GOP: Making nightmare real
As a resident of Idaho we rely on Republican moderation because, let's face it, this state is as red as wine. What must be asked of Republican voters in this state and across the country is to keep the leash tight on the extreme wing of the party. Republican leadership is leaving your kids and your grandkids with a legacy of debt and voter suppression.
Politicians are positioning themselves so they may choose their electorate instead of the electorate choosing them.
A right-wing supreme court has ruled that corporations are people, leaving our country with a soulless oligarchy guaranteeing that the loudest voice in our once great democracy also has the most money. In 2006 the Republican House put a poison pill in the post office, requiring them to pay - in advance - 75 years worth of retirement in a 10-year window... guaranteeing bankruptcy despite the post office making a billion dollars a year in profit. The post office and postal roads (in case you're unaware) are required in the Constitution.
A defense bill passed by both parties allows the government to hold an American citizen who is deemed a terrorist indefinitely without any due process.
It's as if George Orwell has collided with the book of Revelation to form some insane nightmare from which we cannot awake. Our leadership and Fox News sing a lullaby of freedom and cry "tyranny!" at Planned Parenthood, Social Security and Medicare. We are told the guardians of the environment are the real end of careers in this country while multi-national and American companies ship countless jobs overseas regardless of an already obscene profit margin.
A pipeline of oil sludge over an aquifer that supplies drinking water to seven states was strangely put into a bill meant for a middle class tax cut. The last catastrophic oil spill nearly destroyed a part of America's gulf waters while Republicans actually apologized to the oil companies. Gas prices tear at your budget, dancing to the whim of oil speculators who have gotten drunk on deregulation, eliminating the once simple rule of supply and demand... while the only answer from the far right is "drill baby drill." They scream of drilling in national parks and wildlife preserves to wean ourselves off "foreign and terrorist oil" ... while ignoring that 70 percent of our oil actually comes from Canada.
Republican leaders are asking you to accept a health-care system where the rich are attended to and the rest of us are left with crowded emergency rooms and collection agencies. House Republicans voted to turn Medicare into a voucher system because nothing says great care like a profit motive. Seniors are going to be left to fend off insurance companies and will be forced to pick up the tab when the voucher fails to pay the entire premium, or they can simply go without. Republican governors' continued assault on child labor laws, collective bargaining rights and voters rights are causing a paradigm shift in the electorate as working class voters, Reagan Republicans, and a growing minority base move to the Democratic party. The writing is on the wall for the GOP; it's quickly turning into a corporate cult instead of a viable political party.
CHAD SOLSVIK
Coeur d'Alene