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 | | Senator Kitt Bond |
Kitt Bond -- Stealth Senator
I have been attempting in vain to determine the nature of Senator Kitt Bond's position on Barack Obama's restoration stimulus package. On Jan. 14th a group of six citizens met in Bond's Jefferson City, MO office with Liz Behrouz, Senator Bond's Constituent Services Director. We expressed our concerns for the economic state of the nation and the need for a swift, effective, comprehensive remedy. During the meeting we presented the Senator's office with the following letter. Senator Kitt Bond
274 Russell Senate Office Building.
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5721
January 14, 2009 Dear Senator Bond, We, your constituents and members of Move On, are meeting with your Jefferson City office staff today to urge passage of the Stimulus Package for American Recovery and Reinvestment as outlined in remarks by President-Elect Barack Obama delivered on Thursday, January 8, 2009. Obviously we do not need to remind you of the difficulties we face as a nation and the urgency for rapid, innovative, effective means to begin to turn our floundering economy around. Nearly as important as the need to staunch the hemorrhaging of jobs from the American labor market and mediate the disastrous credit freeze that is making recovery an ever-receding dream, is the need to frame bold, far reaching programs that will move us away from the very mindset that helped to create this mess in the first place. Barack Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Program is not just a remedial band aid, but contains wholly new plans for education, infrastructure, green technology and assistance to Missouri and other struggling states. Of course one of the primary concerns in this stimulus package is the role of taxation in attempting to provide the wherewithal to help stimulate the economy. Already there are pressures to shift the tax burden away from the wealthy back on those who can least afford it. We wish to remind you that more tax cuts for the rich are not only eminently unfair, they will do little to truly stimulate the economy. One of the things we have come to see with clarity by now is the total failure of the "trickle-down" theory of economics. The President-Elect has made a bipartisan appeal for us all to come together in solidarity to accomplish this monumental task. It is important that Democrats and Republicans put aside partisan interests and move to pass this package as soon as possible so that we can begin the process of recovery and reinvestment in the promise of America. I am confident that you will continue to demonstrate the leadership which has been the hallmark of your service to the people of Missouri and actively support our new president's bold program. We look forward to a face-to-face discussion of your plans to address and support this proposal at your earliest opportunity. Thank you,
Robert Boldt
deboldt(at)gmail.com
Event Host
Committee of Missouri MoveOn members Prior to the meeting, no one in Senator Bond's office could give me any idea of his position on the stimulus package. Unless Bond is in the habit of keeping his staff as much in the dark as his constituents, they had to be pretending not to know anything about the matter. The good Senator, along with the rest of the Republican leadership, was apparently already laying plans to oppose the stimulus package. To date the all I could find on Bond's official website pertaining to the stimulus package was a terse quip to the effect that the only things the stimulus package will stimulate is the national debt and the size of big government. This statement is disgraceful both in its brevity and its obfuscation. If I recall, our Senator Bond was, is and ever will be an avid supporter/defender of both an astronomical national debt incurred by an illegal, unnecessary and crushingly expensive war as well as an unprecedented expansion of government size and power. I don't recall any such talk when Bush decided to bail out the Wall Streaters who initiated this catastrophe in the first place. Talk about hypocrisy. I hope that finally even Bond's Missouri supporters will be smart enough to see through this line of bull-crap. Since the Jan. 14th meeting, I have been frustratingly unsuccessful in my attempts to pry any comprehensive, detailed statement from either Bond's website, his office, or anyone else connected with the Senator. I have not received so much as a follow up/courtesy/boilerplate letter from the local office we visited. thanking us for dragging our collective butts down to his office like the good citizens we are. I guess only Bond contributors/supporters are entitled to such acknowledgment and minimal respect. I presume this stonewalling will continue until after the Senate votes on the stimulus package on Tuesday and after that it will be too late. So much for what passes for representative democracy in Missouri…. After receiving similar treatment over the issue of preemptive nuclear war in an attempt at dialogue with my House of Representatives member, Ike Skelton a year ago I am beginning to think that our members of Congress believe in treating their constituents like mushrooms. You know the old joke…. "I must be a mushroom - because everyone keeps me in the dark and feeds me with lots of..." (I must hasten to add that this does not apply to our own MO Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill)
 Robert Boldt an editor of MWC News, is a freelance film/video producer living in Jefferson City, Missouri. He is active in local politics, worked on the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns and is a cofounder of The White Rose Collective. Articles by Bob Boldt at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/bob-boldt |
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