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)
An Open Letter to Mitch McConnell, From a Kentuckian
22 March 13
Reader Supported News | Perspective
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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