A Personal Letter
To My GOP Friends

Dear Friends:

As Democrats, Republicans and Independents, we used to be able to talk. Our common bond was our American citizenship and our belief that no matter what differences we had over how to solve domestic issues, we all believed in our Constitution and our democratic principles. We all wanted what was best for the nation.

That doesn’t seem to be so any longer.

The Bush Administration and the right-wing GOP power brokers in the U.S. House and Senate have an agenda all their own, and the only analogy that comes to mind is to imagine the Democratic Party being taken over by the kind of dedicated zealots that ultimately controlled the 1960’s Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS.

Traditional Republican values have been thrown overboard for a radical soup comprised of international bullying and dominance because our nation was the winner in the super-power contest between America and Russia, and a total lack of restraint, or even concern, for fiscal responsibility.

And this radical soup is compounded by mixing extreme religious views and social mores into it, thereby masking the unpleasant taste of imperialism and potential dictatorship from a people who historically upheld democratic principles.

We hear of the ‘Clean Air Act’ when it really is a reduction of environmental restrictions that allows the air we breath to become increasingly contaminated. Bush Administration officials declare, with a straight face, that clear-cut logging will save the forests from fire dangers.

Aside from such important environmental concerns, there are others that strike directly at the American public.

Recently the GOP Congress declared that acting on the public behalf it wants to make uniform, under federal law, the disclosures that drug manufacturers must place on medicine. But this isn’t for the benefit of the public, since currently the drug companies have to accommodate many states with much tougher labeling laws than the federal requirements. This is a mechanism for reducing the regulations to the low federal level.

And all of this doesn’t even begin to discuss the efforts that the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress have made to undercut if not eviscerate Social Security and Medicare.

The radical GOP policies are on the march in every direction, and it is hard to decide what civic battle to fight, which of course appears to be a very clever strategy. The points enumerated here are only a fraction of the negative efforts the GOP is undertaking.

The most immediately devastating policy, of course, is the abandonment of all fiscal restraint.

In six years America has gone from the budget surplus of $236 billion that Pres. William J. Clinton passed over to George W. Bush, to a current situation where the Bush Administration itself is projecting a 2006 budget deficit of $423 billion. And even that number doesn’t take into consideration GOP manipulations, some would say raids, on the Social Security Trust Fund, which if added in would be another $150 billion.

It certainly seems as though the radicals running the Republican Party are bent on pushing the nation to the edge of bankruptcy – the U.S. is already the largest net debtor nation on the globe – so that all the major entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, can be justifiably dismantled.

And this says nothing about the incredible adventurism that the Bush Administration has undertaken around the world, but particularly in the Middle-East through this nation’s first pre-emptive war. Currently the U.S. is spending $2.17 billion a day, with the bulk of that going to the military and the so-called war effort.

So, my Republican friends, I want to find out where you are today? You are awfully silent! Have you decided that your old ideals and values, of fiscal responsibility combined with thoughtful approaches to social issues no longer matter? Have you concluded that the current leaders of your party are correct in their ‘no holds barred’ view of accumulating and retaining political power?

I hope that I’ll hear more from you soon, because if your silence continues the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you approve of the radicals running the GOP.

Sincerely,

Mike Bradley

The Bush administration is forecasting that the budget deficit for the 2006 budget year, which will end Sept. 31, will hit a record $423 billion (euro355 billion), surpassing the old mark, in dollar terms, of $413 billion (euro346.5 billion) set in 2004.