Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 25, 2007. (photo: Dennis Cook/AP)
22 March 13
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ear Senator McConnell,
You are not a Kentuckian. In fact, your citizenship as
a Kentuckian should be revoked, and you should be ineligible to run
again for re-election.
Kentuckians live by the phrase "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." It's emblazoned on our flag
along with two men, a frontiersman (Daniel Boone) and a statesman
(Henry Clay) standing together. They may be standing on opposite sides
of the seal, but their embrace symbolizes a spirit of cooperation and
caring for your fellow man, even though you may sometimes disagree with
him. Yet as Senate Minority Leader, you proudly announced that your
chief goal as the top Republican member was not to create jobs or help
schools or look out for the struggling middle class, but to deny President Obama a second term. We've seen a record amount of Republican filibusters, surpassing all others
made in recent history, under your leadership. Since you've been the
Republican leader, the US Senate has become what Jesus, when he cleansed
the temple of the greedy moneychangers, referred to as a "den of
thieves." And because of your divisive tactics, you are not a
Kentuckian. But that's not the only reason.
You've also let down the very same Kentuckians you
were elected to represent, by choosing to first represent the interests
of those who write your campaign checks. In your 2002 re-election campaign,
which precluded your YES vote on the Iraq War, your top campaign donor,
Guardsmark, and your #10 campaign donor, Mantech International, were
both military contractors – or as FDR called them, war profiteers.
Just
months after your YES vote to the invasion of Iraq, which claimed the lives of at least 4,500 American soldiers and has cost us upwards of $800 billion,
you voted once again for an additional $86 billion in war spending. Two
years later, when the behavior of military contractors like those who
donated to your previous campaign were questioned in the public, you
voted NO to a bill that would have investigated those companies, who
were paid with taxpayer money and should have every reason to be
transparent.
But in 2010, when those soldiers who were fortunate enough to make it home from Iraq alive needed your help the most, you voted NO to $3.4 billion in assistance for homeless veterans with children to look after. You even voted NO
to spending just $1 billion in 2012 for a jobs program for veterans,
many of whom live in your state. Your craven subservience to big money
special interests has never been more clear than when you gave your #24 campaign contributor in your 2008 re-election bid, Amgen, a Christmas gift in the fiscal cliff bill that bilked Medicare out of $500 million.
Because of your disdain for your constituents and naked pandering to
your campaign donors, you don't deserve to be called a Kentuckian.
You're a prostitute who puts out services after enough is put into your
pocket. And last time I checked, prostitution is illegal in Kentucky.
Your attack campaign on Ashley Judd, the darling of Kentucky basketball,
a native Tennessean but still more of a Kentuckian than you'll ever be,
will backfire. Kentucky voters are fed up with paying you an exorbitant
salary to sit on your thumbs while refusing to help anybody but
yourself. The latest polls show it – at the end of 2012, most Kentucky
voters said they can't stand you.
73 percent of Democrats disapprove of you and 58 percent of
Independents say they don't like you either. Even 28 percent of
Republicans openly disapprove of how you've wrecked the country.
Your time is limited, Senator McConnell. It's time for
you to step aside, and let a Kentuckian do the job you haven't been
doing for decades.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a
nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of
thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts
in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and
other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not
Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently
lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at
carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
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