Subject:
What we need
To:
Rep. Tammy Baldwin
October 31, 2009
(No phone/disability: This form requires a phone number, so I made one up.)
Over the past 30+ years, it has been our own government that has caused so much harm to so many. We see the results of a government that has inspired international contempt, and in domestic policies that have resulted in a degree of poverty few of us imagined would ever occur here. Our government defunded humanitarian aid, only to pass billions of dollars of aid on to the richest. Perhaps worst of all, our government has worked long and hard to turn Americans against each other.
Consider some of the results of our "successful" welfare reform: The infant mortality rate among our poor now surpasses that of some Third World countries, and the life expectancy of America's poor has now fallen below that of most Third World countries. That's remarkable.
Add in a range of other factors: This land of freedom has the highest rates of imprisonment, with some of the longest sentences on Earth, often for offenses that earn no prison time in the more modern nations. Consider our government's treatment of the (low income) victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the US today, people do die from poverty, and our government refuses to help.
I have read how (specific to Hurricane Katrina) our government wouldn't allow other nations to help our poor directly, and that aid was actually blocked by our government. People in foreign countries sometimes know more about the plight of our poor than our fellow citizens. The world outside of the US knows that poverty is caused by economic factors, not "bad behavior/choices." No, poverty is not a "lifestyle choice," as our government puts it, but a hellish condition.
What we need our government to do is to stop blocking foreign countries
from helping our poor. Beyond that, it would help if government stopped demonizing ANY law-abiding segments of the population, whether the poor or people who smoke or gay people, creating a culture of scapegoatism that has become toxic.
Fort Atkinson , WI
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