A country its leaders do not live in

Congress now has had more prime time committee hearings on the January 6th protest than it did on 9/11. I am not sure just what the purpose of the January 6th hearings is. Americans have turned their attention to inflation and recession.

But in Washington, where no one ever gets laid off and no one has to go to work if it snows, the show is the talk of the town. The rest of the country has to work today. DC closed for Juneteenth. 

The great divide in America is not between lefties and righties. The divide is between the governed and the government. Two reports from Salena Zito, the Pittsburgh reporter who actually talks to people, confirm this.

The first report is about a city park honoring the Hampton Battery, a band of brothers who fought in the Civil War under the command of its founder, Captain Robert B. Hampton.

Zito wrote, "Residents say the Civil War statue is literally surrounded by drug dealers, buyers, and users around the clock. They are getting more aggressive with panhandling, trespassing, and theft.

"Just yards away, along the old Pennsylvania canal, a man walks down the street, carrying a brand new patio chair stolen from the porch of a nearby home, toward the new and growing homeless camp. Last week, there were two tents or makeshift abodes. Now, there are over a dozen.

"On the sidewalk, a woman dances erratically in her socks, her hoodie pulled up over her head. She then abruptly collapses in the street — within minutes, the medics arrive, and she is revived. She then continues on despite having overdosed minutes earlier."

But the politicians of Pittsburgh ignore the drug dealing. They are focused on other things, she reported. 

Hers is an unpleasant column about the denegation of America. Let us turn to a happier time when the nation had Howard Johnson restaurants from coast to coast. Well, the last one closed recently. But in its heyday, HoJo was the Sears, Roebuck of franchised restaurants.

Zito wrote, "Richard W. Sears understood customers’ needs because he understood and experienced their challenges, which is easy when you come from Stewartville, Minnesota, where the population at the turn of the 20th century was under 800. You are in touch with the customer when you are the customer. In short, he was able to put himself in their shoes.

"Howard D. Johnson, a World War I veteran who inherited his father’s soda shop, knew people. Despite failing a lot more times than succeeding in his early days, he never stopped trying, innovating and learning what his customers wanted.

"The beginning of the end for both companies began as they kept getting sold and resold and sold again to venture capital groups, the operators of which never once ate at a HoJo’s or bought Sears auto parts to fix their car or had their children circle what they wanted for Christmas in the Wish Book. When you share little in common with your customers, how do you innovate to keep them and their children?"

She made a good point.

They say the beginning of the end for Union Carbide was when it moved its headquarters from West Virginia to Stamford, Connecticut. Within 10 years, Bhopal happened and the company was no more, being mercifully bought out by Dow. The sale saved many a retired Carbider's life savings.

Sears, which became a national retailer through mail orders, could have been Amazon but its CEOs were money men, not retailers. Jeff Bezos came along and wanted to sell books online. After a couple of decades, he retired as the richest man in the world. Elon Musk has since supplanted him. 

Our politicians are not Sears or Howard Johnson or Bezos or Musk. Our politicians are just money men out of touch with the nation they would lead. Which brings me back to the January 6 obsession in Washington. 

Food inflation is in the double-digits. It costs $100 now to fill up a pickup truck. Baby formula and tampons are in short supply. The stock market is tanking. Poverty is just around the corner. Miles of homeless people in pup tents line the streets along the West Coast. Drug overdose deaths now top 100,000 a year. Millions of terrorists, gangbangers and other illegal aliens have flooded in under Biden.

But Congress hired a former ABC executive to put together a TV extravaganza on J6 featuring some guy in a buffalo hat grinning inside the Capitol. He looked like Randy Quaid in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation film. I would have busted my bladder if the guy said, "Shitter's full."

We put Liz Cheney and the rest in charge. They may soon learn we can replace them.

There is an election on November 8. Chickens won't be coming home to roost. Eagles will arrive, talons up.

Newt Gingrich sees 75 House seats flipping Republican -- which would be his party's best showing in 128 years. This only works if you flush about half those 200 or so sitting Republican congressmen down the commode with their Democrat pals. We found that out in 2010 when Republicans threw away their Tea Party victory like Biden threw away Afghanistan.

The people we elected to take care of our politics don't live here anymore. They live in gated communities and work in a Capitol patrolled by 1,869 uniformed officers.

Zito ended her park piece, "This ugly reality will affect the elections this fall, probably far more than the political class understands. Why? Because they never take the time to walk down a street like Cedar Avenue and ask how it is going. More importantly, they take for granted that they will always have the voters they have always had, never realizing most people have a breaking point."

We shall see how many voters break with the status quo on November 8.