Dear Kossaks,
I have been on a mailing list of an aquaintence of mine from a few years ago while I volunteered with Sister Cities (a very worthwhile organization.) He sent me many emails, and finally I had to respond. It also goes to the Austin American-Statesman and to y'all. Here it is:
Dear Alex,
I have seen your signs around and been receiving your emails. I just looked at your website and realized that I know you from my activities with the Hispanic Firefighters, sister cities and friendship with members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
What you should realize is that I am a union firefighter and an American head of a household and therefore put these two issues, my family and my job in the foreground of my political decision making. I come from a military family where my brother, sister, father, grandfather, nephew have all served.
Therefore I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that supports the current and immediate past Governors of the state of Texas. Governors that oppose loving couples of any gender makeup from marrying and enjoying the same legal, cultural, economic, and marital benefits as I do with my family, where such discriminatory and bigoted practice I view to be in direct violation of the equal protection clause of the constitution.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that supports these two incompetent oafs of Governors that are elitist SOB's that couldn't give a rats behind for the working people of the state of Texas.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that has so thoroughly and incompetently messed up the state educational system even though they are in the majority in both houses of the Texas state legislature, haven't overcome greedy self-interested infighting and are having to meet in another special session with no foreseeable positive outcome. Sessions that cost the taxpayers of Texas millions of dollars. I can't even believe you as a Hispanic Texan would want to play part in this rendering apart of one of the most important functions of the state, which is educating your children and my son and all of the other Hispanic and Black and White children in the state. These legislative Republicans are not fighting amongst themselves about how to make education in Texas better, they are fighting about how to pay the absolute least for education and are trying to keep Texas in the bottom 5 of the states that provide the least per capita funding of education. They are fighting about how to keep the tax burden off of businesses and white suburban neighborhoods. They are fighting about how to get away with the least possible funding of poor school districts, especially in San Antonio and the Valley. They are fighting about how to pay the least for teachers.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that is so totally and profoundly anti-union in all its aspects. I won't bother to elucidate for you this issue as I am sure you are very aware of the disastrous record towards jobs and labor Reagan, GHW Bush, and especially the current Republican president have.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that would so totally abrogate its responsibility of congressional oversight and allow our current illegally elected fascist president that they would allow people in his office to commit treason in the Valerie Plame affair and spy on American citizens without warrant. How can you stand for this and attempt to run as a Republican? Shame on you and shame on the Republican party. George Bush is an inveterate liar, a fascist, incompetent, and totally unsuited to be President of the United States. He should be impeached. If you think otherwise, you should not hold elective office.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that is attempting to break down the separation of church and state and facilitate the establishment of an American theocracy, facilitated by the Republican party and directed by religious right elements within that party. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a Mormon, and I am quite scared of the religious right and what they are trying to do to my country. The GOP has been taken over by the Ralph Reeds, James Dobsons, and Pat Robertsons of America, and because of this, I foresee a very ugly future indeed. I don't want my son having to say or listen to Right-Wing Conservative prayers in his public school. I don't want to have to be subject to a party that gets its political organizing lists from church directories, as the GOP is doing in North Carolina. The next step is discriminating against churches and church members that don't toe the political and theocratic line. This is already happening. Here's a hint for you, they don't like Catholics very much either.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that has exhibited such a culture of corruption as manifested by the Jack Abramoff affair. The GOP is so tied to this corruption, managed by Tom Delay and winked at by G W Bush, that it has so ruined this country's political system that I fear that fair elections and government by the people and for the people is a thing of the past.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that supports a president that brought us into a war of choice in Iraq that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis (and a very few guilty ones), maimed many thousands of young honorable American soldiers, killed over 2200 of them, many of them Texan and many of them Hispanic. A war that has been so incompetently managed that there is no foreseeable end or positive outcome to it. A war that GWB uses as a justification to use torture, HOW CAN YOU STAND FOR THIS? A war that is a disastrous morass of death and justifiable ill-will towards America that we find ourselves with many fewer friends and many more enemies in the world than we did 6 years ago. A war that has been a black hole of a money-pit of profiteering and corruption that it has cost the taxpayers of America over $250,000,000,000, a bill my son and your children and their children will be paying for and all for no objective positive outcome. All for nothing. It certainly hasn't made us safer and it certainly hasn't made us more free, but quite the opposite. I certainly hasn't made the Iraqis safer. I hasn't made a lot of Iraqis more free, it has made a lot of them more poor or more dead. All of the blame for this rests squarely at the feet of George Walker Bush of the GOP.
I find myself unable to vote for anyone that would belong to a political party that has so indebted this nation that we will never in my lifetime or the life of my grandchildren be done with the deficit. I can very well see the US becoming and economic also-ran due to the policies and practices of George W Bush. This debt is entirely to be laid blame on the shoulders of GWB and the GOP in their efforts to establish a neo-corporate fascist state that caters to corporations and the wealthy elite over the interest of working Americans. Look it up in the dictionary, this is the very definition of fascism. The party caters to the religious right solely to build a base of voters, but hasn't appeased them in any concrete way. The GOP uses the religious right but doesn't reward them, it abuses them, and they are the worse off for being ignorant of this.
If you were running as a Green party member or even as a Democrat, (I hold my nose and vote Democratic when no other choice is available,) I would gladly vote for you.
And finally I won't vote for you because you are running in the 47th district and I live in the 45th. And yes I have gladly voted for Patrick Rose twice and will do it again, even though I am essentially a Green Party member.
You have been sending me all of your email distributions, but after reading this letter, I would imagine that you would stop that. If I continue to receive your emails, that is an indication to me that you haven't read my letter in its entirety and therefore aren't qualified to serve because you are unwilling to take the time to listen to your constituents.
Yours,
xxxxx xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx
(manoffire)