Every Vote Counts

I haven’t added to this blog in almost seven months and that wasn’t due to forgetfulness or laziness. I stopped writing because so few bother to read it. This lack of public interest in my writing is the title to one of my upcoming short stories. Apathy Rules. I’m sure few will read it either.

Despite being the falling tree in an empty forest, I feel compelled to write this piece as our next presidential elections approach. Perhaps no one will read it, but if nothing else, it will make me feel better to get this off my chest.

So many issues plague our country right now but I think the one that more American citizens can agree upon than any other, regardless of political affiliation, is the idea that taxes paid by our citizens ought to support the needs of our citizens. Not the needs of the corporations that downsize, marginalize, and patronize us. And not the needs of Middle Eastern countries that claim to be our allies yet use those funds to kill our soldiers and support our enemies.

If we can agree upon that, then I submit that the four most important Congressional votes in the past ten years are the 2002 vote to invade Iraq, the 2008 TARP bailout, the 2009 Stimulus Package, and the 2009 Health Care initiative. Those four votes spent more of our taxes on foreign countries and big business than any others. If a congressman voted yes for any of those bills, he/she took my hard-earned money (and yours) via threat of imprisonment and then gave it to one of those groups to spend as they like.

Now let’s consider the office that’s up for grabs this November, the President of the United States. We’ve had 44 presidents so far and of those, only one came from the House of Representatives and didn’t hold the higher office of Senator, Governor, Secretary of State, or Vice President before being elected to the top job. That president was Abraham Lincoln. I think even those of us that really like Ron Paul can agree, he’s no Abraham Lincoln. He is not going to be our president. Ever.

If Ron Paul and his House peers are out, what about our senators?  How did they vote on those four bills? I did some research. Only twelve senators voted against all three 2008/2009 bills. Not surprisingly, given that they were Democrat-sponsored, all twelve were Republicans. Before we start patting them on the back, let’s mention that eight of them were in office in 2002 also. All eight voted for the invasion. These aren’t men of conviction. They’re men toeing the party line. You can do your own research on the remaining four, John Barrasso, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, and Roger Wicker, but if you think any of them would have stood up against then-president, George Bush and his desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein via concocting the tale of “weapons of mass destruction”, I’ll have to leave you to your illusions.

That brings us to the three men left standing in the November election. Two with a real shot at winning, and one merely a way for people to make a statement about their growing resentment at the death of the American Dream and the rise of the American Plutocracy. Either Obama or Romney is going to win in November. There’s no doubt about that. And there’s no difference between them. They’re both in the pocket of the wealthy elite and both will continue down the current political path. You only need to look at their voting records to understand that.

The other is running as the Libertarian candidate, GaryJohnson. Gary will not win. However as the former two-term governor of New Mexico, Gary is the only candidate with a record of rejecting bills like the ones mentioned above. He’s the only candidate that would bring our troops home, keep our tax revenues onshore, balance our budget and restore some sanity to our spending prioritization.

I am not stupid. I’m confident that most of my readers (those few of you there are) are not stupid either. As I stated above, this election will result in status quo. Either Obama or Romney will win and no major change for the better will happen in the next four years. But perhaps if we vote for change, if we vote outside the two parties that have been force-fed to us for generations, we can begin to move toward that change. We can make a statement that we want something better for our country.

On November 6, 2012 I am voting for Gary Johnson. I hope you will too.