Mind-blowing, right? Here’s a little of what I wrote about this over at Babble today:

There’s a new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that says teen girls don’t become poor because they have babies. Instead, they have babies because they are poor.

The study concludes that for young women in the United States “being on a low economic trajectory in life leads many teenage girls to have children while they are young and unmarried and that poor outcomes seen later in life (relative to teens who do not have children) are simply the continuation of the original low economic trajectory.” In other words, being stuck in the cycle of poverty is a risk factor for teen birth.

The study also indicates that young women growing up in areas of significant income inequality are even more likely to become mothers in their teens.

As a long-time advocate for access to health care, contraception, and sex education as means of preventing unwanted pregnancy, I feel like the ground has gotten a little shaky under my feet from this study. It’s relatively easy to increase access to health care and comprehensive sex ed (not cheap, but easy). But breaking the cycle of systemic poverty? That’s only the biggest social issue of all time. And if systemic poverty is a risk factor for teen pregnancy, well, suddenly I have a lot fewer good answers than I thought I did.

In these days of economic stagnation, systemic poverty is more entrenched than ever. I wish I had a pat answer for how to fix things but I really don’t. No on does. Whatever the answer turns out to be, its going to be cataclysmic, that’s for sure. Because squabbling about taxes and abortion sure as hell isn’t doing the trick.

Then this week we got hit with a trifecta of crazy ass shit. Which is good for bloggers like me but is probably evidence that humanity is doomed.

First, it turns out that FOXNews’ Sean Hannity has a crazy friend. Not the good kind of crazy friend who will call you from their car, parked in your driveway, saying “Out of the house, bitch! Saks is having a shoe sale and we’re gonna go get drunk and try on Jimmy Choos and post pictures on Twitter!”. No, Mr. Hannity associates with a pastor who does not think women should have ever been given the right to vote.

I’ll let that sink in…OK, now please take a deep breath before your head explodes on the screen.

Apparently Jesse Lee Peterson, a conservative pastor and regular guest on Sean Hannity’s show, said this in a sermon recently:

“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson said to his congregants in the 12-minute video. “We should have never turned that over to women. There are more women out there voting than men now … and these women are voting in the wrong people. They are voting in people who are evil, who agree with them, who are going to take us down this pathway of destruction.”

I certainly hope if Mr. Hannity ever runs for office, his opponents make as big a deal out of this as Obama’s detractors made of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

For my own sanity, I’m going to assume that Reverend Peterson is an outlier and there isn’t a cadre of would-be 19th Amendment Repealers out there. If it turns out that he’s part of a vanguard of assholes who wants to deny women Constitutional rights, I will be first in line to shut that shit down.

Next, we have one of those rare moments where I find myself nostalgic for John McCain. Remember when a lady at one of his events said Obama wasn’t American and McCain corrected her? That was honorable and honest. Mitt Romney exhibited none of that honor or honesty recently when a woman at one of his rallies said Obama should be tried for treason.

“We have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our Constitution,” the audience member said to applause. “And I want to know — yeah, I do agree he should be tried for treason — but I want to know what you would be able to do to restore balance between the three branches of government and what you are going to be able to do to restore our Constitution in this country.”

Mr. Romney answered with some pablum about the Constitution and later brushed it off when questioned on the rope line by a New York Times reporter, saying he didn’t agree about the treason stuff.

Me? I disagree about the letting-the-accusations-of-treason-go stuff. This happened with Bush and Cheney too and it pissed me off then as well. Here’s the deal: treason is taking action to overthrown the government and is a capital offense. Presidents have not been doing that. They have been doing something else, instead. It’s called Doing Shit That You Might Not Like Much. That’s not illegal. Accusations of treason are needlessly inflammatory and usually just demonstrate the speaker’s utter ignorance about how government works, not to mention a failure to learn basic vocabulary because they clearly have no idea what treason actually is.

In the future, if anyone ever hears someone accuse a politician of treason, the immediate response should be to ask them to define treason. If they can’t do it, the conversation is over.

Finally, last night, North Carolinians passed an amendment to their state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one women. The amendment dulpicates existing law also refuses recognition of other non-marital unions, even between straight people.

This makes me want to cry. What could drive a person to affirm, in the strongest possible way, that there is a segment of the population that they feel is lesser than they are and therefore, they are willing – nay, eager – to block them from a legally recognized marriage? It’s senseless bigotry born of a voyeuristic interest in they way others have sex and it’s, frankly, disgusting. Anti-gay forces can quote the Bible and ramble about sins until they’re blue in the face but until the day they start crusading to withhold rights from other sinners like adulterers, thieves, murderers, fornicators, and people who covet their neighbor’s goods, I’m calling bullshit. They hate the idea of gay sex and they’re not mature enough to deal with their feelings so they’re punishing gay people.

If you’re gay, and live in North Carolina, I would like to formally invite you to relocate to Maryland. It’s lovely here, the schools are very good, we have world-class arts and cultural attractions, and we made same sex marriage legal recently. This is a nice place to settle, raise a family, maybe start a business if that’s your thing, and live your life without a constitution that says your relationships don’t matter.

Now I certainly hope this spate of crazy is over because I simply can’t take more douchebaggery right now. To counteract all of this, I’m going to do a little good in the world by joining my pals at Rants from Mommyland in putting together Mothers Day packages for women in local shelters. If you want to find out more about this or their project to collect clean birth kits for moms in developing nations, check out the Mother Pucker Project.

When they talk about preventing new rules mandating contraception coverage by insurance, I hear,  “We won’t cover your birth control because you just don’t know that you really want babies.”

When I heard of lawmakers in Texas and Kansas mandating sonograms prior to abortions, I hear, “We’ll make you look at this ultrasound before an abortion because you just don’t know that babies are precious.”

When I hear them rehashing the argument of abstinence only sex education, I hear, “We won’t teach sex ed because if you know about sex you’ll think you want to have it and you just don’t know that sex is only for married, straight people.”

When Ron Paul says things about victims of “honest rape” when considering who should be allowed access to emergency contraception, I hear, “We say things like ‘honest rape’ because you just don’t know what rape really is and you don’t know how to consent to sex.”

Gentlemen. Let me assure you. WE KNOW.

Women know whether we want to have children today, tomorrow or never. Women know what the implications of ending a pregnancy after it has already begun are. Women want to know, and for their children to know, the biology and psychology of sex and they want that information available. And women know if they consented to sex.

It turns out I’M TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT WOMEN KNOWING WHAT THEY WANT.  There’s now even a study to prove it. I wrote about it over at Babble just now:

According to a new study released by the Guttmacher Institute, women seeking abortions are already confident in their decision and probably don’t need a mandated waiting period to mull it over further.

The study, which surveyed over 5,000 women seeking abortions at one clinic, revealed that 87% of patients seeking an abortion had “high confidence” in their decision. Factors that strengthened conviction that the abortion was the right choice for them were a supportive partner or mother. Factors that reduced women’s confidence in their decision were “being younger than 20, being black, not having a high school diploma, having a history of depression, having a fetus with an anomaly, having general difficulty making decisions, having spiritual concerns, believing that abortion is killing and fearing not being forgiven by God”.

Uh-huh. 87% of women surveyed had high confidence in their choices before they walked through the doors of the clinic. They didn’t need to go think about it for 24 or 48 or 72 hours. They didn’t need a sonogram. They didn’t need to talk about an anti-abortion activist at a crisis pregnancy center. They knew full well what they were doing, why they were doing it and what the implications were. BECAUSE WOMEN ARE SMART.

Now if all the men making laws about women’s reproductive health care out there would kindly assume the position, I would like to kick a clue up their asses. Because it’s long past time they started to acknowledge that we, as a gender, have more going on between our ears than they’re willing to give us credit for.

Here’s what I wrote about it at Babble today:

It is possible for each and every one of us to help prevent maternal death in the developing world simply by stepping up and providing a clean birth kit for a mother who needs it. And this Mothers Day, Bloggers for Birth Kits are organizing to do just that.

According to Adriel who writes the blog The Mommyhood Memos and the powerhouse behind Bloggers for Birth Kits, infection following delivery remains a leading cause of death among both mothers and newborns. This risk can be mitigated. Both maternal and neonatal infection rates have been proven to decrease if women are given access to the most basic elements of medical sanitation while birthing: soap, a length of clean string to tie the umbilical cord, a clean razor blade to cut the umbilical cord and a clean, plastic sheet on which to deliver.

Bloggers for Birth Kits is working to bring clean birth kits to women in need. A clean birth kit includes:

1. Soap (for the birth attendant to wash her hands). Use a hotel-size soap or cut a regular bar of soap into 1/8-sized pieces. (Microwave the bar of soap for 30 seconds to soften it for cutting).
2. One pair of plastic gloves (for the birth attendant to wear).
3. Five squares of gauze (to wipe the mum’s perineum and baby’s eyes). Gauze pieces should be about 10×10 centimeters or 3×3 inches.
4. One blade (to cut the cord). You can buy individually wrapped sterile blades at the pharmacist or buy utility blades (much cheaper) at the hardware store. We teach the women to boil the blades for sterilization, so utility blades work just fine.
5. Three pieces of string (2 for tying the cord, 1 for “just in case”). String should be about 30 centimeters or 10 inches long.
6. One plastic sheet (for a clean birthing surface). Sheet should be approximately 1×1 meter or 1×1 yard and can be purchased at your hardware or paint store.
7. One sandwich-size ziplock bag (to pack the contents).

You can make your own birth kit or make a cash donations to Bloggers for Birth Kits by going to this site (donation instructions are at the bottom!) . You can also donate to World Birth Aid, an non-profit that provides birth kits for women in Africa by clicking here.  In either case, you’ll be contributing to the care of a mother who deserves a safe, clean birth.

Seriously, is this not so incredibly awesome that you can hardly stand it? So simple, so effective, and so, so very important. I’ll be making a donation this week and hope you will too!

I wrote a bit about my conflicted feelings about protecting babies from meth versus a state going all Big Brother on pregnant women at Babble today:

And how does this link in with the growing fetal-personhood movement? Do laws that protect the unborn ultimately detract from the rights of the born? In this case, the mother doesn’t truly have the right to engage in the behavior in question – i.e. illegal drugs – but what about other scenarios? Would a mother who works in agriculture be forced to quit her job if farm chemicals were seen as chemical endangerment while she was pregnant? What about a server in a bar that allows smoking? What about a lab technician or hospital worker who deals with hazardous substances?

Heck, what about the expectant mom who colors her hair, drinks too much coffee, or has some champagne at a wedding? At what point does the idea of “acceptable risk” in pregnancy get taken out of the hands of a woman and her physician and put in the hands of the state?

Most of you all reading here already know that I think the fetal personhood movement is scary-ass shit that could result in a Handmaid’s Tale nation where pregnant women are sequestered in camps where all decisions are made for them for “the good of the baby”.  (I wrote about it at length last summer if you want a recap of my thoughts.) So, I’m not feeling any warm fuzzies when the Times tells me that Personhood USA is loving this Alabama statute. If they think it’s a good idea, I tend to think it’s not great for women in the long term.

As I say on Babble, I think we should be looking at WHY so many people in Alabama are using, making and selling meth and solve those problems. Sure, I don’t want women doing meth while pregnant but I don’t what them doing meth or blowing themselves up with meth labs while they;re not pregnant either. Maybe a little focus on education, social supports, and job creation would be just as good for babies as standing guard over pregnant women to make sure they toe the line, hmmmm?

The reason I don’t want to be writing this is because I’m wholly unqualified to delve into the whole concept of class envy. It strikes me as a deeply complicated topic best addressed by psychologists and sociologists and possibly historians. I am none of those things. I was a drama major, for pity’s sake. My masters in is arts policy. My main qualification for anything is an overabundance of snark and my fondness for the news. Any thoughts I have on something as broad as class envy are opinions and conjecture based on no knowledge and no research. This is just me thinking my little thoughts on this blog for you to read. Accept or dismiss them at your will.

The reason I feel compelled to talk about class envy at all is because of the inevitable comments accusing me of that very thing when I wrote a post suggesting that Ann Romney is unfamiliar with the real details of the lives of the middle and lower classes in this country. It’s a familiar, and frankly boring, dialogue when a liberal says the very rich don’t get it and a conservative says that the liberal is just jealous. If I’d been smart, I never would have even jumped into the fray but I’m not that smart and had to say my piece about what I perceive as the Romney family’s blind spots. I’m certain that somewhere on the internet there is a more conservative blogger saying comparable things about what they think Barack Obama’s blind spots are. I am equally certain that a liberal commenter has found that conservative blogger and left a knee-jerk response about how the blogger is an unthinking enemy of the middle classes who cares only about money. Just as people commented on my post saying that I’m just a bitter person who wishes she were as rich as the Romneys.

Am I? Bitter, that is? Yes. Maybe. But perhaps not in the way people think.

The perception of wealth and the aspiration toward wealth and rationales for seeking wealth are, I believe, varied. And the discussions of class envy and class warfare are pretty one-dimensional. The presumption is those who have less money want more in order to acquire things.  The simplest way to think of that scenario is the poor person wishing for the trappings of luxury: fancy houses, fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy vacations. An MTV Cribs form of class envy, if you will. A desire for enough income to cover not only basic needs but to allow the individual to move into a financial zone where pleasure seeking is permissible.

This exists. It must. If it didn’t, there would be no market for knock-off designer handbags.

I do not suffer from this. At least not in any deep sense of the word. Sure, I see a picture of Louboutain shoes in a magazine and I think they’re lovely and would enhance the look of my feet and legs. But I do not covet them. Owning them is not a goal of mine. I have no ill feelings toward people who can and do own them. I cease to think of them after I have turned the page in the magazine. Just as I don’t have any strong feelings about the Romney’s beach house in La Jolla. It is merely a thing that someone else owns and it inspires very little sentiment from me. So, in that sense, I do not suffer from class envy.

But in other ways, I do envy the richer classes and I’d imagine most of us, even those who use the phrase “class envy” as a perjorative, suffer from this too. What I envy is the security money can buy. I look at the Romneys and what I see is a family barricaded against financial ruin. There is almost no circumstance that will leave anyone in that family at a loss for food, clothing, shelter, or medial care. They are not living – will never live – one pink slip or one medical diagnosis from ruin. That cannot be said for me. I imagine it cannot be said for you.

I am all too aware that my access to health care is through the largess of my husband’s employer. Yes, we make a contribution to the cost but they could choose to rescind coverage at any moment (at least until 2014 when the mandates in the Affordable Care Act kick in) and my family and I would be up a creek. We could wade through the marshes of COBRA and HIPPA to continue coverage but the cost would be potentially beyond our means and we would need to seek other options. Options that may or may not exist, given our collective medical histories and the reluctance of insurers to offer their products to people who have ever been ill. We could join the ranks of the uninsured at any moment. The thought of that situation arising makes my blood run cold.

No one named Romney has those fears. Their money separates them from the possibility of having access to medical care limited or closed off to them. THAT I envy. Being able to look my child in the eye and being able to say “You will never be so sick that we can’t get you the best care.” I aspire to that. I feel a surge of covetousness when I think of that. I am bitter that there are some who live with that security for their entire lives while I, and so many others, are never far from a precipice of medical insecurity.

The final level of what I see as class envy – or perhaps, more accurately, the oft-touted resentment of the rich – comes from my sense that with tremendous wealth should also come tremendous responsibility. And wealth combined with power such as that of the Presidency brings even greater responsibility. A responsibility to improve the lot of the many, to institute rules that create a fundamental social fairness that allows a majority of people to have a certain minimum level of security. Not luxury, not by any means. The person who whimpers for the Louboutains has no fundamental right to anything other than being sad that they can’t have them. But a baseline level of security about food, shelter, education, and medical care seems to me the least we, as a nation, should offer. Those who have the money and/or the power to offer them but who choose not to are operating in a manner that I find anathema. In that sense, I do resent certain segments of the powered and monied classes. They could implement change but they do not. In the public sector they attempt to thwart changes like raising minimum wages, broadening access to health care, improving public education, and sustaining programs that provide food and shelter for those who otherwise cannot afford them. In the private sector they fail to increase payrolls, expand benefits to employees or raise wages. They think first of the aggregation of wealth, not of the distribution of basic necessities. This I abhor.  I believe that once your needs are met there is a responsibility to assist others in meting their needs, too. If the airplane depressurizes, by all means, get your own mask on first. But do not leave the person beside you gasping for air because they cannot get theirs on without help. It does not matter why they need help. The fact remains that they need it. If you have the means to provide it, you should.

And here is where the problem lies because I think that the Romneys of the world think a tax break is that oxygen mask. That a trickle of money will grow to a deluge if used properly. They believe that they are going to help by channeling the flow of money in a particular way. And I think they believe this – and this was the point I was trying to make in my post about Ann Romney – because they don’t understand the true nature of the problems. They are blind to the realities of a life without security. I keep thinking that if only they knew, if only they understood what life looked like without a wall of money surrounding them, they would embrace different methods of offering assistance to others. If they knew more about other types of lives, they would see the value of direct, rather than indirect, methods of building others up. Others who do not look to the Romneys of the world to play Santa Claus and give them luxury goodies out of some desire to make the rich share their petty good fortune but rather others who need the Romneys of the world to use their power and wealth to remove obstacles to basic health and security.

But it’s never that simple. Matters of class, of divisions of wealth and who deserves what are never simple. That’s why the accusations about class envy and class warfare all ultimately fall so flat. Because it’s not easy for any of us to unravel our feelings and motivations. Not me. Not Ann Romney. And not any of you.

Hi. How are you? How was that $500 per plate fundraiser the other night? Tasty? Or rubber chicken at fundraiser prices? Could you have made better chicken at home?

Wait, do you cook?

OK, that was snide. I’m sorry. You seem like a perfectly lovely person. I bet we’d find plenty to talk about over a plate of brownies and some sparkling water. Women usually do, you know? We have so much common ground that we can usually overlook our differences, unless one person is determined to be a jerk. I’m sure you’re not determined to be a jerk.

But even though you seem nice and you’re trying hard to be relatable, Ann, you’re making it clearer and clearer that you’re not. Like I say, you’re trying. At that $500 per plate dinner you said this:

“I know what it’s like to wake up early in the morning and get them off to school; I know what it’s like to be up in the middle of the night when they are sick; and I know what it’s like to struggle and to have those concerns that all mothers have,”

Yes. That is the common ground. But then you continued on and said this:

“My hats off to the men in this room too that are raising kids — I love that, and I love the fact that there are also women out there that don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids,” Romney said. “Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.”

Ann. That was awful. It sounds awful. It made me feel awful to read it. Because it underscores the differences between us so starkly. Because we all know, we KNOW, that your life is not really like ours. And you should know it too. It has similarities because you’re a mom, probably a very good mom. So, we have that and that is HUGE. But the rest? Ann, your life is not like ours.

Your life is not like mine today when I had to spend the afternoon juggling a whiny toddler and own pregnant bulk as we sat tethered to the house waiting for a plumber to come during the 4 hour window the company offered us to get our toilet fixed. Waiting and hoping that the cost of the repair wouldn’t blow this month’s budget. You never had to wait because there was probably someone else to do the waiting. Someone on your staff. Or maybe someone was on staff to do the fixing without bringing in a plumber at all. And the cost was never an issue.

Your life is not like my sister, a public school special education teacher who is the primary breadwinner in her two-income household. You never worry, as she does, about the implications of school budget cuts that leave her without a raise year after year. Budget cuts that still leave room for high-stakes tests wherein her students’ performance affects her job security even though her students have no chance of achieving the arbitrary standards politicians set forth for them. Standards that will affect her own children when they go to public schools. Because private school is not an option.

Your life is not like my friend S whose husband chased a dream of running a non-profit arts institution across the country only to have the organization fall victim to the economy and fold shortly after he arrived. They lost everything and S can stay home with her kids now only because her in-laws are generous enough to let her family live with them while they regroup from financial ruin.

Your life is not like my son’s beloved daycare teacher who achieved the dream of home-ownership by virtue of a home built by Habitat for Humanity. Her first home. Which did not have a car elevator to the underground garage.

Ann, your life is not like ours. You have a safety net that most of us only dream of. Yes, you stayed up nights with sick children like we do but you didn’t emerge, bleary-eyed, into the daylight thinking of how to continue to care for the sick child who couldn’t be sent to daycare and still deal with the responsibilities of your paying job. You didn’t worry about losing a day’s pay to stay home with that sick child – or worse, losing your job. You didn’t worry about what to do with the other kids while you took the sick one to the doctor. You didn’t worry about how to pay for the doctor. There was money. There was assistance. There was security.

You’re a mom like all of us, Ann, and you know the highs and lows of motherhood like we do. We could talk about that all day long, I know we could. But your life is not like ours. Your circumstances are not like ours. You may love the diversity of experience that you imagine American motherhood to encompass but, Ann, you don’t understand it. Not really. And your husband doesn’t seek to remedy the discrepancies between your experience of unqualified security with the rises and falls the rest of us face. He doesn’t see (anymore) the need for universal access to affordable medical care. He isn’t calling for paid family leave. He isn’t proposing to raise the federal minimum wage. He isn’t talking about fixing the mess our schools are in due to No Child Left Behind’s draconian standards. He’s not talking about the needs of moms like the rest of us because the only mom he knows is you.

And you, Ann? You are not like us. You could learn what it’s like to be us but not at $500 per plate fundraisers. To learn about us you need to be in our communities, our kids’ schools, our workplaces. You need to see us for what we are. We would welcome you in to come see. I hope you take us up on that.

Come learn about us, Ann. And then teach your husband.

Sincerely,

Mom-in-a-Million.

I’m taking upon myself to compile a (partial) list of the kinds of economic issues women consider every day. If there is anyone out there with the brains and balls to help solve any of these issues – most of which hinge on job security – they are welcome to step up and get to solving. Everyone else? Should shut up until they can be part of the solution.

1. Paying for housing
2. Paying for childcare
3. Paying for gas
4. Paying for car insurance
5. Paying for the car
6. Paying for food
7. Paying for utilities
8. Paying for medical care
9. How to pay for medical care if insurance is inadequate
10. How to pay for insurance if employer-based coverage vanishes
11. Paying for clothing and shoes
12. Paying for any special services kids need
13. Paying off old student loans
14. Paying off credit card debt
15. Contributing to all the fund-raisers at the kids’ schools to help make up for cuts to school budgets
16. Paying for extracurricular programs for the kids
17. Paying for support services for aging parents
18. Paying for travel costs to visit aging parents
19. Paying for something fun for the family to do every once in a while
20. Paying for birthday and holiday gifts
21. Paying for repairs around the house or on the car
22. Saving for retirement
23. Saving for the kids’ schooling
24. Saving for emergencies
25. How to pay for anything at all if one earner in the family loses their job

So. Newt. This is it, huh? Your last stand. You’re probably not ever going to run for office again so these last weeks of  the primary race are your final opportunity to capture this kind of national spotlight.

What are you going to do with it?

Now, you can count me solidly among your detractors because I have a shitload of serious misgivings about you, starting with that whole adherence to supply-side doctrine that you should be too smart to believe. I mean, really, Newt. If supply side policies were going to work, wouldn’t they have by now? You claim to be a history professor. Have you ever studied a period of history where aggregating wealth among producers at the expense of consumers built a solid economic machine? Hmmmm? I also think you’re arrogant, reckless, and incapable of building strong, lasting coalitions, even among your allies. I mean, let’s face it. None of your erstwhile friends in the House are jumping up and down shouting their support for you, are they? They sure aren’t. That’s telling. Especially since you got drummed out of politics for personal pecadillos, not political failure. You should have some friends left. Where are they?

Actually, you’re probably capable of being one of the best politicians in history if you didn’t keep tripping over your ego. You know how to frame debate to bring public sympathy to your side, you know how to muscle legislation through Congress, and you know how to make deals with other politicians. You engineered an historic majority change-over in Congress back in the day. You have political chops and you can work the system.

A system that sucks. You know it sucks. You know elections are all about the money. You hinted at it recently when it was revealed that your campaign is in the red by some $4.5 million and you were quoted as saying that your staff was trying to spend like Romney without the actual war chest to do that.

I have no doubt that you think you’re a better politician and Romney. Hell, I think you’re a better politician than Romney. But we both know Romney’s money is going to win the day. Doesn’t that chap your ass?

Newt, you have maybe one or two more primaries left before you have to drop out of this race. Why not make your exit a blaze of glory? There was a time that you styled yourself as a reformer. You can still work for that. You can stand up and say “This system with the SuperPACS and unlimited spending and multi-year campaigns is bullshit. It’s limiting the power of the individual vote and placing power, instead, in the hands of the wealthiest, who buy their hand-selected candidates before average voters even get a chance to consider the election. Americans are getting screwed and it’s time to change things so that government is for the people, of the people, and by the people again.”

C’mon Newt. Do it! You’d capture the news cycle for days! You could be the spark that build a fire of real campaign reform! You could change American politics forever! Because you know, you KNOW, that it isn’t about the Right versus the Left anymore. It’s about the Money. No one is ever going to win on the policy front because the Money dominates the whole system.

Pull down the curtain, Newt. Show us the greedy little Money-Man running the show. You can do it. You have nothing to lose and Americans have everything to gain.

Sincerely,

An Average Voter