4 November 2010 Magical thinking and the 1st Tennessee Congressional District

Below is a letter I will send by fax and by USPS to Mr. Roe.  I do not expect any reply other than the usual form letter.

Congressman Phillip Roe

419 Cannon HOB

Washington, DC 20515

fax: (202) 225-5714

Kingsport Office:

P.O. Box 1728

Kingsport, TN 37662

423-247-8161

fax: 423-247-0119

Congressman,

You have now been in office for one electoral term. Exactly what have you accomplished?

You repeatedly trumpet your previous career as an Ob/Gyn, and brag of delivering 5000 babies. That really has nothing to do with your current job. How many of those 5000 were actually delivered by the OB nurses, who then put your name on the birth certificate. Truth in advertising, congressman. You know as well as I that 99% of deliveries don’t require a physician. Certainly the seven I delivered didn’t. My service as a combat medic in Vietnam and 30 subsequent years in OR, ER, and clinical lab no more prepared me to be a congressional representative than did your years as an Ob/Gyn. So please be aware that I’m not impressed by your resume anymore than you should be impressed with mine.

You voted against the Health Care bill of 2009. You do not support adequate or accurate birth control education in schools, oppose abortion, yet, like your fellow GOP legislators, refuse to fund health care for the children you require women to carry to term and deliver. Since your party also refuses to fund education and housing for these unfortunate and often unwanted children, do you intend that they be born onto, live in, and die in the streets?

What constructive changes do you have to offer the citizens of this nation who are unable to afford health care? Please don’t respond with “vouchers and tax credits.” Those are worthless to people who exist by working multiple minimum wage, no-benefits jobs. They don’t earn enough in a year for tax credits to be useful.

Please don’t respond with the GOP standard BS about insurance companies picking up the uninsured. They haven’t done it yet and won’t unless forced to.

You’ve had two years, Congressman, to fix the problems that were in need of fixing when you were elected. Other than a grand-standing offer to review the health care bill with the President – something any 1st term representative should know is not going to happen- ; and voting the GOP party line for natural gas interests, what have you accomplished?

What have you done to provide health care to the citizens of N.E. Tennessee who are unemployed, under-employed, or otherwise unable to afford health care? What have you done to reduce the need for your constituents to line up in the rainy dark in order to receive volunteer provider care dispensed in a stable at a fairground? Will the GOP have a solution for those constituents before the next RAM clinic reminds us that “the best healthcare in the world” is not delivered in a stable? Or will you and your Teavangelist commissars be too busy obstructing any governmental processes that just might benefit people more than corporations?

You’ve had the same 22 months that the Obama administration has had to solve existing problems. Somehow, the GOP managed to convince the unemployed, under-employed, and still employed that tax cuts for the rich will somehow reduce the national deficit while paying for two foreign wars conducted partly by Halliburton and mercenary groups for unholy profit; and that new jobs will magically appear. Please tell me, where are the jobs that the Bush Tax cuts were supposed to provide? How many of those jobs have magically trickled down into Tennessee?

I look at your voting record and I see that you’ve voted for numerous things that should never have been introduced onto the floor. I see bills applauding athletic competition winners, bills about national day of prayer, bills about numerous things that have no connection to the funding and direction of government. When it comes to bills that might improve the living conditions of Americans, that might improve or preserve our failing infrastructure, that might improve food and drug safety and public health, you consistently vote the GOP party line against such bills. You vote for only those bills that have no business being introduced at all or those bills that enrich the corporations that, more and more control Congress.

Phillip Roe, you’ve been a federal employee for nearly two years. Why haven’t you solved the problems that trouble your constituents? You’ve had the same 22 months you allowed our current President to solve many fewer and lesser problems. Why have you failed?