Republicans and Putin’s Soviet Union
To The Editor:
Michael Kuhn’s reply to my letter to the editor is the typical baseless response made by the right wing that is destroying constructive political dialogue in our country, and that is to wrongfully accuse one of making arguments not even made in one’s letter and then to blame Biden and the Democrats in the short term. It is not “tunnel vision” for one to examine the long term history of Republican inability to govern, described in my letter, to understand that it was primarily Republican lawmakers, who for decades now have protected the offshoring of American jobs and manufacturing to places like China, and who have protected the huge annual cost to U.S. taxpayers to provide free security in the Middle East to international oil companies for oil we no longer need, and who have obstructed the funding of a good paying job creating and health and planet saving green energy economy for genuine national, military, and economic security.
If the Republican Party had supported instead of obstructed that green energy economy almost a decade ago now, America could be shipping our domestic natural gas to Europe to defund Putin and his war and our taxpayer dollars could have been invested in that green energy economy independent of foreign oil and in American manufacturing of all kinds independent of China. Instead of spending trillions of dollar for wars in the Middle East for Big Oil and instead of having to suffer supply and transportation shortages and monopolistic prices at the gasoline pump that are the primary causes of today’s inflation, albeit exacerbated by the pandemic, where lives and livelihoods were wasted by Trump led Republican resistance to safe and effective vaccines, and by Putin’s war who was emboldened by the likes of Republican favorite and Russian apologist, Fox News commentator, Tucker Carlson.
For a stronger and more prosperous and competitive America, one should add to the list the need to eliminate continued Republican lawmaker opposition to Affordable Medicare for All, enhanced social security, volume prescription drug purchasing power, living wages and a tax system based upon ability to pay, instead of the GOP’s fondness for regressive taxation of all kinds on working families and truly small business owners and for the GOP’s version of “limited government,” which translates to little or no needed government of the rich and powerful and to the continued needless and immoral destruction of life on the planet by coal fired power plants and other deregulated and needless carbon emissions. Apparently, Mr. Kuhn has conveniently forgotten that it was a Republican controlled Congress that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that paved the way for the crash of 2009 and that adds at least $20 to the price of a barrel of oil due to the participation of needless speculators with no skin in the game unlike airlines, for example, who need to hedge their supply needs for fuel price stability.
Also, make no mistake, Mr. Kuhn, despite whatever Fox News Cable Talking Heads may be telling you, Putin’s war is a war fought by him to create the same oppressive Soviet Union of the Iron Curtain where Stalin starved four million Ukrainians to death and the same Soviet Union that Putin served for decades as a sinister KGB agent. Except this time it may indeed become “Putin’s Soviet Union” and not because of Biden’s less than two years in office, but because of the many years of the above obstruction by Republi can lawmakers, like the present day Republican Members of the Senate playing the only game they know, which is to obstruct at every turn the long overdue widespread prosperity and the security of U.S. energy and manufacturing independence for all Americans and not just the wealthy and corporate elite.
John W. Mikus
Houston