This post by Jonathan Turley seems to have been the catalyst this morning, but I'm going to start with this quote that I mined from Digby:

Those who own the country ought to govern it. --- John Jay

She's commenting on that horrific rant by Matthew Varnum that I discussed here, and finishes up with this observation:

The question is just who the "owners" are today and I would suggest that an awful lot of these Tea Partiers would be quite surprised to learn they aren't actually among them.

The tie-in, of course, is the teabaggers, who were manipulated into crashing town halls a couple of years ago to make their displeasure with our government known. The fact that most of their concerns were based on fantasies promulgated by Fox News is really beside the point: they had access and they used it. Now the shoe's on the other foot, and the reaction is interesting to say the least. From Turley:

As Washington has grown less responsive to what voters tell them and operate in the favor of monied special interests more openly than ever, the voting public has taken notice. An Associated Press-GFK poll recently showed that 87% (you read that right, eighty-seven percent) of Americans disapprove of lawmakers’ job performance. In a democracy, the voters who no longer feel like they have a say in the political process have started to take their justifiable anger and frustration out on politicians whenever given the access to do so. Faced with vocal and public oppositions to policies unpopular with the public, some politicians have adopted a new tactic: ignoring the public and canceling Town Hall events while attempting to place the blame for their choice on the public for daring to criticize politicians or voice their displeasure at Town Hall meetings. When dealing with angry and frustrated people, let alone voters, is ignoring them a wise strategy? Or is it a recipe for even greater public anger and frustration at a system most already perceive as non-responsive?

This is just the latest facet of what's really been an ongoing process. Remember a couple of years ago when DADT repeal was first being seriously considered? Polling showed consistently that 70-80% of the public favored repeal. And the Obama administration dragged its heels, seemingly willing to put it off forever, until GetEqual embarrassed the hell out of them and Congress decided to take action on its own. The special interest here, of course, was the conservative military brass -- not the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs, who obviously had their marching orders, but the second tier of senior officers, who are among the most conservative elements in American society.

So now we see the administration trying to short-circuit investigations into mortgage fraud by the big banks, Congress and the president focusing on deficit reduction -- including tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy -- when what we need is jobs (and both, apparently, trying their hardest to blow the economy to smithereens), backing off tighter standards for ozone emissions, on the verge of granting approval for an oil pipeline that gives every indication, given the record of the oil companies on safety and maintenance, of being an environmental disaster, and on down the line.

And Congress doesn't want to hear from us. (I notice that my junior senator, Republican Mark Kirk, has stopped sending me e-mail surveys -- I guess his staff got tired of my standard response: "Where are the jobs?")

So, really, the next time you contact your Congressional delegation (if you're allowed to), ask them who they're really representing.