Saturday, August 30, 2003

The Cheap-Labor Republicans are HYPOCRITES When It Comes to How They Define Crime!

They twist logic to absurd extremes in order to promote their anti-worker, pro-slavery agenda!

The cheap-labor conservatives in Congress, the Senate, and the White House are opposed to legislation making the penalties tougher for hate crimes, such as when someone injures or kills someone due to their race, religion or sexual orientation. Yet they claim to be "tough on crime" in many other ways. Not only that, with CAPPS II and the PATRIOT ACT (and their McCarthyite TIPS which was justly defeated) they don't even mind every American being spied upon, and being treated as a suspect! They don't even have a problem with the death penalty, even though most industrialized countries (and many people here in the US) consider the death penalty to be barbaric. Their hypocrisy is even worsened when you consider that many of them believe that death is an eternal punishment for most people, and that they love people and want people to have a chance to escape that punishment. They also claim that murder should be forbidden. Then they turn around and kill people! Setting the worst possible example for the children and teenagers who they claim need to be taught "family values". Last time I checked, hate was NOT a family value.

Of course, if your crime is to cheat workers out of fair wages (the minimum wage is atrociously low, and they oppose increasing it) or to kill people by polluting the air or waterways, then they don't have a problem with it!

What the borrow-and-spend Republicans' definition of crime boils down to, and this is one of their dirty secrets, is this. Their definition of crime is anything that prevents or threatens to prevent rich and powerful people from pursuing their agenda, at any cost to the rest of the public. Therefore, a poor black person killing a white suburban person will get the death penalty. But if it happens in reverse, then the murderer will only get a slap on the wrist. If you don't believe me, check out how many people of each ethnicity get the death penalty. Also observe how few of the KNOWN wealthy toxic polluters, corporate crooks who wipe out their employees' or shareholders' savings, and other wealthy people who have ruined other people's lives in other ways are serving a life sentence or on death row.

Have you ever noticed the cheap-labor Republicans' hypocrisy regarding abortion and welfare? They claim abortion should be treated as a crime, because they are "pro-life." In other words, they claim to care about the life of the "unborn child." If this was really true, then they would not only accept, but ENCOURAGE poor mothers to receive pre-natal treatment, medical care for herself and the child after birth, and assistance with food and housing if needed. But instead, they want to wipe out this assistance altogether! No, the truth is, they don't care about poor children one bit. All they really care about is keeping people desperate (and who is more desperate than a single parent in poverty?) enough to work for any slave wage they can find. Their opposition to raising and indexing the minimum wage also shows that they have no feelings of concern for the children who are already or about to be born either, unless, of course, the children belong to the wealthy elite.

John Kerry has plans to improve the lot of working people and to protect basic levels of assistance and reproductive freedom for all of us, including the poor and the middle class!

Pro-Choice for Mothers and Non-Mothers: John Kerry is in favor of a woman's right to choose. And this choice extends BOTH WAYS: to terminate a pregnancy if the woman wishes it, OR to raise a child with the best available access to health care and other necessities. The Republican agenda is not only anti-choice to termination, but is even anti-choice toward poor and middle-class mothers who wish to raise their child, but are denied basic health benefits. Reproductive freedom should include the freedom to expand your family, and to do so in the healthiest way possible, as well as the freedom to limit family size, for whatever reason.

Quality Health Care for ALL, not just the FEW: John Kerry wishes to expand access to ALL Americans the same level of health coverage that he has access to as a Senator. Bush and the cheap-labor conservatives in Congress, also having the same level of coverage as John Kerry, believe that is a right only deserved by the elite.

A RATIONAL Approach to Terrorism and Crime: John Kerry would do more, not less, than the Bush administration is doing now to fight terrorism. Kerry has spoken out repeatedly on the failure of the Bush Administration and the borrow-and-spend Republicans in the House to fully fund the security checkpoints in airlines and other sensitive places, as they had claimed to be willing to do after 9-11. By having sufficient numbers of active observers at sensitive locations, and maintaining high levels of intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, N. Korea and other places around the world, we can prevent another 9-11. But instead, the Bush administration chooses to UNDER-fund intelligence and security, and INSTEAD pry on the phone conversations, emails and other private activities of people in their own homes, even if they are tenth-generation Americans and are at home, far away from any likely terrorism site! This places the average American in DOUBLE-jeopardy: both from his/her own government, arbitrarily denying innocent people the right to fly airplanes or to conduct their life in privacy, and also in jeopardy of terrorists who continue to find it easy to bomb or highjack an airplane or to blow up a nuclear power plant.

Tough Penalties for the REAL Criminals in our Nation: John Kerry supports a strong environmental policy, a move toward alternative energy sources, tough penalties for those who illegally pollute our air or water, tough penalties for corporate crooks who currently rob our nation's employees and shareholders with impunity, tough penalties for those who commit hate crimes against people for their ethnicity, religion, or private preferences, while keeping the penalties against ordinary thieves and assaulters, and a move to make it illegal to pay people a non-livable wage (as our current minimum wage is being kept at by cheap-labor Republicans). Kerry is also opposed to the continued attempt by cheap-labor conservatives to criminalize what is essentially private and consensual behavior, whether it be homosexual acts, termination of a pregnancy, or marriage to the adult person of YOUR choice.

I wish to make it clear that I am NOT opposed to people becoming rich. I am only opposed to a system that freely allows wealthy people to organize for their common interests (corporations) but severely hampers the right of workers to organize for THEIR common interests (unions). If the poor and middle class laborers in this country were as well organized as our corporations and their political lobbies, I can assure you that ALL working people would have their basic needs taken care of, not just a few! And we would have a lot less pollution, crime, stock-market scandals, and other foolish nonsense as well.

That's why we need John Kerry as President! Not only does he know what it is like to defend his country in combat action and to organize programs for the working poor youth of America (YouthBuild), but he is also a stauch union supporter from a traditionally strong-union state!

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