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Why Is Nancy Johnson Smiling?
By Alan DiCara, Winsted
Nancy Johnson is running for Congress again. Despite her 20-some years in Congress and the Republicans’ own notion of term limits, Nancy wants more time to continue fast-tracking our jobs and industry to Mexico and Asia, our scarce dollars to OPEC for oil, and our retirement funds to Enron and WorldCom. She almost succeeded in fast-tracking what’s left of our Social Security trust fund monies into a collapsing stock market. Nancy is not satisfied that her past efforts have resulted in Connecticut losing a Congressional district; perhaps she can get it down to four if we re-elect her.
Nancy is smiling because we pay her $150,000/ year salary, plus expenses, and because she can keep voting on outrageous increases in Congressional salaries, staggering amounts at least six times the average salary for people in Connecticut.
Nancy is also smiling because she knows, if you are stupid enough to continue electing her, that she can still deliver "No" votes against universal health care, against Medicare prescription coverage and against a decent living wage for all Americans, along with "Yes" votes for exporting our industry to Asia and Mexico and our money to OPEC. All the while, she herself gets free medical coverage, free prescriptions and free travel—at our expense—as she represents corporate interests, not yours. And she can still go on those free junkets to the Caribbean in mid-winter at lobbyist (and our?) expense.
Nancy does not believe that what’s good for her, Congress, the President and the rest of the federal work force is good for the rest of us. Unlike many retirees of the large corporations she represents, her tidy, federally-financed (at taxpayer expense) retirement will be there for her with no worry that the Enrons of the world might be stealing her money.
Nancy is also smiling because she knows she can keep whatever unspent millions in campaign money she collects for herself, and that, like 98% of her cohorts, despite September 11 and the failure of our defense on their watch, despite a terrible economy, inadequate health and prescription coverage in the "richest nation in the world," and a mindset that only protects corporate interests instead of yours—even if it means jets flying into skyscrapers—she knows if she is re-elected, she will have fooled you once again.
This year, take the smile off Nancy Johnson’s face and put one on yours: elect someone who will defend our national security, not the airlines’ finances, who will return your tax money to you instead of delivering it to insurance and prescription drug companies, who will demand living wages for all, and who will remove companies paying big PAC dollars from deliberations on our nation’s national security.
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