This week our Republican state legislature votes on a bill that strips from us our right to create and offer a referendum. Not long ago they stripped from cities our right to decide about plastic bags. Even before that, they stripped from us the right to direct public funds used for public education, but reserved the right to increase taxpayer funding for private education while cutting taxes on the wealthy.
The results were predictable. Public education funds at all levels were reduced to poverty status and the blame for deficits placed on people who use Medicaid and similar programs that help the working poor. Our legislators seem more interested in being dominant than in being respectful.
At the federal level, our Republicans have done the same thing. Drastically lowering taxes on the wealthy, crushing public education, creating massive deficits and then wanting to solve the deficit problem by cutting programs like Social Security and Medicaid for the working poor. They too prefer to dominate over being respectful.
And then there’s our president who desperately needs to dominate, and has no respect for anyone who isn’t wealthy, white and male. Dominance Trumps.
The label “conservative” now seems only a philosophical justification for indifference to others… and greed.
Charles Barnes – AZ Daily Sun – March 25, 2019
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