Why you don’t want Romney and Ryan to win

Romney and Ryan have gained in the polls.  Biden’s performance in the V.P. debate helped and hopefully Obama will turn things around on Tuesday.  But, you had better be really concerned about Romney/Ryan gaining in key states like Ohio, Virginia and Florida and having a chance a reaching 270 votes in the Electoral College and winning.

Why DON’T you want Romney and Ryan to win?  Here’s why.

If your or one of your family member’s jobs depends upon the American auto industry, then you had better be glad that Romney and Ryan weren’t running things because most of the American auto industry wouldn’t exist today, nor would the jobs.

If you or one of your family members were among the more than 3 million Americans whose jobs were saved or created by the stimulus, then you had better be glad Romney and Ryan weren’t running things back then because there would have been no stimulus to create or save jobs.

If you rely upon Social Security for part or all of your income, then you had better be glad Romney and Ryan haven’t been running things because there would be no traditional Social Security to rely upon.  Your Social Security retirement funds would have been in the stock market during the great recession, just like your 401K and you know what happened to your 401K.

If you enjoy the benefits of Medicare, then you had better be glad that Romney and Ryan haven’t been running things because traditional Medicare wouldn’t exist or would be seriously threatened. (It depends upon which story the Romney/Ryan team is telling at the moment.)  You would be left with a voucher that might or might not cover the cost of your health insurance, assuming of course that you could find an insurance company that would insure you.

If you or a member of your family has a pre-existing condition, you had better hope Romney/Ryan don’t win so that they can repeal Obamacare because you and/or your loved one will either lose their insurance or find that it becomes too expensive to afford.  Of course, you will still have the emergency room of your local hospital to rely upon.

If you blame the banks and Wall Street for causing the Great Recession (which they did), then you had better hope that Romney and Ryan don’t get in power because the banks and Wall Street will be turned loose to cause another Great Recession.

If you believe businesses should be regulated and that there should be government inspections to insure the safety of our food, drugs, and consumer products, then you don’t want to give Romney and Ryan the power to weaken our food, drug and consumer protection laws in the name of  “free enterprise.”

If you are a woman and you don’t want government telling you what you can or cannot do when it comes to the issue of contraception and abortion, then you had better hope that Romney and Ryan don’t get in power because you will be stripped of most of your reproductive rights.

If you are gay and you want to be treated equally when it comes to marriage, service in the military, being able to adopt children and in hundreds of other ways, then you had better hope Romney and Ryan don’t get in power because they will strip gay people of all of the gains they have made toward equal treatment over the last few decades.

If you think the United States should abandon nation building, work with its allies to bring peace to the middle-east and elsewhere, and go to war only as a last resort, then you had better hope Romney and Ryan don’t get to set foreign policy because they will involve us in unending wars.

If you care about protecting the environment; preserving the national parks, forests and wildlife sanctuaries; and reducing our reliance on oil, then you had better hope that Romney and Ryan don’t get the power to turn over the setting of environmental and energy policy to the Koch brothers and oil companies.

If you are worried about the rise of income inequality and decline of the middle class, then you had better hope Romney and Ryan don’t get elected because their tax policies will guarantee that the rich will get even more favorable tax treatments, a further shrinking middle class will carry more of the burden of taxation and even greater number of Americans will slip into poverty from which they may never recover.

If you believe that our country’s greatness is built to a large part on the basis of the equal access of all Americans to a free public education, then you had better hope Romney and Ryan don’t get to set education policy because in the name of parental choice, they will impoverish the public school system in order to fund private and religious schools and turn access to education from a right to a privilege available only to the rich.

If you are a scientist or engineer or just someone who believes the federal government plays, and should play, a critical role in funding basic but often risky research, then you had better hope Romney and Ryan don’t get to set public policy, because federal support research and development will largely disappear.

If you support the arts and public broadcasting because you believe the value of human endeavor shouldn’t be measured solely by its profit potential and that the wealth of a nation shouldn’t be measured solely by the size of its GDP, then you don’t want Romney and Ryan to have the power to defund everything that doesn’t make the rich richer.

If you believe that most Americans aren’t “moochers” or “takers” to use the terms of those who worship Ayn Rand, but are the true “makers” of houses and roads and bridges and educated children and safe streets and quality products and reliable services, the people who with their hands and hearts and minds do the real work then you don’t want elect to office people like Romney and Ryan.  They believe that the only Americans with value are the real “takers” those who make their fortunes, not on the basis of their daily labor, but through gambling and speculation in the financial markets, usually with someone else’s money and with the guarantee that the government will bail them out should they lose their bets.