Hooray for Congressman Rodriguez, he signed a pledge to support the Fair Elections Now Act

I was there when Congressman Ciro Rodriguez stepped up to the plate Saturday and signed a pledge to support passage of the Fair Elections Now Act, lobbyist reforms and overturning the recent Supreme Court decision which opens a new floodgate of corporate money in all election campaigns. Rodriguez should be congratulated by everyone in his district for standing up for “the people” as opposed to corporate sponsors. He realizes that in America elections should be won and not bought, something that can’t be said about all candidates for office.

The problem with our political system isn’t so much that individual members of Congress are corrupt but that the system is corrupt. Sure, there are always a few bad apples in a barrel, but the real problem is that the barrel itself is rotten. No matter how honest you are, when your ability to get elected depends on collecting millions of dollars from special interests, there’s no way you can be objective. And having to spend so much time fund-raising just discourages good people from running and prevents those who do get elected from doing what we sent them there to do: solve the problems of everyday Americans. It’s time our elected officials started listening to the voices of everyday Americans, not their corporate sponsors. We need to clean up our elections, and do it now. 

Constituents of Congressman Rodriguez should be very proud to have him as their representative and support him for re-election.