So VOTE, Damn It!!!

In my opinion, it is absolutely vital that all American citizens vote on Tuesday if they haven’t voted already.  Of course, in my opinion, it is absolutely vital that all Democrats and Independents vote. 

Why?  Look at the record of what has happened in states that have Republican legislatures and governors.  Michigan is probably one of the worst with Gov. Rick Snyder having the state legislatures give him the power to arbitrarily set aside duly elected Boards of cities for reasons known only to him.  Needless to say, this did not sit well with me – a former elected official.  To outsiders, however, it appeared that the cities where he got rid of duly elected representatives were predominately cities where minorities were in the majority of those duly elected representatives, and where the cities had assets that could be sold off for profits. 

There are the other states where voter suppression is rampant, poor women’s health clinics are closed for spurious reasons, laws are passed to take away women’s freedom of pregnancy decisions, laws are not passed to guarantee equal pay for equal work for women.  Probably the worst of these pending laws regarding women’s reproductive choices is the so-called “personhood laws”.  These laws would deem that the moment the sperm and egg meet, that zygote has all of the protections of a fully formed and viable outside the womb human.  Forget the fact that ¼ - 1/3 of all pregnancies end in a spontaneous abortion, and thus women may be criminalized because of the terminated pregnancy even though they may have ardently wanted to become pregnant.

The rights of workers to organize and bargain for decent pay and working hours is being eroded by so called “right to work” laws, which are nothing more than the right to work without benefits for the workers, but great benefit for the employers.  In May, 1891, (yes, 1891) Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in which occurs a paragraph which could easily be written today:

3. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. 

It appears that this is what the Koch brothers, et al, would like to have this country go back to.

So VOTE, damn it!!!   (Unless of course, you already have.)