Congress and the Culture of CRUELTY--WHO WOULD JESUS STARVE?

I got as an email---

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Congress and the Culture of CRUELTY
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 05:56:01 -0800
From: The Pen <activist.gb@gmail.com>
To: xxxx



http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm (Save our social services)



WHO WOULD JESUS STARVE?

With a national budget hemorrhaging red ink, even the profligate pork barrel princes in Congress had to do something. And what is their solution? Will they trim back even modestly any of the gratuitous tax cuts gifted to the most wealthy and the most fortunate? No, they propose to cut the last ropes of what remains of the social safety net for those hurt most by their "soak the masses and give it all to the corporate kingpins" policies, apparently to pave the way for even MORE reckless tax injustice.

When a right wing think tanker said he wanted to shrink the government down to where it could be drown in a bathtub, he was talking about the social services that are the only thing that keep the burgeoning class of the abjectly poor going. Perhaps the former residents of New Orleans experienced exactly what he meant by drowning, as FEMA had been degenerated into a dispenser of Christmas plums for administration cronies only. The only thing he wanted to shrink was that part of government that does NOT serve the most powerful corporate interests. For the rest it's still unlimited, no-bid, cost plus party time.

Yes, for those whose agenda is war profiteering, or bankrupting families with blockbuster medical bills, or gouging the public with usurious interest charges and fees, or pocketing unneeded subsidies while they collect windfall profits for environmentally hostile sources of energy, or absolving corporations of any social responsibility whatsoever . . . for them it's supply side as far as the eye can see. And the primarily Republican members of Congress they own lock stock and beholden barrel have no shame in continuing to push though special interest legislation written word for word by the corporate lobbyists themselves, to the detriment of every other pressing national policy need.

This groaning chuck wagon of cruel greed will be ringing the bell once again in the House of Representative this coming week. And if the failure of the Senate last week to stand up and protect the most weak and needy wasn't bad enough, the House version of the budget bill proposes even MORE cuts for essential and indispensable lifeline services. They want to cut to the bone Medicare, Medical, food stamps, student loans, pension protection, Supplemental Social Security . . . the massacre list goes on and on.

It has been called "immoral" by voices representing a wide ranging spectrum of the religious community. For example, all 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress in strong protest opposing the proposed budget cuts. But what of you conscientious reader? What are you doing to speak out about this uncompassionate cruelty, so cold of heart that it would chill any but the most unrepentant Scrooges among this administration's cronies?

For those who profess to be Christians, is it not written in your bible?

"I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." (Matthew 25:43-45)

And yet here we have a bill which will take AWAY food from the hungry, rob medicine from the sick, and steal clothing intended for those who are already naked. What would your Lord say should be the judgement for those who do such things? Perhaps you already know the next verse. What do you have to say about all this? Words of true compassion can be found in all faiths. Send a message to Congress and tell them to get their priorities straight.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm (Save our social services)

For those who profess to be liberals, or progressives, or whatever the latest trendy label for people who care about their fellow human being, who will speak out if not you? The action pages linked from this article will send your personal message in real time to your own members of Congress with just once click, and you can make it also a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper as well all at the same time.

And those who profess to be conservatives, even if you care only for yourselves, do you not understand that those who are fortunate in society prosper MOST when there are more who can afford to buy the goods and services from which you profit. The more you cheat the workers in your businesses the less they can buy the necessities which in truth drive the very economy itself. The more you force people into the ditch of debt, the less there will be for all but a handful of unaccountable owners of monopoly corporations, which so few of even you will ever be.

Is if that were not enough, they have also stuffed another giant giveaway to the oil companies into the budget bill in the form of violation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Even IF there were not any direct environmental damage from drilling another one of our precious environmental resources up like Swiss cheese, the real harm will come in the acceleration of global warming from our crack addict dependence on oil as fuel. Unless we reverse the explosion of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, this last hurricane season may turn out to be one of the relatively mild ones of the coming decades.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/anwr.htm (Save the ANWR)

What we REALLY need to do to bring down energy costs is end the illegal self-defeating occupation of Iraq, which is the PRIMARY cause of the political instability in the Middle East which has so exacerbated oil prices. And then we need a crash program to develop renewable biofuel resources and then they can swim in their oil if they want to. We need dramatic policy change and we need it now, or else as Louis XV used to say (or maybe it was Noah), "After me, the deluge."

To his credit on at least one measure, John McCain has sworn that unless his amendment (passed 90-9 in the Senate) to ban torture is included intact in the new defense bill he will add it to every subsequent Senate bill from now on. The ban is against "cruel" punishment among other things. It is time that we renounce the voices of cruelty in all other areas of our government as well. This shameful budget bill must not pass without major revision. It is time for people who are NOT cruel to speak out against those who are. Your members of the house of Representatives are all up for election next year. It would not hurt to remind them of that.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

..........

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Watching Democratic amendment after amendment, that would have tried to preserve these funds, get shot down in the Senate. :cry: