When George Bush took office eight years ago gasoline was $1.46 a gallon. It is now $3.85 a gallon. Our bread, milk, egg and food prices have gone up due to biodiesel plants using our land for biodiesel instead of providing for lower-cost food on our tables. Our employers are cutting our overtime, hours, days or just handing us a pink slip and saying you can pay for your family bills with minimum wage jobs.
Mitch Daniels sold our toll road for billions, but how has Kosciusko County benefitted from it? Our time zone was changed to bring more businesses to Kosciusko and Indiana, but all I see is empty store-front shopping centers in Warsaw. Where are all the jobs promised for this area?
While these issues are important - guns, butter, abortions, lipstick, marriage and oil drilling - none of these will pay for your hungry children, NIPSCO or REMC bill, foreclosed homes or Visa or MasterCard bill at night.
When George Bush took office, we had a do-nothing Republican Congress with him. They helped steer the attention of 9/11 from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein and used weapons of mass destruction to tell me we need spend trillions to protect other countries infrastructure but meanwhile our United States bridges and Warsaw homeless suffer. Sending our jobs to Mexico or having customers calls diverted to China is not progress.
Are you better off today than eight years ago? Some of the elite in Warsaw will say yes and that is because the Republican Party favors corporations with tax breaks by using the trickle-down-to-poor people method, and they have the lawyers and tax advisors to figure how to beat the system. Real issues like gang violence and $20,000 heart transplants at Lutheran Hospital don't get talked about. They want the lower class to continue suffering under the McCain/Bush/Palin/Daniels regime.
The Republican Party is not a moral Christian elite party - remember the toe-tapping Senator Craig in the St. Paul airport restroom and Tom Foley Congress little boy page scandal? We talk about oil drilling but it needs to be refined - we have not built a oil refinery in 30 years so what good does drilling extra oil if you can't process it? Your co-workers want our troops to help others fight for their freedom so they can vote but for some reason, they don't vote themselves. How can you support our troops if you don't vote?
With this all said, I urge all non-elite in Kosciusko and hard-working citizens to vote for Barack Obama for president of United of States and Jill Long Thompson for governor of Indiana. Do you want pocket change or real change?
