{"id":6466,"date":"2012-04-06T12:06:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T17:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=6466"},"modified":"2012-04-06T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T17:06:38","slug":"political-parties-are-not-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/04\/political-parties-are-not-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Parties are Not Working"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Editor,<\/p>\n<p>Candidates brought forward by the GOP and the Democratic parties represent their parties and the special interests that fund them, not you and me. These candidates must conform to one of the two, usually diametrically opposed, political platforms. This candidate selection process gives us fiction-based polarizing campaigns, a failed education system, trillions in public debt, and a tax system for special interests.<\/p>\n<p>Candidates should represent the people who elect them. That\u2019s how the U.S. House of Representatives is supposed to work \u2013 members represent the voters from geographical districts within each state. We should be voting for individual candidates, not a political party.<\/p>\n<p>There is a process that does allow citizen representatives to be selected by the people in their local district. These candidates are not associated with any political party and will limit themselves to two terms.<\/p>\n<p>Serving in Congress should be an honor, not a career.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Billy D. Clifford<\/p>\n<p>Retired<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Editor, Candidates brought forward by the GOP and the Democratic parties represent their parties and the special interests that fund them, not you and me. These candidates must conform&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}