At last week's city council meeting, 5th district Diane Benedetti desperately was looking for a way of defusing John Gonder's typically earnest effort to instill a bare sliver of social consciousness into the antebellum mood typically defining the group's self-serving, comic book deliberations.
The topic was legislation removing restrictions on local gun control, presumably because Republicans now seek greater personal safety by packing pieces to ward off the anarchy ensuing from their efforts to destabilize civil society in the interest of increased fundamentalism and wealth retention.
Infamously, Benedetti mused: How could I, as a mere council occupant who refuses to read newspapers or have an e-mail address, even in the advanced year 2011, possibly have a relevant opinion on state legislation?
Specifically, shouldn't the council defer to Ed Clere and Ron Grooms for marching orders and direction? Shouldn’t we demand that Clere and Grooms tell the council how to think?
After all, announced Benedetti: "They're fighting for us in Indianapolis."
As another pathetic example of what Clere and Grooms have been "fighting for" during the most reactionary legislative session in living memory, consider this: Abortion bill could pass Indiana House Wednesday (C-J).
Has our representative, who fancies himself a legislative “reporter”, addressed this bill in his newspaper column? If not, perhaps management needs to restore a weekly propaganda slot.
When following the path of House Bill 1210, even a caveman can see that both Clere and Grooms have worn their ROCK jackboots in full polish from the beginning to the end of what amounts to an institutionalized deprivation of heath care for women, of whom Bendedetti is one.
What Benedetti is not is poor, and unsurprisingly, poor women will be the chief victims of House Bill 1210. Like a majority of Clere’s and Grooms’s votes this year, the Planned Parenthood gutting is 100% right-wing, theocratically, appeasingly ideological, something to remember when Ed and Ron again deny they’re ideologues.
At the IUS city council discussion last Friday, we were asked how a body like the city council might possibly impact policies toward the least advantaged members of society. Randy Smith, who’s running against Benedetti in next Tuesday’s primary, answered that while it’s a tough question, the answer surely must incorporate a strategy of not making the lives of the poor less safe by putting the least advantaged at greater danger, depriving them of whatever sources of stability exist -- like neighborhood schools and health care.
Had Benedetti attended the informative session at IUS, would her answer have been: As a Democrat, I don’t know, so I’ll copy off the paper of the Republican seated next to me, and get back to you with an answer?
At the very least, shouldn’t a Democrat be a Democrat, and not a Republican apologist?
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