COVID-19 has magnified U.S. health inequities and misplaced economic priorities, aggravated by decades of neo-liberal policy that has transferred wealth upward and squeezed working people with flat wages and reduced benefits. Continued austerity policy that prioritizes the corporate bottom line deprives a majority of people from a floor of protections, including health care access, sick pay, and minimum maintenance. Simultaneously, wealthy elites continue to raid the US Treasury – exploiting the crisis to siphon tens of billions of dollars in additional tax breaks and deregulation from the CARES Act alone.
While rejecting corporate money and advocating policy for people, like Medicare for All and The Green New Deal for an energy-efficient infrastructure, Andrew Romanoff has been the clear US Senate preference of Colorado Democratic voters throughout caucuses to the state convention.
Once again, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations (recently almost $1.5 million from health-care and fossil fuel industry lobbyists) is placing its foot on the scale for their favorite corporate candidate, contributing over $354,000 to John Hickenlooper, who does corporate bidding by strongly opposing Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Hickenlooper qualified for the ballot by paying a political firm almost $423,000 for signature gathering. US politics of the highest bidder serves crony capitalists who purchase candidates and policy. Time to change the scenario – and elect candidates like Andrew Romanoff, not beholden to the corporate bottom line.
View OpenSecrets.org, revealing corporate money influence on candidates, trumping the people’s interests.
Michele Swenson
Denver, CO