From the Department of Dumb Ideas

Joe Ferraro, a local contributor to the Huffington Post, believes that that trouble with America today is that there are not enough U.S. congressman.

Sez Joe, there is only one congressman per 700,000 people. We need to cut that ratio down to one per 400,000 people.

All kinds of people should be able to get behind this idea. No conservative wants an unresponsive government, and neither does a liberal or a moderate. Some of us may want smaller government, but we all want government that will listen to us.

Joe may understand liberals but he doesn't understand conservatives. The Democratic party is the party of, by and for government, big, responsive government. Government that takes care of people and their problems - even if at time the government is the cause of those problems.

Conservatives actually do want a LESS responsive government. One that doesn't respond to every special interest group and rent seeking constituent. One that doesn't create problems for people in order to fix them. We want politicians who are brave enough to just say "NO" to people.

And BTW, You don't get smaller government by increasing the size of it, by sending more pork-seekers to Washington. There are enough snouts at that trough.

As it is, Pennsylvania has one of the biggest, most expensive state legislatures in the country. We need to shrink IT, not grow the size of Washington, D.C.

Sheesh!