Well, it's Monday night. I've voted, Joan has voted; I think the kids have voted. If you value your job, your rights, your government's ability to make laws without being overwhelmed by the narrow interests of big business and foreign governments (none dare say China), you had better vote for the party that has passed more legislation for we the people in the past twenty-one months than was passed in the previous twenty years and more.
This is no joke. There are many races for senate, for congress, for governorships, etc. etc. that pit a Democratic or independent candidate against a Republican candidate, and because of the appalling Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court a few months ago, there has been a blitz--ever wonder what that really means? Before it was a pro football term it referred to the Blitzkrieg--the German bombing of England during WWII--of advertising funded by mostly anonymous donors on behalf of the Republican candidates.
This is your future if you don't support the progressive Democratic candidates on the ballot. Government controlled by and in the interest of corporate America.
Don't believe me, if you like. Just consider where we were when the 2008 election was held, and the legislation that has been passed in the twenty-one months since the candidates elected then took office.
During the Bush administration, the trend toward de-regulating every possible aspect of American business went into overdrive. What does de-regulation mean? It means that there is no control over whatever big business wants to do, no matter how destructive to everyone but themselves in the U.S.
So--that meant the Republican-controlled government passed laws doing such things as:
Providing tax incentives--ie: lower taxes--for companies if they outsourced jobs to places outside the U.S. . . . in other words, taking jobs held by Americans and giving them instead to people who would work for less in other countries. In other words, putting Americans out of work.
Is that hard to grasp? Let me put it more simply:
Putting Americans out of work to increase corporate profits
They also made policies that enriched big Healthcare. Like Medicare Part D--which said, in part, that Medicare could not negotiate with Pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients.
That meant bigger profits for prescription drug companies . . . and higher prices for older people who could least afford those higher prices.
I could go on and on and on, but every single example I could cite adds up to one single theme. The Republicans work for big corporations; the Democrats have been working for all of us--the middle class, the lower middle class, actually, even the upper middle class.
The Republicans decry high deficits. But what they don't decry is their overwhelming role in creating those huge deficits.
They would restore the Bush tax cuts. Those tax cuts benefited . . . well, they benefited everyone a little, but they benefited the very, very rich an awful lot. Nearly a TRILLION DOLLARS worth of benefit for the very, very rich.
Take a trillion dollars off the deficit and you start to see a significant improvement in the government's ability to pay for important things.
Like Unemployment benefits;
Like new projects that will employ people in the U.S.
Like re-hiring people who were let go by the Bush Administration --people like inspectors at the Department of Agriculture who were let go because the Bush administration didn't think it was important to check for things like conditions that allow the introduction of e-coli and other contamination in produce and meats.
And lots of other people who worked in government to help protect people from other abuses by unregulated business.
O.K. there's something else you might want to consider when you're thinking about whether to vote, or who you should vote for.
Have you been paying attention to what happens in Congress? Well, I've been paying attention for a number of years. And what I keep seeing is what some politicians have termed "flip-flopping."
I'm talking about the behavior of prominent Republicans. There have been a number of laws that various Republicans have supported--even laws that various Republicans helped to write. And as soon as the Democrats took control of Congress, the same Republicans who sponsored these laws suddenly turned around and talked about how very horrible these laws were going to be if they were passed.
It's not just flip-flopping. It is lying. It is base lying for the sole purpose of trying to undermine the ability of the Democratic-controlled congress to pass laws.
And the only reason the Republicans have done this is so that they would have a better chance of getting themselves elected this year. There's a reason why the Democrats have been calling the Republicans "the party of No." This is the reason.
If you pay attention, you see this pattern very clearly.
And yet, the Republican ads on tv and radio never talk about this. They just blame everything on Democrats.
Perhaps my favorite bogus Republican talking point is the one in which they complain about "Obamacare" and the "government takeover of health care."
That would be funny, except that a lot of people believe that line of malarkey. Do you remember in the Summer of 2009 seeing coverage of "Tea Party" rallies or Town Hall meetings during which some person says, "Keep your hands off my Medicare"?
These people never seem to realize that their Medicare is a service of the government. And the healthcare reform bill that passed this past summer didn't take away Medicare. It made the healthcare system a bit better for all of us.
The Republicans claim that healthcare costs have gone up because of the new law--but the opposite is true.
And it's the same with so, so many things. But with all those scary ads on radio and tv--paid for by big corporations that never identify themselves as the source of the money for the ads--the Republicans have done everything they can to make it seem as if the Democrats are responsible for the big deficits, for the fact that the economy nearly imploded before the 2008 election.
They never accept responsibility for invading Iraq for no reason other than to try to get control of Iraq's oil (and lest we forget, also to provide lots of jobs for Dick Cheney's Haliburton "consultants").
Do you start to see a pattern?
Here's some more: the Republicans have consistently reviled and denigrated the Economic Recovery Act--a.k.a. the Stimulus. They tell us that it hasn't worked; hasn't created jobs; has increased the deficit. They say these things . . . except when they are busy publicizing the jobs that money from the Stimulus has created in their own states.
Then they take credit for having helped to pass the legislation . . . the legislation they absolutely opposed, voted against, reviled, etc.
Do you want to enable the party of No, the party of the very rich, the party of outsourcing to take back control of congress?
I hope not.
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