Subscribe to this blog's feedA recent thread, concerning a woman who was prosecuted for infecting her lover with HIV, stimulated many ideas, with everything from people being responsible for protecting themselves to the draconian laws that target positive people for infecting others, often with little regard to the fairness of any of these laws.
But these laws and policies do not enact themselves; rather they are a result of our elective form of government, in which we elect representatives to formulate such things in our stead. Unfortunately it seems that too many people have forgotten that: whom you vote for matters and in more ways that most people could imagine.
No matter what you may think, you can’t just vote, without doing any research on the candidates and then claim ignorance about what your representatives have done. Its 2006, with midterm elections just around the corner and so, for some of us it’s a time when you need to start fixing what you did in 2004.
If you voted for Bush in 2000, well all I can say is “Who knew?” what would happen to this country. Six years ago, George claimed to be a “compassionate conservative” and even if he made it to the White House, nobody really expected that he’d be in charge. The GOP orchestrated his election campaign perfectly, employing incredibly divisive issues, to smoke screen the real concerns. Enough voters swallowed the bait and put the Republicans in power.
But if you are an American, who could see the damage George did in his first term and if you still voted for him and other Republicans in 2004, you knew what you were doing. You can’t wish it away, nor explain it away. By extension of your vote, you are personally responsible for all of the president’s misdeeds. Whether the lies leading to up to way, the mismanagement of Iraq, our crushing national debt, failing to respond to Hurricane Katrina or pandering to the Radical Right
You are responsible for an energy plan written by Big Oil, forbidding Medicare Part D from negotiating drug prices with manufacturers, unauthorized wiretaps and domestic spying, trampling on our constitutional rights and flouting Congress and the courts. Unfortunately, the one that hurts the most is you are responsible for FLAT FUNDING HIV TREATMENT AND SERVICES FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS.
(For those of you who don’t see a correlation between flat funding services, you must remember that there are more patients requiring services than there are funds to provide them. So even with flat funding they can’t meet the current need. Now add to that the estimated 40,000 new infections each year and you can see how dangerous this trend can be. Each year our most important programs are forced to serve fewer clients, because the money is just not there.)
Unfortunately, too many of you elected representatives who decided that some people’s lives do cost too much and so the ADAP waiting lists continue. Instead of adding a couple of hundred million of dollars (a pittance in D.C.) to HIV programs like ADAP and Ryan White, which would have wiped out waiting lists and expanded services, they decided that a half a trillion dollar of defense spending was much more important.
That decision to flat fund programs, especially ADAP, has resulted in deaths, because patients were unable to get the necessary medication they needed to survive.
Republicans want you to forget that we could have saved BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the new Medicare D prescription drug program by simply allowing the government to negotiate bulk drug prices with manufacturers, but that’s not what they did. Instead they structured the program to benefit the drug manufacturers, not the insured. Waiting lists for HIV services could have been abolished and/or services expanded, but Republicans had better use for our tax dollars.
Oil companies are posting record profits and we are squandering $82 billion dollars each year, for the war in Iraq, yet they can’t find a few hundred million dollars to make a real difference.
Americans who voted Republican also fostered the culture of corruption in Congress that emboldened Tom DeLay, “Duke” Cunningham, Jack Abramoff and a long list of others. Voting for the Empire of George in 2004 means you were a knowing accomplice in implementing everything from misplaced, mean-spirited priorities to under-funding of HIV prevention, treatment and services.
This president has done more damage to this country in the past six years than almost any other president. He’s removed the science from prevention messages, required foreign countries to promote “abstinence only” prevention messages (or forgo our help), to promoting divisive issues to divert attention from the real travesties in this country. Most disappointing is that he has consistently allowed the under-funding of many programs that help the neediest of Americans.
We all have to stop hiding and realize that there is a war going on and positive people are losing, big time. We seem unable to speak as a community, which I believe is a result of the diverse nature of our community and not intentional. We can’t even seem to agree on which messages are most important or what we should be doing regarding so many issues. We don’t have any real national organizations that advocate for pos folks. So it’s critical that you get involved at the local level, to help start formulating responsible policies.
It’s time to return to the streets and begin to re-exert our rights to proper treatment and services. We need to get up and start doing something, ANYTHING, to help us attain the resources and support that we deserve.
Learn how our government works, how policy is made and how to influence that policy.
Too many of us have this attitude of “I don’t have to get involved, because other people are” and that’s a crock. ASOs can’t staff boards with PWAs and HIV Planning Councils are begging as well. In some locals, it is as if PWAs have all fallen off the planet. I live in an area with thousands of pos men and we can’t staff our boards. How sad is that?
Horrible things are said and done to our community and rarely do we stand up and demand the respect that we deserve. So if they won’t give us the respect, then we’ll just have to claim it ourselves. Learn how your government works and get involved so that you become part of the solution.
Change is incredibly hard and we have a very tough road ahead of us, but if we each do our bit, then that’s just a little lighter burden that we each have to bear.
Two many Americans think that all we have to do to fulfill our civic duty is show up at the polls. Not enough of us are paying attention, nor understand that voting in a representative government can have many pitfalls. Through your ballot, you are sanctioning what elected officials do in your name, once in office.
So for those who voted for George, you’ve sanctioned some of the most egregious errors, whether it is substituting religious dogma for science at the CDC and in our HIV and disease prevention messages, or ignoring the pleas for adequate funding of HIV programs and services. With all that we could be doing, people are still dying from HIV, right here at home, because the programs that keep them alive, simply cost too much.
Hopefully we can all be honest, at least with ourselves, and agree that both political parties deserve part of the blame for our current state of affairs. Our government is structured to be adversarial in nature and that’s not happening. We have a renegade White House, supported by a rubber-stamp Congress and it’s just not working. There is no balance in Washington.
This isn’t about which party is better, it’s about doing what is right for this country. Please reduce the power of the Republicans, because if you think things are bad now, how do you expect they will be in another 2 years?
Think about this: the war in Iraq is just 6 months shy of how long we were involved in WWII. Enough said.
What America needs in government is some balance. Do your homework and work to elect those representatives that you believe will support the issues of importance to you. Please help to restore some balance in our government.
Elections are coming and you hold the power.
As voters, we are responsible for whom we elect and what they do when in office.
