A Month to Go

Lots of pundits have been reminding me today that there is just a month before we should all be heading to the polls to vote. No big issues for this election is the common pundit analysis. I don't know how any thoughtful person could come to that conclusion. Most people who don't plan to vote know that they should.

Here are a few little items. Defeating big money should be one huge item. Rich and powerful people need only one thing from us, every 2 years, that we allow them to con us either to vote for their well funded candidates or turning off politics altogether. I would urge everyone to rise in righteous anger. If we vote in large numbers, we defeat their power grab. Since the off-year election of 1962, no election has matched the 57% of voters who bothered that  year. Can't we do better than that?

Think about the minimum wage. Radical Republicans like to tell us that to raise it even a little would cost jobs. There is something very wrong with that idea. I always thought that employers hired only the number of people they actually needed. And no more than likely, they have the absolute minimum of employees that they can manage with. Businesses take care of their bottom lines first. A few statistics about the minimum wage. In 1960, which doesn't seem so long ago to me, the minimum wage was $1.25. Try living on that. But on the plus side, gas was about $.31 a gallon. Now gas prices don't figure in the cost of living, but as they rose in the 1970s, the price of everything we had to buy went up a lot as well. If the minimum wage had risen in proportion to the increased cost of gas, it would be over $14 today. How nice would that be?

The Radical Right always wails about the size of our government and too intrusive. That makes no more sense than most of what they want to inflict upon our country. They don't wan't government around to help ordinary people. After all, they don't pay Congressional Bills. Government grows because rich and powerful people want government to pass laws that benefit them. They don't want any government around to bother them, so for us government should be much smaller and therefore no hindrance to their plans. So the GOP echoes their complaints. Any help the government gives us ordinary folks is too big. No need for us to have clean air or water, or health care for our children. But the proof of the nonsense of the GOP whining about excessive government is that the first thing they do when they accidentally get elected is that they insert government into the lives of women, reducing rights to control our own lives. I was only a child when I realized that there were two sets of rule, one for men and one for women. It is the Radical Right that intends to keep it that way.

So no important policies at stake in this election? Please. Skip the pundits, TV ads, polls and think for yourselves.

Voting is always important, especially this year. So give our country your support and vote. Your future depends on it.