Dear Rep. LeMieur:
We, as your constituents, may live in a rural community but make no mistake, we didn’t just fall off the proverbial turnip truck. To recap: Following the financial crisis that brought every state in the Union to its knees; in the aftermath of Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the not too distant record beef calls that effected schools in your voting districts, you dispatched a letter to the Morrison County Record demonizing“bigger government” while supporting a budget proposal that would have been balanced on the backs of the poor and the elderly in our community.
Since you are newly elected, I’d like to offer a few tips:
First, Morrison County ranks among the poorest counties in the state. So impoverished, in fact, that the county qualifies annually for federal emergency funds. Corporate dollars may have aided your campaign but make no mistake regarding the demographic that makes up your voting district.
Second, the rhetoric in your letter to the editor is outdated. Even those of us who DID just bounce off the turnip truck realize that less government caused the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, prompting hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent saving the very institutions and corporate leaders who drove the turnip truck straight into the ditch. Thus, leaving our state and local governments grabbing for their proverbial ankles, in the aftermath. We are not confused as to the circumstances that upended our good state and the circumstances that caused our Great Country, far too many, less than star-spangled, historical moments..
What was a boon for Wall Street, has only meant decades of hard times for the average Joe and Jody. Less government didn’t make us more secure or prosperous, it meant our trusty, hired watchdogs became corporate lap dogs leading to a debt that will be worked off by our generation, our children’s generation and our children’s children generations. A toxic chain reaction only bested by Prairie Island’s spent nuclear waste.
Maybe in time we will forget the quagmire. Maybe we will buy back into the notion that government oversight hampers progress. Maybe we’ll forget the consequences of turning hired guard dogs into corporate mascots. Maybe we’ll be reinvigorated to buy into the myth of trickle down economic theory, pink ponies and lavender unicorns. When that day comes maybe folks will once again believe a politician when he shakes his fist at “big government” and tell his constituency that it is the “evil” that bleeds the life out of prosperity for all who are willing to work and impedes the attainability of their great American Dream.
But for the time being, so long as Minnesotans and the American people are still being jettisoned from their homes, as long as we are still paying off the “failure bonuses” paid to treasonous corporate leaders; the only folks who will be jumping on your “we hate bigger government band wagon” are those who stand to benefit from the next cataclysmic disaster.
But for those of us who are still mired in the shoveling, who are still waiting to earn a margin of what we used to, who are still standing amidst farm fields with nothing to line the tired cloth of our well seasoned overalls pockets and retirements but lint from our clothes dryers, we’ll remember who profited and who didn’t. We know who was factored into the big bailout equation and who was left in the dirt to bleed.
Rep. LeMieur, don’t forget the demographic of the people you were sent to the state capitol to represent. And don’t hand us outdated right-wing rhetoric penned for a generation afforded the luxury of being naive. When it comes to the poor and everyday folks we talk in terms of offering people a “hand up” but when it came to corporate welfare we didn’t blink an eye at providing the largest government handout in world history. As Marshall Sahlins once wrote, “Poverty…is the invention of civilization.”
Submitted to the Morrison Count Record on 10/22/08
On 10/17/2008 The Morrison County Record published an article titled: District 12B Candidates Debate Energy. I appreciated the information the paper provided to voters on this subject and have to say that I was startled and alarmed by the comments made by 12B candidate Mike LeMieur.
According to the article LeMieur stated: “The whole state of Minnesota should invest in nuclear power, too,” LeMieur said. “There are no carbon emissions at all, it’s very efficient, and I just disagree with Al’s vote against the proposed amendment. We are one of the only states in the country that has a ban on new nuclear energy, and the House failed to change that.”
It is perhaps a very good thing Rep. Al Doty was at the capitol holding the line on new nuclear energy production as opposed to Mike LeMieur. While the Republican candidate is correct regarding the lack of carbon emissions, I hardly see an increase in the volume of spent nuclear waste accumulating on temporary storage pad across the country as a wiser, planet friendlier, cost effective option.
Twenty-five years after Congress passed the National Nuclear Waste Storage Act and mandated the establishment of an underground repository, long term storage of the nation’s nuclear waste still remains in question. To date, American ratepayers have contributed approximately $28 billion to the national Nuclear Waste Fund without result. At present, there are approximately 169 million Americans living within 75 miles of temporary nuclear waste storage sites in 39 states.
I am tired of politicians enacting short-sighted solutions that leave our children and grandchildren to mop up after our generations failed policies. Adding more nuclear waste to the American landscape without a long term storage solution is not only bad policy; its poor leadership.
