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    Posted September 10, 2012 by
    FDON60
    Assignment
    Assignment
    This iReport is part of an assignment:
    Election 2012: Your stories

    Intolerance of the (too far) right wing.

     
    Congressman Pete Sessions
    Last week I received a fax from your organization asking to add my name to a letter to President Obama accusing him of a lack of ability to "create jobs".
    The letter did not contain any fax number to which I could respond, so I decided to call the National Republican Congressional Committee at the number included in the letter. The person who responded was very eager to add my name to the letter until I informed him that my call was to assure my name was not added to such letter since I was totally against its contents. Furthermore I asked for a fax number to where I could send my response. His answer was to hung-up on me.

    Upon some consideration, your reaction to my dissent was not a surprise given that if you don't align your proposals to the extreme-right / tea-party positions you would not be able to secure any positions.

    Your party is missing a historical opportunity to avoid extinction by not taking a logical approach, that would follow (it is not a bad word) and lead, as a team member, the changes of our times.
    This country must follow and create a path atoned with the 21 century, and the geo social/political changes of this world. This is no longer the world of the 50' that provided the geo-political frame for the US to become a great country, in the second half of last century.
    Probably your positions would change if you could leave aside the selfish self-preservation approach and look at these times with the different optics that requires. But that is a topic for a longer conversation, and I would bet that you know what I am writing about… but again, you see only this process as the opportunities for your survival.

    Let me give you just an example. For more than 40+ years different governments have been trying to bring changes to our health care system. Different countries around the world has many approaches to this problem, thus, we could do far better, but no proposal have been successful for more than four decades. The problem is hard, but four decades to solve a problem that apparently the rest of the world has almost perfected? Can we at least agree that is too long?
    There are two simple explanations why for all these years governments of different political positions have not been able to produce a workable and acceptable solution.
    1- Money. The driven force behind any crime. Different companies make oodles of money out of the way this system currently not-works. Thus they lobby like there is no tomorrow, they pay politicians and they buy policy. We are the suckers.
    2- This it is not your problem. You like all members of government are the beneficiaries of a first class citizens' health plan, of course paid by, again, the suckers. Hereby I challenge you to make an honest move and resign to your first class citizen health insurance. Go ahead and like all of us, pay for a second class service, go bankrupt if you suffer a serious illness, get rejected if you have a pre-existing condition, and all the other negative characteristics of the former health care system. Do so, and I will believe your arguments against the changes proposed by this president. If you were one of us, I can assure you, it would not have taken 40 years for a better health care program. But, this does is not a priority because it does not apply to you. Again, is not your problem.

    At any rate the intention of this communication was to answer your unsolicited fax requesting my support to your letter. Thus, below is my answer, the one I was not allowed to provide, since as soon as your assistant realized I was not supporting your cause, he hung up on me.

    Then, if you have reach this point, thanks for reading, dissenting is healthy, respect is healthier. Below is the answer.

    -------------------------

    NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESIONAL COMMITTEE
    In response to the fax received on 9/7/2012, copy attached:

    YOU DON’T HAVE MY PERMISSION TO ADD MY NAME TO YOUR LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

    President Obama's extract from his July 13th 2012, quoted in your letter has been taken out of context. As noted on the “Political Punch” ABC news web site;
    “The president’s argument, <> revolves around the idea that business people need the infrastructure provided by the government in order to succeed.”
    Check the full article: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/did-obama-say-if-youve-got-a-business-you-didnt-build-that/

    There is no way the extract quoted by you can be read as if President Obama was minimizing the effort it takes to build up a business or in any way demeaning business owners. But “fact-free” statements are no surprise, under the light of how Republicans are conducting this campaign.

    As a corollary, I would like to point out to you a couple of facts:
    Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million. (From President Clinton speech, fact that you can check on politifact.com)
    Other facts: The S&P 500 stock index, for example, has risen 12.1 percent per year under Democratic presidents since 1900, and just 5.1 percent under Republicans. Since 1949, GDP has grown 4.2 percent per year under Democrats and 2.6 percent per year under Republicans. The same trend extends to corporate profits, which have grown 10.5 percent under Dems and 8.9 percent under Republicans.

    The Republican stance was cleverly summarized by President Clinton in his speech at the Democrat convention:
    “In Tampa, did you watch their convention? I did. In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's re-election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”

    I don’t want to bother you any longer with factual information. You know how annoying that could be when you are daily choosing to mislead the public with innuendo and half cooked information.

    But in my humble opinion, why would anyone want to give their vote to your party, whose economic plans brought us the biggest recession since 1930? Whose policies mirror those that have not yet allowed Europe to recover at the rate the US is doing? Whose failed foreign policies brought us two wars that killed and wounded thousand of young people and added $3.7 trillion to our debt? Whose economic approach led to 800,000 jobs lost per month (when President Obama’s policies are adding jobs steadily for the past 29 months)? That supports policies that will keep on giving tax benefits for millionaires who invest their money in Caiman Islands? A candidate who wants to repeal the only attempt in forty years for a more fair health program? To the candidate that stated that the best he would have done with the real estate industry was to let it go “rock bottom”? Whose solution for the auto industry was to let it go bankrupt? That supports and benefits corporations (they are not people), benefits the few, and invest millions in the private agenda of lobbyists supporting special interest that do not reflect the needs of the population. Definitely, not!

    So, my vote goes again to President Obama. For four more years of steady economic recovery, for the strength of the middle class, for four more years of peace and a foreign policy that brought back world-wide positive recognition. And mainly and above all, my support and vote goes for the party whose agenda is for the wealth and fair opportunity of all US citizens and is not misleading people into the belief that a country is a business run for the benefit of the few you represent.

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