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A former college roommate of mine -- someone I was very close friends with -- doesn't seem to know anything about me. She now lives in south Florida, is married to a bank president, and is obviously a staunch Republican. She recently sent me an e-mail entitled "Welcome to the Republican Party" -- I wish I'd saved it but the gist of it is that it was about a college student who was also a liberal Democrat who worked very hard, had a 4.0 GPA, always went to class, and had a bright future in front of her. By contrast, she had a friend who had a 2.0 GPR, skipped class all the time, never did any work, and was hung over most of the time. The good student tells her father about this and he replies, "Well, why don't you take 1.0 off your gradepoint and give it to her? Then you're both even at 3.0. The girl reacts in horror to this, asking why she should do all the work only for her friend to receive equal benefit? Her father smiles and says "Welcome to the Republican Party."
Needless to say, I was horrified that she would send me something like that so I had to concoct a reply, which is below. Sorry for the length of this post but I had to share!
"The onetime liberal Democrat, now staunch Republican, college student graduates from college with honors and eagerly goes job hunting only to learn that entry level corporate jobs have all been outsourced to India. She demands to see the CEO at the last company but learns that she was actually at a branch office and the company headquarters are registered to a PO Box in the Cayman Islands so the owners can avoid paying US taxes. A career counselor suggests that she try for a job in the newly-burgeoning manufacturing sector. “I hear that if you’re really good on the fry machine, you’ll be promoted to condiment distribution in a year or less!”
Not having graduated from college to obtain employment as a burger manufacturer she heads home dejectedly to find her live in fiance, who joined the reserves to help pay for his MBA, packing his bags. “My unit’s been called up and deployed to Iraq,” he said. “I’ll be gone for at least a year and will only have my reserve pay since the company I work for won’t pay me the difference, or hold my job, while I’m gone. So, I can’t pay my half of the rent on the apartment any more since I’m told it can take a year or more to get the reserve pay from the army. And there’s no guarantee I’ll be back in a year if the situation isn’t resolved by then or I could get ambushed as soon as I get there. Wish me luck.”
With no job prospects and an apartment she can’t pay for, the new college grad gets into her imported SUV to ask her father for help. On the way she decides to stop for gas. “$2.00 a gallon?” she gasps. “It’s going to take $75 just to fill the tank!” “It’s those strategic petroleum reserves,” said the person next to her, filling the tank of his Ford Focus. “The government won’t release them so the price of imported oil is up. That way they can fulfill their campaign promise to their Big Oil campaign donors. I’m sure glad my car gets 55 miles per gallon – it’s going to be a long, expensive summer.”
Fuming, she gets back into the SUV, and lurches over the potholed road toward the gated community her family lives in. ‘I wonder why they don’t fix these roads?’ she wondered as she turned on the radio and caught the tail end of a newscast explaining that the president vetoed the federal highway bill as ‘wasteful deficit spending’ but proudly announced another $7 billion would go to fix the roads in Iraq, that, coincidentally, had been wrecked by the American invasion.
Finally, arriving at her parents’ house she asks her strangely-agitated and distracted father if he’ll give her an entry level job; after all he’s one of the highest ranking executives in the area’s biggest energy company. “Can’t do it, honey,” he said with an anguished glance at his watch. “Some holier-than-thou, jealous rank and file worker concocted some crazy story about our cooking the books and inflating our assets to drive our stock prices up. I only had time to drain the pension fund and transfer it to Switzerland before the investigators started showing up. It looks like the company’s bankrupt now so we aren’t hiring anyone new and our 4,000 employees just lost their jobs, benefits, and retirement. Sorry I can’t talk more but I’ve got a plane to catch.”
With no prospects left, she storms out of the house, trips on the steps and breaks her ankle. She calls 911 from her cellphone and asks for an ambulance and learns that emergency services for this community had to be discontinued for lack of funds. “WHAT?” she shrieks. “This is one of the most affluent communities in the state! Just look at all these companies and businesses here! What are you talking about?” “Tax breaks,” is the reply. “Corporate welfare. The companies refused to locate here unless we promised tax abatements for the next ten years. The city doesn’t get a dime from them.” “Well, what about these gated communities like ours? What about their property taxes?” she asked. “Outside the city limits,” came the answer. “You have the same ZIP code but you pay much lower township taxes. The township is supposed to pay us for the emergency services but they had to give abatements to the builder or he wouldn’t build there. We’re all broke.”
Her ankle throbbing with pain, she picks up her cellphone to make one more call. “Kerry for President Headquarters,” says the voice on the other end. “Hello,” she says. Tell me how I can help.” "
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