Letter to my senators: your corruption & inaction are pushing us to a revolution

yurbud

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Sat Jun-04-11 01:51 PM
Original message

Letter to my senators: your corruption & inaction are pushing us to a revolution

I always have trouble writing short letters because I start thinking about the systemic problems underlying the cause of the moment, but the rest of this really needs to be said.

June 4, 2011

Senators,

As a constituent, I am asking you to strenuously resist and vote against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, and other programs that help the poor and middle class in America. If you truly represented us, you would be fighting to extend Medicare to ALL Americans who want in, and fixing Social Security by lifting or even eliminating the cap, and taxing those who have benefited the most from thirty years of Reaganomics: the very, very rich.

Whenever members of Congress start talking about making �tough choices,� it inevitably means harming the poor and middle class to protect or further enrich the already wealthy.

I have been disgusted the last ten years not just by the corrupt and extreme agenda of the Republicans, but how often Democrats in Congress and the Senate in particular have put up token resistance, no resistance, or even voted with the GOP for their most destructive policies like ongoing wars that benefit primarily oil companies, central bankers, and defense contractors, and bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy.

And the rest of us can�t help but notice the breakneck speed Congress works to save the wealthy when they need bailouts for breaking America and the world�s economy, but how they slow-walk, poor-talk, and then deliver a half-assed product like health care reform that does as much or more to help insurance companies who created the problem as it does for average Americans.

Democrats in the Senate had a chance to reverse this seeming complicity with the right when you voted on changing the filibuster rules, but when you did nothing to limit GOP obstruction, you reinforced the impression that the two parties are no more than professional wrestlers, following a script with one writer, who works on Wall Street or more likely never worked a day in his life and lives off a generations' old trust fund.

If Democrats in the Congress can�t shake off enough of their corruption to make not just barely perceptible incremental change toward solving our problems, but fundamental ones that strike at the root causes and make it difficult for the right to roll it back, changes at least as radical as the New Deal, then America may begin to see the kind of political upheaval going on in the Arab world and Latin America.

In the Information Age, when we can monitor what you do with any number of sources, not just a handful of newspapers and TV networks, people will no longer tolerate rigged democracy, where our vote at most affects laws on guns, gods, and gays, but both parties follow the same orders on the economy, taxing the rich, and going to war. We can no longer afford a financial and political elite that impoverishes us and treats us like idiots and cannon fodder. People only pour into the streets and join revolutions when it is more dangerous to do nothing and the profound corruption in Washington is pushing us to that point.