A Note to My Relatives and Friends Who are Republicans

Why I’m Not and Never Could Be a Republican  

The Republican Party is NOT your friend. It, as an organization cares not a whit for or about you, your family, your health, the environment you live in or your ability to survive. The Republican Party has given us voter suppression, gerrymandering to the point that less than 40% of the voting age population controls both houses of Congress and states where they should have no hope. Republicans support the idea of taking your mortgage, food and clothing, healthcare and transportation money, shipping your job to Borneo or Sri Lanka (or any of a hundred places) and pocketing the difference. And to add insult to injury, WE pay for it with our taxes, because they get a huge tax break to cover the "cost" of putting us and ours on the street so they and their shareholders can share the money that used to be our salaries and benefits. What? You thought all that savings would go to create more jobs? Aren’t these people the champions of the “job creators?” Don’t be daft. There are no “job creators” in that scenario. Republicans also think it's a fine idea that CEOs of publicly held companies, who made about thirty-five times the average of employees wages in the seventies, now make ten times that much, while employees' wages have barely matched inflation, if they’ve done that. 

Republicans want to "rebuild" a military that already spends as much per year as, and with the exception of Saudi Arabia, more per capita than the next dozen countries COMBINED! Don’t believe it? Take a look:

NOTE: These numbers are all in equivalent US Dollars - Annual budgets are in billions.

Relative Military Expenses 2016 Top 13
Rank	Country	Annual	Per Capita
1	USA	$598	$1,859
2	China	$146	$106
3	Saudi Arabia	$82	$2,949
4	Untd Kngdm	$56	$878
5	Russia	$52	$362
6	India	$48	$35
7	Japan	$42	$323
8	Germany	$37	$454
9	South Korea	$33	$681
10	France	$32	$702
11	Brazil	$24	$119
12	Australia	$23	$1,000
13	Italy	$22	$348
		TOTAL	Avg per Capita
2 thru 13		$597	$663
	USA	$598	$1,859

 Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

Peace through strength? The point of this is, all that money spent, and we don't get peace out of it. That's not what this is. This is excess spending through hubris and stupidity. If strength bought peace, how much more "strength" d'you reckon we need than A THIRD OF THE WORLD'S ENTIRE MILITARY BUDGET?

But that’s for war and making money off our blood. When it comes to caring for veterans when they come home wounded or damaged by PTSD, or making sure they have jobs to come home to, Republicans think that they’re a "fiscal drain," and get way too much of the budget. These self-righteous, useless wastes of skin have denied or drastically reduced the last five Veterans’ Administration funding bills, and they’ve just done it again. It has been ever thus with these nimrods. No money and then blame the Administration when things go south, like the treatment scandal of last year. I will die believing that my brother died because he never could get a consistent long-term care approach from the VA, and he never could afford what he really needed from the private sector.

Republicans also believe it is better that tens of millions of Americans and their children go without healthcare and die ten years earlier on average than people with healthcare, because it costs too much to help them, and will hurt the bottom lines of too many pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and doctors. Not saying we should’ make them unprofitable, just less obscenely profitable off our misfortune.

Republicans believe that letting the rich keep more of their income and having you and me pay their share of the cost of government will result in more investment in jobs creation. It never has and there is no indication it ever will. Ronald Reagan nearly drove the country broke trying to prove it would, failed miserably and insisted his efforts had been a success.

Republicans promise limited government, but they bloat it and outspend Democrats when they get control of one, and insert themselves into every citizen's bedroom and daily life whenever possible. Republicans insist America was originally a “Christian” nation (a patently nonsensical assertion), and they believe it should be “again,” much as every Middle Eastern country is an Islamic country . . . . because it’s working out so well for those countries, I suppose.

On the environment . . . only Nixon had any record to be proud of environmentally. The Republican cry of “States’ Rights” led to the EPA being throttled by rules that they prove they’re not stepping on State administrations’ toes before they do anything. Can we spell “F-l-i-n-t,” as in the Michigan city, not the stone? EPA was WEEKS later than they could have been had they been permitted BY LAW to just show up in an emergency.  However, when she explained that to the Congressional  committee investigating the Flint Crisis (because, having passed that law they had somehow forgotten all about it), the EPA Director got screamed at (NOT hyperbole) by a Republican CongressTwit that (and I quote): “Nobody cares about the law up here.” Well that’s always been true. But if she had followed his direction and gone in anyway, he’d have been demanding her head. The irony? Although he was screaming at her, it’s a Republican legislature for twelve years and a Republican governor for the past eight that has created this mess, NOT the EPA. Still, there is a proposal in the House, and I'm betting it WILL be voted up to the Senate, to eliminate the EPA and create all environmental regulations by legislative fiat, because . . . stupid.

A note on Republican presidents since Johnson:

• ·       Nixon: a flat out criminal;
• ·       Ford: a nice guy but basically out of his depth;
• ·       Reagan: led us into the wilderness of no government income and great expenses, thereby running the deficit AND the national debt way up without a war to blame it on – dramatically lowered taxes, primarily on the one percent, then raised them EIGHT TIMES, but mostly on us – Dunno about you, but I think that when a small group of people has a majority of the nation’s wealth, they should pat an equivalent percentage of the cost of government;
• ·       Bush the Elder: started a war to help one Middle Eastern Robber Baron get his country back from another Middle Eastern Robber Baron – in short, basically for no American security or other reason at all;
• ·       Bush the Younger: started two wars under false pretense, but didn't do the ONE thing that would have justified the Afghan war (i.e., keep bin Laden and Mullah Omar when he had 'em. Instead, he handed them off to locals who released them. Bush never again went after them effectively), in the process giving us over a hundred thousand bodies and two ruined nations to show for it. And since he fought those wars off-budget, the new (Obama) Administration got the bill and had to make it a part of the National Debt the first month in office, where it should have been from the first troop carrier take-off.

S So I ask you, Republican voters and enablers . . . howinell did you EVER let them fool you this badly?

   Future blog topics:

• The GOP's evangelical Christian-driven attempt to turn America into a "Christian" nation modeled on their version of the religion
• The GOP's Clown Car approach (clowns included) to selecting a nominee for president
•  The GOP's War On Women insistence that the health needs of women aren't important enough to ensure readily available health care (see Planned Parenthood defunding)
• The GOP's War On Science, wherein belief, dogma and political theory tops evidence every time.
• The GOP's War On Elections - Election by trickery, extreme gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, barriers to voting, all justified by false claims of massive voter fraud (ironically, proven ONLY to have been accomplished by the GOP).