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here's the letter I'm sending to my Repuke congresswoman (I'm from Illinois, so I've got good Senators):
Dear Representative Biggert,
I was inspired to write you this letter by an obituary that appeared in today’s Chicago Tribune. Theodore Roosevelt Heller, a World War Two veteran, passed away at the age of 88. The obituary included this request: "In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans." In honor of Mr. Heller’s service to our country, in support of all the men and women enlisted in our armed services, and because you represent me in Congress, I ask you to read this letter in its entirety.
Mr. Heller risked his life on the battlefield to defend our country. I ask you to defend the American people in the halls of Congress. Your service may be less dangerous, but it is no less important. The perils we face today are of a different nature, but how we deal with them now will have a lasting impact on our children and grandchildren.
Enormous budget deficits are doing more than leaving a legacy of debt to the next generation. Current policies are putting our economic security in the hands of Asian banks that hold our debt along with the value of our currency. This increases China’s economic leverage over us, while the trade defits grows and American jobs are outsourced.
Republicans control the White House and Congress. What are you going to do about these deficits? It is morally indefensible to balance the budget by cutting programs and services for the neediest Americans, especially after the disaster of hurricane Katrina exposed the growing disparity between rich and poor in this country. Before the Bush tax cuts, the economy prospered AND the rich got richer. It is time to be responsible and rescind those tax cuts.
Another major threat we face is our dependency on oil, which also puts our economic security in the hands of potentially hostile governments. We cannot solve this problem by increasing domestic extraction of this finite resource. Accelerating the depletion of our dwindling reserves without improving fuel efficiency or implementing renewable energy sources will drive our economy over the cliff that much faster.
And it can no longer be denied that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to global warming, rising sea levels, and climate change that can have catastrophic effects – especially on our increasingly populated coastlines. It also releases poisons into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. In particular, coal-burning power plants are primarily responsible for increasing asthma among children and for levels of mercury high enough among millions of women of child-bearing age to cause a wide range of diseases, including mental retardation. These children will be disadvantaged before they are born, because the industry donated millions of dollars to the election of George W. Bush. 75 of the worst polluters were being prosecuted for violations of the Clean Air Act, but when Bush became president he ordered those lawsuits to be dropped. Then he re-wrote the New Source Rule that required those plants to clean their emissions.
What kind of family values trades the health of our children for corporate bribes?
President Bush appointed as head of the clean air division at the EPA a utility lobbyist who represented air polluters; as head of the Superfund, a consultant who helped corporate polluters evade Superfund regulations; at the Council on Environmental Quality, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute; in charge of public lands, a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional; as head of the Forest Service, a timber industry lobbyist; etc, etc, etc.
Rather than safeguarding our health and conserving our natural heritage, our government agencies are being sold to the highest bidder. Does this represent conservative principles?
There is nothing conservative about “preemptive” war and spending a billion dollars a week on a nation-building operation that, according to the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, is turning Iraq into the recruiting and training ground for the next generation of professional terrorists. This war of choice has been characterized by many experts as the worst strategic blunder in American foreign policy history. The Bush administration advanced the worst case scenario in regards to weapons of mass destruction, and an unrealistically rosy scenario in regards to securing and rebuilding Iraq. Consequently, mismanagement and fatal errors in judgement have drained our treasury and cost the lives of nearly 2000 of our young men and women in uniform.
Which brings me back to Theodore Roosevelt Heller. We owe it to him, and every American who serves in our military, to send them in harm’s way only when it is truly to defend our country, when the American people are honestly informed and willing to sacrifice, and when our leaders do everything necessary to ensure the success of the mission. I don’t know what can be done at this point to ensure success in Iraq, or if it’s even possible, but I do know that this administration and this congress have failed in their duty to the troops who perform theirs so valiantly.
The perils confronting us today are more important than the partisan politics of Republicans and Democrats. The American people need fiscal responsibility, good jobs in the United States, reliable energy, a healthy environment, a foreign policy that supports our troops and doesn’t breed terrorism, and a government that is accountable to the average citizen before the corporate lobbyist.
We need you, Judy Biggert, to set aside party loyalty and work hard for the people you were elected to serve. I’m not referring to your biggest campaign contributors. I’m referring to the hardworking Americans whose taxes pay your salary and health benefits, and to the children who will inherit our debt and the world we bequeath to them.
Hopefully, 60 years from now, the obituary for a veteran of the war in Iraq won’t include a request to write acerbic letters to politicians who failed in their duty.
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