This OP-ED piece written in the Kennebec Journal by Jim Murphy just has to be repeated.
Kudos to those GOP senators signing the op-ed piece: "Government by Disrespect."
They're missing a nastier issue, however: The attack on Maine seniors, families and working people, while increasing handouts to the rich, that's being replicated in all GOP-run states.
Why are different states being attacked with the same strategy? Why do the various bills often have the same wording? Because distant corporate interests have scripted, funded and staffed long-range plans to rule our statehouses. "Suspects," such as Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch brothers, are working through the GOP-tea party to privatize and deregulate state economies for investors, erode basic rights and corrupt democracy.
Rep. Kimberly Rosen, R-Bucksport, said one anti-labor proposal is being driven by out-of-state interests.
Another odd similarity: In all these GOP-run states, truth and facts don't matter. One big lie is that Americans are with them. The tea party is big on this one.
The Opinion Research/CNN poll showed its favorability dropping by 21 points. It's now down to 47 percent disapprove, 32 percent approve. Recent rallies are tiny. Witness the huge upset in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The crime here is theft: Transfer of the people's resources and commons to the very rich. But that, after all, is only money.
A more monstrous moral evil is taking root: The destruction of our key values of dignity, cooperation, democracy, justice and the common good. These are the shared beliefs that bind us as a community, and they're getting in the way of corporate rule.
"Kiss my butt" and "Go to hell" mask this deeper malignancy at work.
Jim Murphy
The Tea Party, and their financial backers the Koch Brothers, do not represent the majority of Americans and yet the majority of Americans do nothing to stop the corporate take-over of our federal government.
The figure-heads in Washington, puppets of the corporate agenda to tear down any and all legislation that restricts their activity in any way, are more than happy to accept financial benefits in order to keep their ‘prestigious’ positions.
We did not elect these people to become ‘puppet spokes-persons’ for corporate America and yet by our very unwillingness to participate in government affairs our representatives are emboldened to answer only to those with fistfuls of money to give them direction.
America, if you are not pissed off then you are not paying attention.
The only incentive remaining for most working adults to get out of bed in the morning is to keep their paycheck in hopes of keeping their home. That job and that family home is no longer a guarantee backed by honest hard work. Corporate America is taking these once-solid American foundations away from us bit by bit and they are doing it through federal legislation.
You think your vote doesn’t count? Well thanks to the years of voter apathy the cumulative effect of low voter turnout has made that question moot. Only those people who give a damn about the ‘common good’ vote and those numbers are dwindling.
We need to stop viewing the political process from the selfish mindset of ‘what is in it for me’ and wake-up to the fact that how we vote or don’t vote affects ‘everyone’.
We need to start behaving as a community because it is a guarantee that corporate America is behaving in this way and they are winning.
