Open Letter to Marsha Blackburn

Dear Mrs. Congressman Blackburn:

It may be time for you stop appearing on all the fancy national network news shows and come back to Tennessee and live with the common folk for awhile.  You have become infected with that most deadly of diseases, Potomac Fever.

The Fever is distinguished by a “tax and spend” mentality.  Its most recognizable symptom in those who claim to be “conservative” is the support for legislation which is destructive to local economies and the average household.

If you were to actually spend a day or two driving slowly through the rural counties of your district, you would be able to see the factories vacated as a result of “free trade” agreements such as NAFTA. Thousands of Tennesseans have been left without employment because their jobs have been shipped across our southern border or to any number of cheap-labour countries overseas.

In the wake of closed factories, Mom & Pop stores on every rural Main Street have been forced to close. And what has appeared in their place? Big-boxes like Super WalMarts are supplying cheaper-than-dime-store merchandise from China while advertizing more things for a better life.

A tremendous bulk of your campaign support comes from Big Business donors and their PACs, so it has become easier for you to listen to their “experts” pontificate, while your constituents suffer. A twenty and fifty dollar donor is not really a voice worth listening to. Obviously, their lack of financial resources is a result of intellectual deficiency and thus an inability to actually view a situation realistically and logically.

NAFTA and its ilk benefit Big Business. These “free trade” agreements are destroying the economic foundations of the county you claim to love. They are also destroying our ability to defend ourselves in the event of a real war, instead of the neo-con adventurism which has plagued the United States and caused the deaths of so many young men and women. Should we actually have a real war, we no longer have the domestic manufacturing capability of defending ourselves.

Your sworn duty in your oath of office is to uphold the Constitution. Have you read it lately? Your obligation Biblically is to be a servant of the people you represent. Have you actually listened to your constituents lately?

I am President of a rural county Chamber of Commerce. Not just the businesses, but the county itself is on “life support” because of the empirical-style policies coming for the District and which have your support. Wake up! Or stay home!

From Solitude,
David O Jones