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snip...The answer my friends, is not in the stars. The answer is in the clueless and
spineless Democrats, busily dialing for the same corporate campaign dollars. snip
:fistbump:
Not a big fan of Nader since Gore lost 2000 but he nails it here.
Full letter:
From: Ralph Nader <info@nader.org>
To: alerts@lists.nader.org
Sent: Fri, Sep 24, 2010 11:58 am
Subject: Why Say Yes to the Party of No?
How does the Big Business-indentured Republican Party get away with expectations
of a runaway election victory this November? If such a victory should occur in
Congress and for many governorships and state legislatures, it will be due to a
ten percent or so shift in voters who voted Democratic in 2008 and are expected
to vote Republican this year or stay home in despair or disgust. The rest of the
voters who do vote will still stay with their hereditary Republican or
Democratic candidates.
So what is accounting for a possible ten percent shift? Let’s briefly review
some of the Congressional Republicans’ voiced positions:
1. They want to do nothing about unfair Chinese trade practices that lure jobs
away from our country though huge factory subsidies, and where workers are
repressed and counterfeit products abound. Imagine, Republicans coddling a
communist regime, luring the auto parts, electronic, solar and drug ingredients
industries away from America, often in violation of the World Trade Organization
rules. And, in turn, China is exporting to the U.S. impure food, faulty tires,
toxic drywall, lead-tainted toys and medicines which are contaminated, defective
or harmful. Don’t forget the dumping violations.
2. Republicans, led by Senator Richard Shelby and his banking friends, declared
their adamant opposition to Professor Elizabeth Warren becoming head of the new
consumer financial regulation agency. (To avoid a confrontation with them,
President Obama made her a special assistant to organize this consumer
watchdog.) Ms. Warren has a solid record of exposing and communicating clearly
to families the tricks and traps of credit card companies, mortgage firms, and
intermediaries that have taken so many billions of consumer dollars with
impunity.
3. The Republicans led by their House leader, John Boehner (Rep. Ohio), a total
toady of the gouging student loan companies, opposed the Democrats successful
reform of this taxpayer boondoggle that guaranteed obscene profits and had the
taxpayers absorb any student defaults. Boehner’s lobbying should upset millions
of parents who had to foot the bill for so many years.
4. The Republicans are opposed to raising the federal minimum wage to what it
was, adjusted for inflation, in 1968!! They opposed an adequate budget for
health and safety enforcement by OSHA to diminish the 58,000 American workers
who die every year from workplace toxics and trauma. They are now blocking
protections for coal miners pending in the Senate after the Massey mine
disaster.
5. Republicans oppose doing anything about “too big to fail” even after Wall
Street’s reckless, avaricious collapse of the economy, costing 8 million jobs
and trillions of lost pension and mutual fund dollars.
Moreover, they do not support genuine enforcement of the anti-trust laws which
are supposed to break up monopolization efforts, monopolies or oligopolies like
Monsanto (seeds) or the big five banks—bailed out by taxpayers and secure in
their domination of well over 50 percent of all bank assets, deposits and the
credit card business. This is by far the highest concentration of financial
power in modern U.S. history. With few exceptions, the GOP want very few federal
cops on the corporate crime beat.
6. Fighting for the last billionaire and multimillionaire, Republicans are
blocking ending Bush’s tax cuts on incomes beyond $250,000 per year. Yes,
Republicans want to reduce the deficit yet they want to end revenues of over 700
billion dollar over ten years of restored super-rich taxes. They are blocking
renewal of the estate taxes after their expiration on Dec. 31, 2009 left no
taxes this year on the estates of the super-rich. (Over 99 percent of estates
were already exempt from the federal estate tax.)
7. No matter that Republicans caved to the health insurance companies getting
over 30 million new covered customers, starting in 2014, they supported the
industry’s blaming the federal government, no less, for this month’s latest
sharp hike in insurance premiums by Aetna and others largely on the policies of
individuals and small business. The Republicans did this after blocking the
“public option” that would have given consumers both a choice and the benefit of
some competition to the big insurance firms.
8. Have the Congressional Republicans ever challenged the bloated, wasteful,
contractor-corrupt military budget that makes up half of the entire government’s
discretionary budget?
Even the Congress’s own auditing agency—the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) declares the Pentagon budget unauditable. Many Pentagon audits document
the abuses of Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and other firms in the
deficit-driving, bloody Iraq and Afghanistan wars (both Republican espoused.)
The Pentagon’s burgeoning budget, now nearing $800 billion a year, is deemed
untouchable. (A few Republicans, like Charles Grassley and John McCain sometimes
object to contracting abuses.)
9. President Obama wants a counter-recessionary public works program renovating
airports, bridges, highways, rail and mass transit, drinking water and sewage
treatment facilities and other infrastructures. Republicans sneer at this local
job creation for much needed facilities.
10. Unlike any Republican Party since its creation in 1854, it has misused the
filibuster threat, and any one of its Senators misuse the rules and block even
going to a floor discussion or a nomination vote. The Party is earning its
moniker as the Party of NO. Republicans have turned the U.S. Senate into
America’s graveyard.
There is much more, but enough has been cited to ask again—how are Republicans
seen by the polls as front runners in the upcoming election?
The answer my friends, is not in the stars. The answer is in the clueless and
spineless Democrats, busily dialing for the same corporate campaign dollars.
The other answer is in the ten percent of the actual voters who need to
seriously avail themselves of the facts and a modicum of thought. For if they
don’t, they will continue to pay bills handed to them and their children by
their ruling corporatists in Republican clothing.
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