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Don't
Follow the Leader
June 15, 2002
By Bob Volpitto
 In
1956 I was a 26 year old Republican. In fact I was a Republican
in 1952, too. I voted for Eisenhower in both those presidential
elections. I recall my stepfather and an uncle by marriage
urging me to vote for Ike with this admonition: "You are voting
for Ike, aren't you? Stevenson is a Jew and you wouldn't want
a Jew for president, would you?" Smear tactics employed by
the GOP haven't changed in nearly a half-century.
Before 1952 I was a Democrat. I vividly remember a billboard
adorned with an Alf Landon advertisement outside Fire Station
#3 in my hometown. Passersby had a hard time reading that
billboard - it was badly smeared with gobs of mud tossed on
it by partisan Democrats. Of course you remember the year,
it was 1936. FDR won his second term, carrying every state
except Maine and Vermont and swept huge Democratic majorities
into both the House and Senate with him.
But, back to 1956.
Ike won his bid for re-election for the second time over
the "Jew" Stevenson, but the party of FDR held onto majorities
in Congress. I held onto my Republican registration card with
the reverence that one would an icon of the faith, blessed
by the Pope. In 1962 my good wife and I bought a fledgling
weekly newspaper in in a small town south of the Mason/Dixon
Line. There, for more than 10 years, we witnessed poverty,
ignorance, bigotry and inequality first hand. We tried, in
many subtle ways, to right injustice, enlighten those who
lived in ignorance and breach the walls of de facto segregation.
We stood against the tide of intolerance and endured and suffered
the consequences. Alas, we earned the hated title of "Liberal"
in a "Conservative" world. For the first time in my voting
life I returned to my true family roots and cast my lot with
the Democrats.
The point of this lengthy introduction is that if you live
with those with whom you can identify, if you experience hunger,
wants and needs and all those many experiences of common folk
you can never vote Republican no matter who heads the ticket.
Dwight Eisenhower was a great American. His goals for his
country were lofty and sincere, but he carried with him into
the White House the baggage of Sherman Adams, Bill Knowland,
a pair of legislators named Hallack and Dirkson, a cabinet
known as eight millionaires and a plumber and a host of Right
Wing corporate moguls whose agenda was not for the benefit
of the common man and woman living on Main Street, or on the
country's farms, or who own and operate the struggling mom
'n pop businesses. It was a different world then, but is mirrored
in the current administration, the same agenda persists -
"I got mine, now you get yours and it doesn't much matter
how you get it!"
Greed, arrogance, avarice, hypocrisy, you name it, all fit
the description of the present Bush administration led by
a confused, illiterate, befuddled and an unprincipled poor
excuse for a president who rivals the dullard Millard Fillmore
in attitude and accomplishment, or, worse, the ineffective,
incompetence of the indecisive James Buchanan. Mr. Bush's
main goal, I should say his only goal, is to become a two-term
president. His handlers, and he has many, are determined to
break the pattern Bush the elder forged during his lack luster
four years in Washington. His detractors, and I am proudly
one of them, have seen through the transparency of this ignorant,
artless creature who poses before television cameras almost
daily in a variety of cities and towns at the behest of his
manipulators.
On each occasion he proposes policies (voicing them in a
flat, uninspiring, cultivated Southern drawl that belies his
Connecticut heritage and background) of which he hasn't, in
my opinion, the slightest comprehension nor of their effect
on the future of this nation and it's people. He confers with
world leaders and agrees with them only when he hears the
word "oil", eager to please, especially the wealthy, influential
Saudis, but with no understanding of their problems or how
to solve them. He negates world treaties, using Hitler's flippant
attitude that they are mere "scraps of paper" to be tossed
into history's trash dumps.
Also, like the infamous Nazi, Bush swore an oath to uphold
the Constitution and the laws of this nation. He and his attorney
general, through legal means, like the Nazis, are slashing
away at our liberties and those inalienable rights generations
fought and shed blood for. Ask the flag flappers "blinded
by the right" if they have any conception of why they support
an administration that undermines the Bill of Rights. "Just
because it's the right thing to do," they'll probably
answer. My flag flew for a week last September and has been
furled but once ever since.
Mr. Bush's appointments reveal his intentions. Named to cabinet
posts, departments and regulatory agencies are people who
use the very laws and regulations that created and sustained
those segments of government to subvert them. Go down the
list: EPA, Education, Defense, Justice, Energy, Health and
Human Services, Commerce, Transportation, Border Patrol, FCC,
INS, FAA, SEC, FEMA, FDA, HUD, FBI, IRS, CIA and more. These
agencies are woefully understaffed by under-paid people who
are in many cases incompetent, and turf protecting, self-serving
"order takers." While Bush touts aggressive reform and
expansion in many agencies of government, especially Homeland
Security, his proposed budget slashes needed funds for not
only their operations but also their very existence. Read,
study, learn what this administration is doing, or rather
not doing, to serve the people who pay the taxes and deserve
the benefits.
Waiting impatiently in the wings of this administration are
numerous hell-bent-for-leather conservative law school graduates
who expect to be appointed to federal benches at all levels
of the judiciary. If the tenure of their appointments were
anything but life most would agree to let Bush have his way.
Sadly, though, term limits do not apply to these appointed
judges nor do they stand for review by the electorate. Impeachment
is the only means to remove them, and this rarely occurs.
With the Senate, the legislative body that must pass on these
appointments, narrowly in Democratic hands, the likes of Judge
Pickering may someday wield a gavel in a federal court of
consequence.
Bush's disregard for the environment, human rights here and
abroad, needs of the working man and woman, a secure economic
future for everyone, universal health care, freedom of expression,
world prosperity through education, health and an equitable
share of the planet's wealth is evident. Bush's inability
to focus beyond his black/white, on/off, yes/no perspective
seriously limits his ability to govern. He is a puppet, manipulated
by strings held by Rumsfield, Powell, Rice, Cheney, Rove and
a host of others, Little wonder Hughes quit and went back
to Texas. She obviously saw that someday, someday soon, the
ones who pull the strings of this martinet will tangle them
into an impossible to solve mass and the dummy on the end
of them will crumple to the floor of his stage, becoming a
hopeless and helpless inert creature.
If nothing else, vote your pocketbook. While the average
Joe and Jean taxpayer shells out 15% to 30% of his and her
wages by the way of payroll deductions for income taxes the
average giant corporation pays only 6%. Self employed entrepreneurs
pay around 15% of their profits to maintain their Social Security
account plus an income tax on those same profits - a pure
case of double taxation. Corporations and wealthy individuals
hide their profits and income in off shore bank accounts,
safe from their prying eyes of the IRS. If they, by chance,
do get caught in an audit their slick, expensive tax lawyers
and equally slippery accountants sit down in conference with
the IRS and strike a deal that allows these tax evaders to
pay only a percentage of what's due.
While corporate executives earn millions of dollars, their
employees on the production lines bring home only a tiny fraction
of their boss's compensation. While fringe benefits for executives
were trimmed recently because of falling corporate profits
nearly nine million ordinary workers and middle managers lost
more than fringe benefits - they lost their jobs. While corporate
executives keep up their company paid memberships at expensive
country clubs middle class Joe and Jane taxpayer sold their
clubs at the neighborhood flea market and don't even go the
movies any more. If you contend this is class warfare, it
is because of what has happened to Joe's and Jane's retirement,
their college fund for the kids and their accustomed lifestyle
that can't be maintained on $300 a week unemployment compensation
check - it just ain't fair, Magee!
Ask the simple question, "Are you better off than you were
two years ago?" The answer in the vast majority of cases will
be an equally simple answer, "Hell, no!"
I plead with you, America, return to your roots. Regain your
integrity as individuals as I did and deny these "follow the
leader" syndrome worshipers further opportunity to destroy
us as a world leader and bring true compassion and patriotism,
love of country, pride in our ability to show the world greatness,
truth and beauty of which we are capable if only we have a
bona fide leader with a firm hand at the tiller of our ship
of state. Bring back the words of Longfellow who wrote in
another era: "Sail on, O ship of state; Sail on, O union strong
and great; Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes
for future years, hangs breathless on thy fate".
It's behooves you, my fellow Americans, to wrest the power
to legislate from those who would destroy what this great
nation has stood for over 200 years. It is up to you, the
electorate, to bring back the image, the leadership, the integrity,
the justice and moral courage sorely needed to make the hard
decisions that only a competent president of this super power
can. It is up to you. Take back the Congress in November 2002
and the White House in 2004 - before it's too late.
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