Dear Republican Party:
Thanks for renewing a pledge to have some kind of "Contract with America" thingy. You guys are just the gift that keeps on giving.
But here's the deal:
We already have a contract with America.
It's called "Social Security." Turning over that contract to Wall Street in the name of "privatization" would be breaking our contract.
We already have a contract with America.
It's called "banking regulations."
And when illegal, robo-signed foreclosures become an avenue for greedy institutions to hold on to profits in tough times, and your party advocates repeal of rules for Wall Street, that breaks our contract with homeowners and the American Dream.
We already have a contract with America.
It's called "Veterans Benefits."
Privatizing VA hospitals would be breaking our contract with those who served our country more than any others.
We already have a contract with America.
It's called "minimum wage."
Eliminating the minimum wage and turning our country into a race to the bottom serfdom would be breaking our contract with every American worker.
We already have a contract with America.
It's called the Clean Air Act. Putting corporate profits ahead of clean air and water is breaking our contract with our own health and well-being. Oh, and privatizing the Centers for Disease Control is, too.
We already have a contract with America.
It's called national infrastructure. And when corporations are allowed to disregard safety in the name of "deregulation" to the point where bridges collapse, natural gas lines explode, and the Gulf of Mexico is covered with oil, our contract is broken with Americans. And your concentrated effort to mesmerize the public that "government's bad" has and will lead to disasters that have and will KILL people.
We already have a contract with America. And your candidates propose breaking that contract in so many ways that you cannot be trusted to govern this nation.
Thank you.
The difference, of course, is that theirs is a contract "on" America.
ReplyDeleteTAKE HER OUT!
S
Nice piece, Blue Gal.
ReplyDeleteInfrastructure? You mean the way it rained this weekend (that's what we call a "storm" here) and 15,000 customers and a BART station had no electricity for six hours? I wonder what they do in places where it snows, because this didn't seem like much of a storm to me. I wish my mail-in ballot would hurry up and get here.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
Damn Right!
ReplyDeleteSing it, sistah!!!!!
ReplyDeleteDon't know how I missed this - great post. Really - brilliant! Do you mind if I link it in my next post?
ReplyDeleteThis post is dead on.
ReplyDeleteOne might argue as well that these things taken together amount to breaking the social contract itself.
Knowingly instituting things like indefinite detention without trial or torture (for two dramatic examples among many) decimates the social contract & sends society's lowest common denominator into a nosedive - calling it barbarism is not rhetoric or hyperbole. Nowhere is it etched in stone that barbarism always has to be a low-tech affair.