d.jpg
The problem with these types of laws is that it does nothing to prevent the happening but only punishes if and when it is caught. To educate people to pull over, have a passenger do the texting, or just plain ignore the phone is a better use to time and tax dollars than more laws:
Republican Sen. Mae Beavers of Mt. Juliet opposed the bill because of provisions in the current law.
"I really don’t see the need for the bill," she said. "I’ve said time after time, I don’t think we can legislate against stupidity."
Furthermore, driving is a skill and not everyone has the same abilities. That is not a statement to justify one person texting behind the wheel while another doesn’t but to point out the people who are crossing the center line while texting may just as well be doing the same thing while reading a billboard, talking to a passenger, tuning the radio, or daydreaming. We have all done stupid things while driving. I bet everyone at one point has turned the wrong way down a one way street. I did in Memphis as a teenager. It scared me silly to see 3 lanes of lunch hour traffic barreling down on me. A law preventing me from going the wrong way on a one way street would have done nothing to prevent me from making that silly mistake..wait a minute..it is against the law to drive the wrong way on a one way street….oh.
I thought Georgia wanting to move the Tennessee border was a publicity stunt. Is this really continuing or is Knoxnews hurting that badly for a story? "More details as they develop online and in Wednesday’s News Sentinel."
Georgia’s water problem will not be solved by tapping the Tennessee River. They have a water management problem. If someone has a spending problem, their spending habit does not get cured by throwing more money at them. Georgia must develop land management and water management plans. How much of their water is flushed out to the Gulf of Mexico in storm drains rather than recaptured for recharging the aquifers? Does Peachtree Street need another fountain?
I predict there will be bloodshed if that border ever actually moves!
From the minute I learned about the proposed Interstate 3, I said, "read between the lines, and this road is about moving depleted uranium to port." Obviously this is evident to other was well. See the Stop I-3 Coalition letter of January 12, 2007.
Our interest in nuclear matters stems from the fact that the proposed highway would connect the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge with the Savannah River Site in the Augusta area and the Port of Savannah. We have noted with concern that the I-3 proposal coincides with a considerable effort on the part of the government and a number of utility companies to increase nuclear weapons programs and nuclear power activities, including waste reprocessing, and the concentration of these activities in the Southeast. We are convinced that should I-3 ever be built it would become a convenient route for the traffic in radioactive materials which would arise from Complex 2030 and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, as well as expected routing of nuclear wastes and plutonium through the area. [Source]
Section 2. No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards
and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this
state. [Source]
As a matter of fact, religion [implied Christian] is so important to the state of Tennessee that Article IX Section 1 specifically excludes ministers from holding office since their duties are far more important.
Section 1. Whereas ministers of the Gospel are by their profession, dedicated
to God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great
duties of their functions; therefore, no minister of the Gospel, or priest of any
denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either House of the Legislature. [Source]
Arkansas and Tennessee are in good company. Apparently, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas all require the believe of a supreme being and/or afterlife and in some cases you must specifically be a Christian to hold office or be a witness.
So, not only are Atheists going to Hell (a place they don’t believe exists) but they cannot hold one of the most corrupt jobs known to man for which they would go to Hell anyway.
Husband to one wonderful wife, father to five fantastic children, juggler, technophile, freelancer, DIYer, adventurer, volunteer, KO4NFA (2m/70cm), WRMJ225 (GMRS)
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