VOTING A STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC TICKET
(THE ONLY DECENT THING TO DO) 

   In the hot humid aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and before a live audience and cameras rolling, New Orleans’ poorest had seen their hopes and family drown before their helpless eyes.  It was then that Kanye West blurted, “George Bush don’t care about black people.”  His words seemed to slice through Michael Moore, standing next to him, like a sharp knife.  Pretty direct.  No attempt to put lipstick on that FEMA pig and Bush’s non-response.  But people were drowning and dying of thirst, FEMA was out to lunch and Bush flying over the corpses for a look-see high up in Air Force One.  Time passed, and Americans forgot what Kanye West had said.  Bush’s apathy wasn’t about blacks.  It was about “them,” the other human race Bush set apart, in his actions and in his arrogant rhetoric from all the more fortunate chaps from Harvard and other origins of affluence.   

   If you were not one of his base, the “Have Mores,” then you were unimportant.  You were a second class American and you got second class treatment.  The poor, you see, were a drag on the deep pockets ability to avoid shelling out in taxes to finance people programs in America.  Even on a good day, you would not catch Bush supporting extending healthcare to poor children, and in fact he vetoed the very bill that would have done that.  It just did not fit the Republican mentality.  A tax cut for the rich, however, is more like it.  Such reward for the Have Mores is top on Bush’s agenda.  Cutting Social Security benefits for those who need it, is Bush’s business, just as is reducing Capital Gains tax for (guess who) the rich.  Kanye could have said, should have said, “poor people,” not “black people.”   

   I cannot help but smile when someone pokes fun at another who votes a straight party ticket.  “Yellow Dog Democrats,” they sneer.  And these hecklers usually claim how they vote for the person, not the party, as if they had the intelligence to see beyond what each party stands for, what each has stood for, and what each party platform is for and against.  These brilliant voters who know their own minds seem to have mastered sifting out the spin so that they can make a clear and correct choice, too.  Yeah, right!  And tomorrow all the possums will revolt and turn the tables on all the dogs and hunters in Georgia and chase ‘em up every Georgia pine from Atlanta to Savannah.   

   This year both candidates are pretty cut and dried as to issues.  McCain has followed Bush each step of the way on continuing the Iraq War even if it takes 100 years, and Obama says he, as president, will affect a planned withdrawal from such a costly and immoral war.  When asked softball questions on camera, McCain is quick to attack Obama for being a tax-and-spend Democrat when McCain has supported Bush on the most severe spending damage to the National Treasury in the history of America.  Bush’s Iraq War which McCain faithfully supports has cost the taxpayers Trillions of dollars OFF BUDGET while other programs like Social Security funding (which helps the working man) gets sacked by the GOP with a warning,  

   “Social Security is in big trouble, and may just run out of money in the next few years, so git prepared for the worst.”  Like Zombies, America’s young working men and women will tell you what they have been hypnotized to believe, namely, that they will not live to see any benefits from Social Security.  Baloney!  Social Security is solvent until the year 2040 despite these OFF BUDGET Trillions that pour out of the Treasury and into the pockets of the war corporation cronies Bush affectionately calls the “Have Mores” (his base). 

    Cutting the benefits of poor and working Americans is the business of the GOP, George Bush, and the Neocon Congress that bankrupted America good.  For the last 7 years, we have seen Bush lie about being pro-education with his infamous No Child Left Behind Act.  Bush gloats and brags about all he has done for average American school children to help them get an education, whether they are rich or poor.  Not.  Funding for the NCLB Act has been at 10-15% of the amount required to make it work for each of the last 5 years.  And who budgets the money to fund programs?  The White House.  And Congress approves it, and McCain has voted for each and every Bush budget that came down the pike.  And as a result of this Bush/McCain, Laurel and Hardy approach to education, some inner city kids throughout the country have not been able to even attend school because Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act Budget did not fund enough money for buses to get them there to the public schools.

    One of the saddest lies that Bush ever told was that he applauded John McCain for his support in getting passed the recent VA Education and Reenlistment Funding Bill.  Neither supported it in the beginning, and Bush said he would veto it until the passage became inevitable, and then Bush jumped on the bandstand as if he had been for the bill all along.  To add insult to injury Bush praised John McCain on his support to insure the VA Bill’s passage, when truth is, McCain was against much of it, including his objection that the reenlistment bonuses and other benefits in the bill were too high and too costly.  Veterans groups who watched the votes closely, sobered up fast when McCain’s position for the Vets surprised them.  After all, he was a veteran who had been a POW.  But McCain is following GOP miserly spending for people programs like VA benefits, to the letter. 

   Neither Bush, nor his GOP Republican base ever supported a hike in the paltry minimum wage until the Democrats took control of Congress.  The Republicans in Congress, when they had a majority, voted down raising the Minimum Wage every time the bill came to the vote.  Religiously, McCain voted with his fellow Republicans whereas Obama voted to raise it every time.   

   Remember when Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act after Hurricane Katrina?  The Act says that government pay for contract work such as the Katrina cleanup would be commensurate with the local prevailing labor rate.  The going rate for labor in New Orleans at the time was around $9.50 per hour, and Davis- Bacon would have kicked in if the president had not suspended it in time of emergency, you know.  So guess who, instead of having to pay $9.50 an hour to N.O. local workers, got to pay a little over HALF that amount?  If you guessed the king of the no-bid contractors, Halliburton, you are correct.  They got to hire their work force for Minimum Wage while they got big bucks from Uncle Sam.  I wrote Senator Hutchison of Texas and protested Bush suspending Davis-Bacon to accommodate more of his crony Have More base, and she had the audacity to write me back, telling me that Bush was right in suspending the DB Act because it saved the United States lots of money by contracting out labor costs for less than the going $9.50 per hour.  Say what?  The contractors like Halliburton were the big winners because they got to pay cheap wages out while continuing to charge the USA billions from their fat no-bid contract agreements with George W. Bush and his Republican thieves in Congress.  And the US Government still paid the big bucks through the nose to private contractors.  Blackwater got some of the action after Katrina, too, but you can bet that they didn’t get paid Minimum Wage.  Earth to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, got that?  Duh? 

   The GOP, George Bush, and his Neocon Congress have not done the American working man many favors in the last 7 years.  Millions of jobs lost.  Factories shutting down.  Mortgage meltdowns.  Brokerage houses going down the toilet.  Even General Motors is teetering, signaling massive layoffs to come.  McCain is a GOP team player all the way.  He favors continuing Bush’s policies to decimate the working man, programs for the poor and the middle class, and last but not least, making the 2 Trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, permanent.  Obama’s first order of business, he says, will be to get the tax cuts for the rich rescinded and the monies applied back toward programs such as real funding for Education, real funding for Veterans Benefits, and real funding for College Tuition and other costs.  Obama, true to his Democratic Party platform wants to put the power back where it belongs, in the hands of the people, in the hands of all Americans, not just Bush’s Have More cronies. 

   Parties do matter.  It is a matter of moral principle that the Democrats favor a government that helps people grow and prosper.  And the GOP, year after year, has maintained the same old ideas such as privatization of government, repeal of the Inheritance Tax for the affluent, Capital Gains Tax cuts, and etc.  Under Bush during the last 7 years and his lapdog Congress (of which McCain was a dutiful supporter and player) the Republicans have managed to shift more money from government programs for the poor to the pockets of the rich through partnering with war corporations.  For decades each party has managed to nominate candidates who supported the ideals and the platforms of each respective party.  McCain is more of the same old GOP attempt to drown government social programs in the bath tub.  Obama is the future.  He favors programs where we the people win.

   I say it’s time to shuck the repugnant Republican philosophy of greed which favors taking the whole government pie and telling you it’s legal.  It’s time to do the right thing and vote a straight ticket.  Call me a Yellowdog Democrat, if you will.  I have been known to howl at the moon, and in protest of the train wreck that Bush and his Republican yes men like McCain have brought to America.  Let’s throw the bums out.  Vote Democratic.