Instead of standing up for America’s most vulnerable, the increasingly fascist-minded Republicans have decided to put tax cuts for the rich ahead of protecting the American people, many of whom have to work more than one job to make ends meet. The Republicans say this legislation will make them popular with the American people. If so, then why is a large majority of Americans opposed to it?
Once again we are promised the trickle down benefits from this hair-brained scheme that very few of those who voted for it even understand. Many admitted they did not have time to read and study the provisions of the legislation before they rammed it through Congress behind closed doors in the dead of night. I would think they would have learned by now that trickle down never works because there are too many greedy hands hauling in the lucre before it gets down to those anxiously waiting for it. Any ameliorating provisions pledged to the middle class are only temporary and will likely add to the deficit (a rising deficit floats all yachts). It is said that no one wants to know how laws and sausage are made. We just saw how sausage is made in Washington, DC, folks. Even Senator Marcus Rubio (R-Florida), who supported and voted for the legislation, admitted after its passage that it went too far in benefitting corporations. A day late and a dollar short, if you ask me. And who can ignore Congress’ aggressive maneuvers to enrich its own members and the president’s [sic] family? Just one more egregious example of Congress feathering its own nest at the expense of the people on whose behalf the have been elected to govern.
For the past several years, on the morning of July 4, I have participated in the reading of the Declaration of Independence. I’ve done so because I think it prudent that every person residing in this country should read it at least once a year to be reminded of the tenets on which our nation was built. It declares America’s sovereignty over its people and a destiny as a free nation in which everyone is guaranteed "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" by whichever creator they chose to recognize. In order to secure these rights, our Founding Fathers (and the women who stood by them) instituted a government deriving its "just powers from the consent of the governed." We established a congress of elected representatives and gave it our sacred consent to govern on our behalf.
Granted, the Declaration of Independence was drafted and sanctioned in order to separate the American colonies from Great Britain based on that country’s failure to guarantee its American subjects’ God-given rights, and to establish the free and independent United States of America. Should we not hold these United States, our own country, to the very same standards we expected from the British motherland? Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly believed so in his second inaugural address, on 20 January 1937. "We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." This no longer rings true today. The current president [sic] and Congress have seen to that in spades.
So let’s take another look at the Declaration of Independence. It states that "whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." This is certainly something we should all keep in mind as we approach the mid-term elections in November. The Declaration cautions us, however, that "prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Yet the representatives who no longer represent our interests are where they are because we elected them. We can just as easily send them packing and elect leaders and representatives who will hold our Founding Fathers’ pledge and their sacred honor to a higher standard. "[B]ut when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to [subject] reduce them to arbitrary power, it is their [the American people] right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." This right is ours and we ought to take it back. November can’t come early enough.
It should be interesting to see what the new year holds for Americans who are pledging to take their country back from this Fascist-minded Republican administration and gearing up for what are likely to be punishing midterm elections in November . . . especially after the trouncing the Republicans took in the November and December by-elections. These 2018 midterms, more than those in previous years, will prove a referendum on the catastrophic Trump-Republican administration. Resist!! Vote!!
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