Over five years ago, while still celebrating Joe Biden’s victory over the personification of self-interest, I received an unexpected sum of money.
Although the subsequent reversal of that election prompts what I’m about to propose, this story remains in December 2020.
While everyone I hold dear was relieved we were rid of a malignant national disease, we were still faced with the prospect of a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.
Two run-off elections, both in Georgia on Jan. 5, would decide it. Republicans needed just one to keep Mitch McConnell as Senate president.
This would have paralyzed a Biden presidency. McConnell, who openly reveled in the nickname “Grim Reaper,” had already stripped Obama of a Supreme Court appointment.
That move led to the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the 2024 ruling that a president, contrary to any honest reading of the Constitution, is above the law.
Republican donors poured millions into Georgia. Democrats were desperate. And there I was with an unexpected $500 in hand.
My few political contributions along the way have all been a meager $20 or $25. To be fair, I’ve also penned public endorsements as far back as 1984 in a paper that circulates in New Hampshire, a swing state.
In 2020, I asked that, rather than any Christmas gifts for me, friends and relatives donate to the Georgia campaigns. I then sent a $200 check to each, and spent much of the remaining $100 on beverages that might help me either celebrate the results or forget that the $500 ever existed. Both candidates won.
That helped, but Biden paralyzed himself by selecting a cadaver as attorney general. Fearing political backlash, the Justice Department did nothing to pursue the planners of January 6 until Republicans could whine that it was “too close” to the presidential election.
On both sides of the aisle, it was cowardice wrapped in the rigor mortis of procedure. The result, as Herman Melville noted of European revolutionaries in 1848 who neglected to hold overthrown parties to account:
“Victory reverts to the vanquished.”
Hence, the personification of self-interest re-took the White House–demolishing some of it–while the Republicans have re-taken both the Senate and the House. In just one year, they have slashed every humanitarian interest that cannot be monetized to benefit their donors.
All kinds of scientific research, especially medical, including the Affordable Care Act, top the list, followed by numerous programs for children living below the poverty line, for veterans, for victims of natural disasters, for environmental protection.
Internationally, the Center for Global Development estimates that the Republican slashing of the United States Agency for International Development has already resulted in over half a million deaths, most of them children who succumbed to starvation while shiploads of withheld food rotted in their third-world ports.
Meanwhile, we are watching more and more television ads asking us to donate to charities that hope to meet those same needs.
Question: Which would be higher?
A) Federal funds that could be allocated by Congress with a reasonable corporate tax-rate, or…
B) Individual donations from those so inclined while corporations skimp on taxes, report record profits, and dole out billions in bonuses for CEOs?
A loaded question? Only because the load is of obvious truth.
This is not to be construed as a case against donating to charities. But, in a time when a Republican-controlled Congress is slashing every cent it can from humanitarian needs, our donations will be better spent on candidates who will take Congress out of Republican hands.
My admiration goes out to those who reach for the checkbook when they see an ad for malnourished children in Africa, or for children fighting cancer here in America, and I will continue to applaud them.
However, in this midterm election year, I must ask: Are they throwing money into a hole where any bang for their buck will barely be heard?
And wouldn’t the bang be far bigger if those bucks went to rid Congress of those who keep digging that hole deeper?
Newbury’s Jack Garvey celebrated a birthday last month. Send what you would have spent on a gift to any and/or all viable opponents of Republican candidates in closely contested races for the US Senate and House in November.