The actions taken by Congress must be felt by Congress. Why should they be any different than us?

An e mail has been circulating for the past weeks, and suddenly it dawned on me that it was being read by lots of Americans who all agreed on its premises, but it needed publicity in order to reach the ears of our legislators. In order to enact the change that Occupy Wall Street is demonstrating to achieve, this would be the perfect platform to combine action with a plan

The nightmare of the Iraq War is finally coming to an end. Our soldiers will need jobs--lots of jobs, here at home. It's time to start serious investment in our own country's infrastructure if we want to thrive in the 21st Century. Every member of the fortunate, wealthy elite who have reaped, either directly or indirectly, so much profit from war must now pay their fair share in support of those who fought. The time has come for a Patriot Tax, in effect a sponsorship of every returning soldier. America is lagging far behind the rest of the civilized world in technologies such as high-speed rail, renewable energy, and even simple road and bridge maintenance. While we have been destroying and rebuilding overseas, America is crumbling. Do not allow our brave soldiers to come home to yet another nightmare of joblessness and despair. We can support our troops and rebuild America at the same time. It's the moral, patriotic thing to do.

This is not a petition for or against any entity. It is a declaration by people and a pledge that they will take a small simple action to improve the economy and create jobs by diverting $5 of their weekly budget to buy the same items but AMERICAN MADE rather than foreign. 100,000,000 people doing this would pump $500,000,000 dollars a week into our economy. American factories could buy more supplies and hire workers. Workers would buy products and pay taxes as would companies. This is totally patriotic and not at all political and we are not waiting for our government to quit arguing and actually do something!

This would be a very simple but effective way to put the burden of economic recovery directly on the institutions and individuals who caused our problem—Wall Street. The current protests against big banks and rich people have nothing to offer except frustration. If they adopted this plan as a cause, they could actually contribute something positive—something that would work.

Citizens United means corporation are people and therefore can vote. Corporations are a group of lobbyists and should not be able to vote. They can back their vote up with millions of dollars, the average person cannot back their vote with millions of dollars. They are stealing our democracy.

Senator McConnell has, at every turn, sabotaged the efforts of the President and Congress to create jobs, including a filibuster to prevent even a portion of the President's jobs bill from being voted on. It's more important to him to defeat the President in 2012 than it is to feed an estimated 10 million American children who are "food insecure", or to help the millions of Americans who have no work and/or are losing their homes to foreclosure. He has utterly disregarded his solemn oath to "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Tell Mayor Ed Lee to stop the midnight raids on the Occupy SF encampment and the violent police crackdown.

Give people the right to protest wherever and whenever they want rather than going by codes and permits. No police interference unless riots break out. Right to occupy any public space without police interference.

Pennsylvania is faced with a budget crisis due to poor management. With this single amendment Pennsylvania lost 12 million tax dollars annually. Rendell vetoed this amendment for that very reason. Since then, the legislative branch and governor Corbett have acted shortsightedly with no regard for our budget or our rights as citizens using extreme cases of abuse of synthetic cannabis and use by minors as reason to pass the nations strictest state law in effect. By signing this petition you agree that this amendment should be rescinded. Let's send a clear message in the amount of several hundred thousand voices that we disagree with their recent decision.

This pledge gives FOCUS to the 99% protests by GETTING MONEY OUT OF POLITICS. Any legislator failing to sign the pledge should be OPPOSED IN A 2012 PRIMARY by a protester willing to stand up and file for election.

Basic Change everyone can get behind. Read the key points above. I did not write them, I do not know who did. Is it perfect? No, but the message is good. Let's make Congress work for the People of the United States of America!