Author: normboyd40

Following in italics is a statement released by Congressional candidate Benjamin Lodmell (AL-1)

This is the Democrat running against incumbent Jo Bonner. Damn, he deserves to win! This is a decent caring family man who is dead right on all the most important issues – not as rabidly liberal as I am, but then someone like me could never get elected to anything in Alabama. I hope people reading this will be moved to show some support for Lodmell.

MOBILE, November 26, 2007 – Mobile resident Ben Lodmell, co-founder and executive director of World Children’s Relief & Volunteer Organization, 501c3, today announced the opening of the first public library built by the charity in Les Cayes, a remote rural area in the southwestern region of Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere.

“The library is a simple building, which will open December 1, took 18 months to build at a cost of $35,000, using local volunteer labor and donated books,” Lodmell said.

In addition to attending the library’s opening ceremony, Lodmell said he would be bringing a team of volunteer dentists and other health care professionals to Les Cayes where they will spend a week providing about $50,000 in free dental services at the Community Center created by the charity to help feed neighborhood children.

“Since its start-up in 2002, WCR has either built or rehabilitated 16 schools in some of the most remote and destitute areas in the world,” Lodmell said, “including nine in Haiti. We have also trained 173 teachers who serve as rural ‘trainers of trainers’ and helped sponsor the education of about 4,500 children in sub-Saharan Africa as well as provided more than 10,000 school uniforms.  Our food programs feed nearly 1,000 children a day and those programs are growing.  I can’t even count all the healthcare missions.” The total cost has been about $1,500,000 from public contributions.

World Children’s Relief is a non-profit charity founded by the Lodmell family. Its purpose is to foster justice, dignity and social development among the world’s neediest children. “Our goal is to give real hope through education to at least some of the 130 million children in the world who have never seen the inside of a school by establishing a network of them wherever the need is greatest,” Lodmell said.

I am so honored.  I got a letter from Congressman Josiah Bonner, the Alabama First District’s version of Bush-puppet. In it he explained to me that voting for or against S-CHIP isn’t really a vote for or against children.  No, it is, according to the patented convoluted Republican line “a part of an ongoing conversation on the expansion of government-controlled health care and the value of the free market”.

Boy! I sure feel better about it now.  It isn’t about children. It’s about a “conversation”. And, of course, Alabama’s and America’s children and families will have time to enjoy this “conversation” while sitting in hospital emergency rooms across the country, waiting for non-emergency care that would have been covered by the S-CHIP program the Republicans killed.

But, seriously folks, how long will American voters let them get away with just plain bald faced lying about their motives? Government-controlled health care? Didn’t I hear somewhere that S-CHIP benefits are provided through private insurance companies and that private insurers back this bill consistently?  Didn’t someone mention that it is funded by an increase on the most deadly legal product available to our citizens- tobacco – and that a majority of smokers back this bill?

Bonner, in his letter, goes on to say “S-CHIP should continue as it was designed ten years ago-for children of low-income families, not adults, illegal immigrants, or wealthier families.” Well, okay.  That is probably why the bill was written by Democrats and some good, honest Republican mavericks to support children of low-income families, not adults, illegal immigrants or wealthier families. D’ya think? 

Hey, Jo.  I haven’t been following your career from the beginning, but what I hear is pretty interesting.  I hear you were not a rich man when you ran for Congress but, with the help of some really good, honest folks, like Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and the tobacco companies, you got elected.  I also hear that you are now worth several million dollars.  And I know that, as a member of Congress, you and your family have really good health care coverage. Why, with all this going for you, are you so reluctant to help the people who elected you to your gravy train. 

Oh, and Josiah.  One more quote from your letter.  “Additionally, I have co-sponsored two bills?which would reauthorize and extend S-CHIP for another ten years while accomplishing many of the goals the majority’s bill failed to reach”. Please, Sir.  Doesn’t your rapidly growing nose get in the way of your typing? Your bills wouldn’t have even covered the children currently protected and certainly wouldn’t expand coverage to the other children who are without health care.  No Sir.  Your problem is you don’t seem to regognize that we are talking about flesh and blood children here, not just pawns in the cruel Republican chess game.  You are still locked into Karl Rove’s dream of a one party nation.  It is a dream you are helping to advance, Sir, but it may not be the party you had in mind.  Everybody loves children, at least every real American I know. Lies and deceit can only carry Bush and his clones so far and the end of the road is quite visible from where you are standing.

Benjamin Lodmell will be happy to take over your Congressional seat and HE will serve the people, not the GOP and the tobacco companies.