What happened to the United States of America? What happened to a government that anyone could turn to? What happened to a government that sent troops to allow little black children to even attend school in Alabama and Georgia and Arkansas? What happened to the government that built dams to help farmers along the lower Mississippi and Missouri rivers from being flooded out?
What happened to the government that hired unemployed Americans when there literally were no jobs, to build the TVA and East Texas electrical projects so that farm wives could have light other than candles and oil lamps and be able to pump water from a distance rather than walking a mile to a river bank for water? What happened to our generous spirit?
What happened to the government that took care of the soldiers of WWII, like Bob Dole and Daniel Inouye (who themselves do not understand what has happened to the Senate in which they serve or served)? What happened when Bush and Cheney and the Republican government could deny coverage to veteran and let VA hospitals fall into disrepair? How could they put political hacks in charge of the VA so that even men with lost limbs and eyes and horribly mutilated bodes would be cast aside? (All volunteers for this country, by the way, in an all-volunteer military.)
How could the Republicans give the original Bush tax cuts to billionaires while denying these brave men and women even basic, decent medical treatment? And worse how could they hypocritically go on the floor of the Senate and lie to Americans that everything was fine in the VA system until the Washington Post did an investigative report that conditions were not even tolerable but horrific.
What happened to the Neocon Republicans in the Senate or people like Dick Cheney, who cause massive layoffs, tens of millions of people, and then call the unemployed “lazy” because they cannot find a job when there are ten applicants at least for every meager job that is left?
When did they suddenly become Fascists? When did they decide that the super-rich and international corporations are more important than the police and firefighters who entered the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center when everyone else was leaving? Why don’t they care about those who tried to save their fellow Americans on September 9th, 2001? Why would they not help the thousands of workers who volunteered to go to the World Trade Center site and sort through toxic rubble to find remaining individuals who might still be alive or search for the bodies of their fallen comrades? And they did it long after those towers had fallen on their fellow firemen and police…because it was the right thing to do.
These 9/11 heroes–and they are heroes, make no mistake about it–are now suffering the effects that we were told many years ago, might result from the fall-out from the disaster, toxic effects on the body that might cause lung problem, even cancers. Well, the prediction by experts in disease control and health care has unfortunately happened to many of these young men. And the President and the House of Representatives went to work to fill in those gaps where private health care comes up short…as they always do…as all the greedy do when you ask them to be ethical.
The House of Representatives authorized something like 7 or 9 billion dollars to study this problem, to augment the health care policies that are now being revoked and rescinded by the health insurance companies and the extreme costs that happen when a family is suddenly hit with a wage earner who becomes disabled and needs extraordinary care to stay alive. Forget the suffering. That in itself should be enough to move these Republican Senators.
The costs are wiping out families financially as well. New York City cannot bear this burden alone. As wealthy as many are in New York City, this is a national problem.We were attacked as a country, not just a city.
While turning down a request for 9 billion dollars, for sick and dying heroes of 9/11, the Neocon Republicans forced the Senate Democrats and Independents, and the President to approve a 700 billion dollar tax bonus for super-rich Americans, the average of which will be something between 80 thousand and 100 thousand dollars apiece. Not only did they deny the first responders any help, they said that, unless the owners of Walmart, Nordstroms, Federal Express, Home Depot, Koch Industries and other Super-rich would get this big tax cut…that they don’t need and will never spend…they would cut off unemployment for millions of Americans who would then have no job and no money coming in at all.
Have you tried to live on no money at all? It is very difficult. As Representative Alan Grayson (who was defeated in his own Third-World Educational Level district) has said…the Republicans’ plan for Americans is “…just die. And as quickly as possible.”
On average, the rich now pay about 23% of their income in taxes. They want that lowered. Grover Norquist, as slimy and greasy a little punk as ever fooled his professors to get to Harvard, at least until George W. Bush fooled formerly distinquished Harvard Business School into taking him, wants to destroy government, eliminate government, do away with Social Security, do away with national security, do away with Medicare, Medicaid, health reform, pensions…do away with anything that will in any way inconvenience the rich.
Remember that while it was Jack Abramoff who went to jail, it was the little punk Norquist and the little punk Ralph Reed, both pretending to be “Christians” who laundered much of the money that Abramoff and Scanlon appropriated from unsuspecting Native American tribes and others. Abramoff was a scum bag but he is not a weaseling, timid, pudding faced little punk-Nazi like Reed and Norquist. If you squeeze them, pus comes out.
Senators Kyl, McConnell, McCain, Thune, Sessions…all the wimpy, lying, cheating, stealing, money-grubbing, lobbyist-pandering, hypocrites who wander around the Capitol grounds picking up money thrown there contemptuously by the health insurance industry, the coal and oil interests, the Wall Street “Banksters” as Thom Hartmann calls them….all these disgusting, smelly, hollow men…voted against and repeatedly vote against the American People.
They are a stain on the American Society. We need to find a good, reliable stain remover.