This article was
initially posted on May 19, 2013 and is being reposted again because it speaks
to something important. And since the
midterms are nearly upon us, it’s time to sit-up and pay attention! You might not realize it right now, but you need
to vote like your life depends on it, because…
Weird Wally didn’t get serious
about blogging until around 2007. And
that was about the time he got his head out of his butt and took a look
around. Something was up,
but not yet obvious and Wally took to blogging to help him figure it out. Although nothing more than an online
journal, he learned to question authority, and in the process, finally started
paying attention. A lot of
other people also started paying attention, but we could not believe what we
were seeing.
Besides the irrational tax cuts
and big bank deregulation that no one really wanted, we also saw a gigantic
increase in corporate welfare, billion dollar no-bid government contracts, and
a senseless war in Iraq. And
not too long before the financial crises of 2008, President Bush and other
Republicans were pushing hard to privatize social security and hand the money
over to Wall Street. Fortunately,
that didn’t happen. But would President Obama
be sitting in the Oval Office today, were it not for the financial meltdown of
September 2008?
For a while, we believed that
our votes actually made a difference, but as Obama’s first term progressed, he
didn’t stand up for much and many began forgetting what he once stood
for. Nobody from Wall
Street went to jail, foreclosures continued, wages remained stagnant and the
rich kept getting richer.
Meanwhile, with the help of a
super-secret society, known as the American Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC), many states were busy finding ways to keep minorities, single
moms, seniors and single women in general, away from the polls, and voter
suppression was just a start. ALEC
also promoted cutting state taxes for large corporations, fighting unions and
keeping worker wages as low as possible.
In Washington, DC, things were
equally as bad. The Supreme
Court had gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, immigration reform stalled and
in Congress, the House voted over 50 times to repeal “Obamacare” and Republican
politicians cowered to talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and people on Fox News
and denied that they were all just bunch of women hating racists, anyway.
But as things started getting
uglier, Wally could not yet believe how ugly things already were. Black men and women who were unarmed
were getting gunned down by cops and regular citizens alike. Seems like, if you shot and killed an
African-American, all you have to say is, that person was “black and I feared
for my life,” and if you’re white, you might just get away with it.
Even as Obamacare shows major
signs of success and the president is getting his mojo back, no one from Wall
Street has gone to jail and the “too big to fail banks,” continue to keep
private their profits and make public their loses (by way of the tax code,
monetary policy and government subsidies), I’m pissed, but will vote this
November in spite of it.
Had Romney been elected in
2012, he and his administration would have ignored ALEC and its attempts at
voter suppression and a lot of states would be throwing people off voter rolls
unhindered. As it is,
it’s an uphill struggle.
So if we don’t vote in
November, there’s a good possibility we won’t ever have to stress about it again. A lot can happen in only two
years. Meanwhile, keep an
eye out and please pay attention, because you never know.
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