Stand up for the people

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To the Editor:

Within a blue state or a red state, even within a congressional district, there will be differences of opinion. Regardless of those differences, you would like to think that the common good is held dear. Is it so hard to know that young people need a future, families need stability, and older folks need to feel secure? Of course, the devil is in the details of how to get there.

How are we to believe government has our interests at heart when you enact a law banning Medicare from negotiating the price of medicines; when you will build another multibillion-dollar aircraft carrier that will be blown out of the water by a land-based missile from 2,000 miles away, while hungry school kids can’t concentrate; when the CDC is banned by law from even investigating the public health aspects of gun violence; when massive frauds are committed by the financial industry and no one goes to jail; when dark money bribes officeholders blatantly, and no, there was no quid pro quo. Really. We the people …

If the vote is held sacred, how one arrives at casting a ballot is equally sacred. That process requires clarity, education, and engagement. There is little clarity filtering through the news these days. The motivation behind engagement seems to be more and more petty all the time. The dark money loves the pettiness, loves the distraction of who can pee in which bathroom. While the sound bites dominate the news, lobbyists are busy writing legislation bearing oxymoronic titles that “regulate” their sponsors’ businesses. How can this be? There was a time when lobbying was either illegal or seen as corrupt practice. How can the accompanying campaign contributions not be bribery? You people live in an alternate universe if you think those monies do not influence your votes, and if you think that we believe you when you pooh-pooh such a notion.

There are more learned people than myself to speak of the intent of our Founders. I do know that they had a fear of corporations as a competing power base, and rightfully so. Our government has been subsumed. There are no officeholders who are unaffected or untainted. Calvin Coolidge had it wrong — the business of America is not business. The business of America is liberty and the welfare of the people. It says so in the brief preamble to our Constitution. Corporations have no interest in the welfare of the people, nor in the interests of their shareholders — the owners of those companies. Our government is no less unresponsive. The boor in the White House is a reaction to the government’s remoteness from our common good. He is a symptom, not a solution or even a catalyst. Officeholders have created for themselves a new class. Democrat or Republican, you are the first members of Congress — a country club playing shirts and skins to protect your 75 percent–paid-for healthcare and pensions that vest after five years, while we the people … You all are more afraid of your campaign donors than you are for your souls. We are a better people than we are a nation right now, and it is your job to close that gap. Who among you will get up, stand up?

We the people are fed up and engaged. You have our full attention — can you stand the scrutiny? We the people are getting up, standing up. We the people aren’t going away, and we want our country back in our hands, for all of our common good.

James P. Hickey

Chilmark

This letter was sent by the author to Senator Ed Markey, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Bill Keating.  —Ed.