Since the days of Newt Gingrich I have fumed. I can't stand it any longer - I have to rant. The pot has boiled over, so to speak, so in order to vent to who-ever might want to listen I have at long last properly joined DKOS to post this diary. Really I have nothing new I could say to the Daily Kos community. Nothing at all. You folks know it all already. It is just a rant. Consider this my angry rant to the Republican Congress (and tea baggers everywhere):
Dear Congressman [fill in the name of your own favorite Republican Congressperson: it is a bit sexist to address this 'Congressman' but then again, most are male],
Let me describe to you the Republican vision for America.
It is an America with 20% unemployment [slash the budget, the Ryan plan, and no infrastructure investment]
It is an America with 100 million people without health insurance [defund Medicaid, privatize Medicare {the Ryan plan}, gut the ACA, give health insurance companies the power to deny anyone insurance]. Before the ACA, the U.S. was at 55 million uninsured Americans with the number rising fast, as more and more employers no longer provide health insurance.
It is an American with 20 million children suffering from malnutrition [rising poverty, cuts to food stamps, cuts to WIC, cuts to unemployment benefits].
It is an American where 70% will have no retirement [gut Social Security, encouraging corporations and municipalities to raid pension funds, corporate bankruptcies gutting pension funds]
An America with no rights for workers. No unions, no collective bargaining and no voice for labor [‘right to work’ legislation, gutting the National Labor Relations Board]
Infant mortality of 15 per 1,000, up from 5.9 [no publically funded prenatal care, no health insurance for the poor, no public hospitals, and defund the Children's Health Insurance Program]
Life expectancy of 55 years [increasing infant mortality, increased water and air pollution by gutting the EPA, increased poverty and disease, malnutrition, and diminished health care and an increasing population of the elderly without health care, without a pension]
An American where more than 50,000 people die each year because of little or no health care.
A country with 20 million homeless [there is now effectively a homeless population close to 3 million, but increase unemployment, cut unemployment insurance and ensure people lose their homes, AND make HUD serve only developers ?]
An American where a ‘living wage’ is inaccessible to 40 million people, meaning a working poor with an income less than $25,000 per year [‘right to work laws’ and corporate business plans (like Walmart’s) are based on workers living on foodstamps with health care provided by Medicaid, but an America where those programs will be gutted].
An America that is no longer a leader in technological innovation. An American with little investment in research and innovation [sequestration, gutting basic research].
An America that is scientifically illiterate; politics overriding science. [a corporate culture spending advertising money debasing science, a congress with more respect for ideology than science, defunding the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)]
An American where a quality public education is no longer available [school vouchers, cuts to public education, cuts to teacher salaries, No Child Left Behind act, gutting the Pell grants, gutting the student loan programs, the Higher Education Act of 1998, teacher required to do “outcomes assessment”, school boards insisting on ‘creation science’ curriculum].
It is an America without military and veteran education benefits.
An America where more money is spent on prisons than higher education.[America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, roughly 1 in 100]
An America where prisons are a refuge for the mentally ill and the disabled.
An American where elected officials routinely lie to their constituents.
An America with crumbling infrastructure [no road repairs, few bridge repairs, no investment in public works and infrastructure, no money for public transportation]
An American where corporations have more rights than the citizens.
An America where corporations get government handouts and pay less than 10% of the taxes. [$112 billion in fossil fuel handouts alone]
An America where corporations get to write off $70 billion for meals and entertainment.
An American that is no longer a representative democracy. An America where there is no respect for what citizens want [organized efforts to discourage Americans to vote, purges of voter rolls, voter id laws, rampant gerrymandering, 13 state Republican legislatures where the majority of voters voted Democratic, and an America with a whole party of elected officials with little or no respect for the democratic process]
An America without a safe food supply [gut the FDA and the EPA]
An America where corporations can buy an election.
An America where campaign donations can buy legislation.
An America where a pandemic could kill 40,000,000 [no public health service, no extra hospital beds, no vaccines]
An America where there are periodic shortages of prescription drugs.
An America where medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy.
An America where bankruptcy is an inescapable crime.
An America where rape is the victims’ fault.
An America that can wage wars without paying for them.
It is an America where coastal cities are routinely flooded. [global warming, rising sea levels]
It is an America without disaster relief. [No FEMA]
It is an America where you can be disabled, lose your job and become homeless, all in the same year.
It is an America where roving armed gangs can terrorize neighborhoods.[cut neighborhood policing]
It is an America with over 10,000 gun deaths a year, 200 of which are children under 12 [in cases of unintentional child shooting deaths, the relevant gun-owning adults are almost never held responsible].
An America where you can be shot in your work place [no gun control]
An America with no religious tolerance [a Christian nation, in a very narrow sense]
An America where we spend $50 billion in drug interdiction but almost nothing drug treatment [more than $15 billion at the Federal level alone; 7.7 million people needed treatment for drugs and 18.6 million needed treatment for a serious alcohol problem, but only 1.4 million received drug abuse treatment and only 1.5 million were treated for their problems with alcohol]
An America without civil liberties:
An America without the First Amendment. [rampant corporate censorship: privatize the internet; public demonstrations made illegal]
An America without the Fourth Amendment. An where the government can read your e mail, listen to your phone conversations, track your purchases, your internet searches [FISA, the Patriot act, secret courts]
An America without the Fifth Amendment. [An American where police and prosecutors and the government can seize property without due process]
An America without the Sixth Amendment. [prosecutors and investigators can lie to a suspect, but a suspect can be jailed for lying to an investigator]
An America without the Seventh Amendment. [upholding corporate confidentially agreements even in cases of crimes]
An America without the Nineth Amendment. [An American where the government can legislate away birth control and pass laws on other personal issues]
An America without the Fourteenth Amendment. [An American where police and prosecutors and the government can seize property without due process]
An America without the Fifteenth, Twentyfourth and Twentysixth Amendments. [An America with gerrymandering, suppression of votes, voter i.d. laws, as above, etc., etc.]
An America with concentration camps. [Guantanamo Bay detention camp]
An American that condones torture.
An America where judges do not know the law and do not respect the rights of the individual [the American bar Association no longer vets or comments on judicial appointments]
An America without trial by jury [the Military Commissions Act]
An America where a person of color can be shot and killed without consequences [‘stand your ground’ and other ALEC legislation]
Grim vision for America ? Congressman, you voted for this vision.
