A Letter To Rep. Ron Kind: The Growing Severity Of Pandemic Is Grounded In Your Failed Neoliberal Corporate Politics

 

Now — like no other in your time in office — is the time to get your priorities straight: Defend the needs of citizens.

By Mark L. Taylor
Commoner Call (4/2/20)

On Wednesday I got an email from the Daily Kos asking me to send off a comment to my representative, Wisconsin Third Congressional District Rep. Ron Kind (D). The following is what I sent in. Unfortunately, the points raised with Rep. Kind apply to the vast majority of congressional ‘representatives’ of both parties. Over the past 40 years they have systematically nailed together the conditions that are ready to turn our pandemic crisis into the widespread catastrophe that will personally impact us all.

Many of the coming deaths are the direct result of a bipartisan corrupt political system more focused on corporate greed and entitlement than the common good. We need to let our nominal ‘representatives’ know that we know that and will no longer accept such routine, sociopathic betrayal.

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Rep. Kind:

I am angered about media reports of the callous treatment of front line medical staff by various health care systems during the Trumpandemic.

Due to decades of faulty neoliberal trade policies, this country no longer manufactures much of the most basic of supplies medical workers now need; from simple things like swabs and masks to life-preserving ventilators.

These heroic medical workers are now paying the price for foolish bipartisan neoliberal, corporate-friendly trade policies that have systematically gutted our ability to manufacture what we so critically now need. Policies, Mr. Kind, you and your friends at Third Way have long championed. You hold a large share of responsibility for the horrors these heroic medical professionals are now facing, and the coming needless illnesses and deaths of these health care workers and their patients. Truly, the vultures of your corporate coddling agenda have come home to roost.

Every child in your district is as valuable and loved as your children are to you and every child deserves the same level of health care that would be assured through Medicare For All. Time to find your heart, Congressman.

Now is the time, Mr. Kind, to step outside your usual pro-corporate allegiance and attend to the needs of citizens, not corporations. It is time, congressman, to step up and — finally — do your duty for the people you say you represent. The citizens of the Third Congressional District need you — now — to set aside your priority of corporate enrichment and put people first. People, Mr. Kind, not corporations!

A share of responsibility for every person who dies in the coming weeks for lack of care and insurance is on your hands

It is time for you to lend your voice and energy to urge the federal government to support and supply our precious front line medical workers. You have been highly effective in D.C. at doing the bidding of corporations with destructive trade polices and erosion of consumer protections. Now — like no other in your time in office — is the time to get your priorities straight: Defend the needs of citizens.

Your callous disregard

The rapidly escalating medical crisis exposes the callous disregard you have shown in your disdainful, dismissive opposition to Medicare For All. Citizens of the Third CD deserve the same quality of health care coverage you and your family enjoy on the taxpayers’ dime even though they often suffer along with crappy — or no — health care coverage. Be clear Mr. Kind, every child in this district is as valuable and loved as your children are to you and every child deserves the same level of health care that would be assured through Medicare For All. Time to find your heart, Congressman.

Right now, you need to immediately lend your support to H.R. 6139, the COVID-19 Health Care Worker Protection Act and make sure our health care workers are safe and supplied with what they need to provide their compassionate care, no matter what your corporate benefactors are telling you to do.

Once this is over, as a measure of atonement, you need to work for true, radical reform of so much of the deadly neoliberal corporate coddling welfare policies you helped craft that have left us all far more vulnerable than we should be.

Time to get to work — for us, Mr. Kind!

For a change.

Mark L. Taylor

(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link toe www.thecommonercall.org )