My initial thought was that it might have been a misprint, so I looked up the Congressional roll call on the official website. There was no mistake; he actually voted that way. This is horrible, I thought. How could he sell out the people that elected him so soon? Did it take only three months for Brian to turn from being a man of the people to being a bought-and-paid for political hack? Brian was supposed to be a guy we could count on in Washington to put the interests of the voter ahead of the special interests. What happened?

I was sure there was an explanation. Maybe he made a mistake in casting his vote. He’s a rookie, for Christ’s sake! Maybe the sun got in his eyes and he pushed the wrong button. I figured I’d better call his office and try to get to the bottom of this.

I looked up Congressman Higgins’ official website and got the local number. It was Sunday evening, so I figured I would call and leave a message. To my surprise, a woman answered the phone. I told her who I was, that I was with a Buffalo paper called The Beast, and that our readers and I wanted to know how the Congressman could have voted for this horrible bill. "How," I asked "could he vote for a bill that was so blatantly directed at hurting the little guy and protecting the financial interests of the banking industry and wealthy investors? What happened to the man of the people shtick?" The woman on the phone became a little indignant, saying, "it’s no shtick; I’m one of his aides and I’m here working hard on a Sunday night. That should tell you something, that he has aides working so hard."

What I thought was that this stupid aide had a boss that takes her away from her family on Sunday night, but I said, "OK, maybe it’s not a shtick, but this bill is awful. I would like someone to explain how he could do this." She took my information and said she would pass it along to the "appropriate person."

On Monday morning I was anxious to hear from Higgins’ office, but as noon approached I had not heard anything from them. The woman I spoke to Sunday said Higgins would be in Washington on Monday, so I called his Washington office. I was connected to one of his aides, some public relations type by the name of Suzanne Anziska. I told her who I was and why I was calling and she promised to get back to me.

Tuesday morning I received the following email from Suzanne:

What a load of shit. I really don’t know what I was expecting to get from his office. I was hoping to speak to the Congressman or at least get some press release they had worked up to answer questions about this bill, like they thought about it before the vote was cast. I did not expect to get what I got, some aide regurgitating a paragraph of lies and meaningless rhetoric that equates to squirting some whipped cream on a dog turd instead of scooping the damn thing.

If Higgins was going to screw the public for his own gain, he should at least have the decency to be honest about it. He should have had his aide tell the truth; at least I would have respected that on some level. Here’s how that email should have read:

I guess its no big news flash to find out Brian Higgins is just another lying politician. We knew that his years in Albany had exposed him to the virus of political prostitution, but when we found out he sided with the credit card bastards, we were just caught a little off guard by the speed at which Higgins had dropped to his knees and started sucking once he got to Washington. It’s astonishing really; the man is a machine.

Of course, Higgins has to run again next year, and then we’ll have the lovely choice of voting him out of office in favor of an even worse Republican whore, and this time it will probably be the intolerably dim-witted Jim Kelly. You know Republicans love dipshit sports stars, and they certainly have been grooming Kelly for something. You saw him at the Republican National Convention, acting like the choke-happy douchebag he is. He’s their dream candidate: Bushonian intellect, great name recognition and all he has to do is talk about the Bills, throw in a few sports metaphors and nobody will bother him about anything like issues.

So what did we expect from Higgins? Nothing, really. He’s just another bit player in the farce called American democracy. The system is not functioning, and too many are unable or unwilling to see that the people in office are tools, and whether a tool is a Democrat or a Republican is largely meaningless.