"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." MLK

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
- Bertrand Russell

"Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
- Charlie Chaplin

"Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war."
- Gerry Adams

The welfare of our country and its citizens should be the top priority of our elected officials. It is ridiculous that elected officials can make such rash decisions that have an enormous impact on the income/economy of the American people, while avoiding any effects themselves.

That's why I started a petition to the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and President Obama, which says:

Congress, in its unwillingness to compromise on a budget, has unnecessarily shut down the government. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be unpaid throughout the shutdown. Members of the Senate and Congress should do the decent thing and forgo their wages for the same period. Our elected representatives at every level are voted in to represent us and our interests. Without a forfeit of wages, the officials making these decisions prove further that they are out of touch with the common citizen. The rash decision (government shutdown) is damaging our already fragile economic recovery. The forfeiture of pay is the least they can do to prove they are sincere in their efforts to provide a government worthy of our citizens.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.