2016 Republican Candidates: More Wealth to the Wealthy, Fear in the Streets, Prejudice Against Women, Blacks, and Many Immigrant Groups - PLUS an Authoritarian Presidency

Latino protesters - We need all voices, all votes for a Democratic win!

The 2016 Republican candidates, including the GOP POTUS candidate, are running based on:

1. A Party Platform that advocates GREATER WEALTH FOR THE WEALTHY. 
2. The Republican Presidential campaign emphasizes FEAR OF CRIME (thus, the need for “law and order”) – stereotypically committed by illegal immigrants, blacks, and Islamic terrorists. 
3. The Republican Presidential campaign clearly and PROUDLY RESURRECTS AND PROMOTES PREJUDICE against women, blacks, various ethnic and religious (immigrant ) minorities. 

Probably even more important a problem for American democracy, the Republican Presidential campaign has raised the possibility of a demagogic President who has expressed views of Presidential power “above” the Constitution – closer, in fact, to authoritarian or even DICTATORIAL power.

The election of a DEMOCRATIC POTUS and a 

Democratic Congressional MAJORITY is CRITICAL! 

We MUST ALL #uniteblue and #VoteOutGOP by voting in Democrats! 

NO WRITE-IN VOTES THAT WEAKEN THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE AND INCREASE THE GOP CHANCES OF WINNING!

NRA = Front Group for Military Style Weapons Industry

Open carry law - Texas

GUNS ARE TOO EASY TO GET.

Although the NRA was founded in 1871 to improve marksmanship, starting in 1975 the NRA has increasingly become a major front group for the manufacturers of weapons currently referred to as military-style weapons. At the same time, the media continues to misleadingly identify the NRA as primarily representing the interests of the many members who are amateur hunters.

In 1934, the Fire Arms Act was passed to protect the public from killings by “military- style” weapons, “destructive” devices, and concealed weapons. Military-style weapons meant machine guns and any firearm that could be “readily converted” to fire more than one bullet per trigger pull.  Pistols, revolvers, normal length rifles and shotguns were not restricted by the Act. The Gun Control Act of 1968 updated the legal basis for addressing the same concerns. Until 1975, the NRA leadership best represented the concerns of hunter, target shooters and sportsmen - and not dealers or manufacturers.

After 1975, the NRA focused more and more on political involvement through PACs and lobbying groups and, in effect, rejected the threat to the public of mass violence weapons. The post-1975 NRA “framed the issue” not in terms of public safety but in terms of the for-profit interests, gun dealers and

Guns for sale via interest.

manufacturers, and their self-serving interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment. (Of course, the type of weapon is no longer the only safety issue since large ammunition magazines increase the ease/speed of mass lethal violence and some types of munitions put law enforcement etc. at greater risk.) 

Ever since the mid 1970’s, the NRA has consistently opposed the types of gun control restrictions in Western Europe or Japan and has increasingly and deliberately taken advantage of the media’s failure to recognize that the modern NRA is, first and foremost, an economic interest group that rejects majority public opinion  - even the majority opinion of hunters, target shooters, and sportsmen.

Focusing on background checks misdirects attention from the types of weapons, clips that are readily available. This also ignores the long standing evidence that the ability to predict violent behavior is so weak that background checks are not “common sense” gun control but misdirection on the part of the gun industry. Proven gun violence control policies do not rely upon background checks as a central strategy.

We MUST mobilize against this very real threat to our safety and well-being! 

We MUST WORK TOGETHER, UNITE BLUE! 

Only a Democrat POTUS and a Democrat Congressional majority can make the common sense gun law changes we want and need. 

Common sense gun law deniers=VOTE THEM OUT!

VOTE BLUE! EVERY VOTE MATTERS!

Profits are a higher priority than public safety

We cannot allow "big business" to continue to mislead us, influence our country, and harm us for their personal profit!
Fight back with your voice and your VOTE! 

Georgia Congressman, John Lewis,June 22, 2016

"...Sometimes you have to get in the way. You have to make some noise by speaking up and speaking out against injustice & inaction..."

With the current focus on new legislation to help prevent the kind of violence against innocent members of the public that recently occurred in Orlando, it is important to step back and put the issue in a larger historical and social context.

AK-47

To start with, economic interests groups like the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry, and the military-style weapons and munitions industries have many obvious characteristics in common.  In each case, these industries seek greater profits for their mainly wealthy shareholders by selling “products” that clearly do or may, as in the case of the recent Orlando mass shooting, put the general public at risk of terrible harm. Whether we are talking about the risk of lung cancer and other smoking related heath damage, global warming and its catastrophic impacts in the present and future, or the increasing incidents of massacres of innocents in America, profits have been and continue to be a higher industry priority than the public well-being.

At the same time, such industries have continued to try to misinform the public about terrible adverse impacts of their “products” by using many different arguments that, in fact, have been and are consistently deliberately misleading and demonstrably false.

• The cigarette industry touted the association of smoking with lung cancer as actually due to stress, personality type, etc.
• In America, we still hear from almost all leading Republican politicians and candidates that global warming is a hoax or that the consensus of climatology scientists should be ignored because
• not enough research has been done OR
• there must be no uncertainty in climate science before policy makers should accept that the main driver of global warming is human activity (and therefore, we may be able to slow the warming by what we do).
• Likewise for the military-style weapons and munitions industry, their front men have been so successful that the arguments and discussion about protecting the public from harm has moved so incredibly far away from banning all “machine guns” (National Firearms Act of 1934) and their potential for mass killings/injury to who is Constitutionally “entitled” to own such weapons (as well as who is entitled to own munitions that put law enforcement wearing protective vests at risk). 

In the U.S., more than other capitalist countries, very profitable economic interests have typically used every resource, notwithstanding their prior knowledge of the risk of harm to the public, to insure their continued profitability. A key resource is always the effort to mislead the public, policy makers, law enforcement, media, etc., about known harm to the public.

Although not universal, profits before responsibility to the public well-being has become a tacit norm of corporate behavior.

Orlando, FL shooting response

Fight back with your voice and your VOTE!

Don't give up! Vote them out!

#votethemout