Dear Members of Congress (and particularly those of you serving on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform),

It is my great pleasure to write to you today on the behalf of some of the most important, yet sadly so often forgotten, people in your political lives: your constituents. Please rest assured, I am not writing you on behalf of ALL your constituents! No, even I wouldn't go that far. But I do keep my ear to the ground, as it were, and I have begun to notice a remarkable amount of grumbling from out here in the vast forgotten hinterlands of actual voters and, to paraphrase the late great Dr. Seuss, that grumble may have started in low but it's beginning to grow. Why? Well, strangely enough, there are some people out here, people that you represent, who seem to think your continued fascination with bringing professional athletes, particularly professional baseball players, as well as league and union officials before you to discuss the alleged use of steroids, HGH, greenies and other performance-enhancing drugs in major league sports might a be a little….. Out of whack with what they feel should be just a smidge, just a skosh, just a teeny little bit higher up on your list of priorities. I know, I know, baffling! But it's true.

Rather than fawning all over these gentlemen who are paid crazy amounts of money to PLAY GAMES, and rather than preening before the cameras as you work yourself into paroxysms of high dudgeon over their alleged abuses of the public trust, allow me to present a handful of numbers and subjects towards which you might better turn your formidable intellects and patriotic zeal:

• 3972. That, according to the website icasualties.org, is the number of U.S. military fatalities, to date, suffered in Iraq. icasualties.org compiles this data using news articles and obituaries, CENTCOM and Multi-National Force Iraq releases, and, as the final arbitrator, official reports released by the Department of Defense. (There is, admittedly, a four-fatality discrepancy between icasualties.org and the DoD; that discrepancy represents soldiers who died out-of-theater from wounds received in Iraq that DoD, to date, has not yet included in its official count.) It has come to my attention that many of your constituents still find the concept that American men and women are dying in a war based on false pretenses and shoddy evidence might, or at least should, fall under the purview of a Committee dedicated to "Oversight and Government Reform."

• 79. That is the percentage increase in homes that fell into some state of foreclosure across the United States in 2007 from 2006, according to RealtyTrac, a real-estate-industry tracking firm. According to Alex Velga, an AP Business Writer, "RealtyTrac is forecasting that the pace of foreclosure filings will remain steady, rather than accelerate during the first half of 2008." Well, THERE'S a silver lining if I've ever heard one…

• Unemployment and the economy. (Admittedly, this is two things, but they seem strangely interconnected, so please bear with me.) According to remarks recently made by the Federal Reserve, "[…with the economy slowing down further, the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 5.2% to 5.3% in 2008, higher than the Fed's previous forecast rate of 4.9%." Additionally, the Fed also expects inflation, "…to be between 2.1% and 2.4% this year," up from its original projection "that inflation would be at around 1.8% to 2.1%." While these shifts in percentage may appear small at first, and certainly not as noticeable as the jump in numbers for some of the athletes you have so diligently questioned, when translated into real, solid numbers (actual jobs, cost of living, etc.) they are, I promise, quite large indeed.

• $9, 321,616,408,799.31. That, believe it or not, is the current outstanding public debt of the United States of America according to the website brillig.com; you can surf directly to site's "Debt Clock" by going to http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/. This number may also be confirmed by the Federal Government's own Treasury Direct website at http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/charts/charts_debt.htm. For those of you having trouble with all those numbers and commas, that's over nine TRILLION dollars. Luckily, the government just raised the debt limit to $9.815 trillion last September. Phew! I know this is a lot of information to process all at once, dear House Members, so I'll leave off for now. But, goodness, what an incredible amount of fascinating topics this should give you to explore! Just think of all the hearings you can hold and all the legislation you can fashion to help address THIS stuff! Makes all those nasty ballplayers arguing about who poked whose butt with what seem kind of trivial in comparison, doesn't it? We're all excited to hear what kind of progress you make and feel that, for now or at least until you can demonstrate some substantial progress on the rest of this, you should leave the sports stuff to the rest of us. Really.

cuda24@yahoo.com