Only one of literally millions of examples of Culberson’s cruelty toward children since the shutdown: HeadStart programs not only care for and educate the young, whilst giving full weight for the children– especially the ones who are not, were not and will not be educated and cared for like Culberson’s child via Cadillac means, but rather just plain, but meaningful supports, ESPECIALLY REGARDING NOURISHING FOOD. A huge percentage of HeadStart programs provide two nourishing meals for the children of the working and struggling poor.
As of Culberson’s Cruel Shutdown without regard for the vulnerable: here is the purposeful avalanche he started, knowing there are vulnerable persons who will be crushed in the rockfall: and this is a pitifully short list of the deleterious cascade compared to the actual [including Culberson & Co Sequestration which already gutted medical, and transportation services for little children in Head Start programs: Culberson’s attacks on children are many. Many many. ]:
–Parents brought their small children to HeadStart as usual this week.
–They were told the facilities were closed by the shutdown [Culberson led.]
–The parents were beside themselves about where/how to keep their children safe, having NO daycare, NO money for daycare, NO contacts for daycare for their little children.
–Many of the parents had to go to work, are barely making ends meet, and thus had to stay home to watch over their little ones.
–The parents’ bosses and companies they worked for, lost the work of many of their employees.
–Other employees, especially in service businesses, have to take up the sudden loss of manpower/womanpower.
–Suppliers and customers have to wait longer and longer to buy or be paid for lack of the chain of manpower being intact.
–Meanwhile, parents who have so little means are not only scrambling to figure out how to get childcare so they can work as they live on the margins of losing everything if they miss even one paycheck [and those of you, who like us from long ago remember what it was like to suddenly lose responsible daycare/school for one’s children will remember the terror is not too strong a word, of somehow at last minute finding safe and responsible people to watch over, how hard that was and still is.
–The parents too, are ANGRY. Angry at Culberson and others, ANGRY AT THOSE IN CONGRESS WHO DO NOT SPEAK UP for them, for vulnerable children, properly ANGRY that BIG GOVERNMENT via Culberson &Co reached into their lives and caused ONGOING mayhem… the GOP, the party that supposedly says ‘compassion’ and ‘keep government regulation out of other people’s business.’ The people so deeply affected SEE these slogans apparently only are meant for the well heeled clubby set, not the poor and struggling.
–The millions of parents across the US impacted by headstart shutdown engineered by Culberson &Co. will NOT be forgotten. Not ever. The millions of parents whose security regarding their children is so now destroyed, will NEVER FORGET this came from the GOP who instead of dealing with budget, tied the budget to another item some GOPers hold deep grudges about.
–And this: MORE THAN ANY OTHER ill effect from Culberson: The children of Headstart programs will no longer have their 2 nourishing meals per day. Growing children, whose brains and bodies need calcium, quality protein and other nutrition to grow well, to be able to concentrate, to be able to learn. Taking away those 10 meals a week from those who live in poverty… while Culberson&Co dine on your taxpayer dollars in the fine dining rooms on Capitol Hill… is miscreant, cruel beyond understanding. That the shutdowm also closed the WIT programs which provides food for indigent children and parents, is the equal travesty. No food from Headstart, no food from WIC. Basic, essential: food for human beings.
John Culberson is a Rep [r] from Texas who with pride, before, during and after the shutdown, stated when given the limelight, that he was ‘standing on his principle’ that “people be left alone” instead of unpinning his pet project from the okaying of the Federal Budget so all grants, supports, jobs paid for by our government, and the literally millions and millions of people [not in his district] would not suffer loss of jobs, access, and support.
His “principle” that “people be left alone” has come true. People outside his district are left standing emptyhanded and alone and already devastated. Culberson’s wish for the downfall of human beings, came true because of his ill stated desire.
Culberson, living at the grand layer of congressional welfare he lives at suffers in no way. Culberson’s ‘let them eat cake’ point of view while trying to destroy healthcare for the citizens of the US, many of whom are uninsured and underinsured for decades- that Culberson’s ‘standing on his principle’ is in spades causing more souls to be hurting and dying without intervention while Culberson enjoys his fabulous health care premiums, 72% of which are picked up by taxpayers who dont even know him, like him, or care about his grease…aye, there’s more than the ‘rub.’ There’s the laceration of decency toward struggling others who are not oneself.
There’s a saying in farming where I grew up, you reap what you sow. Culberson and his company have sown destruction for millions of persons in our country… and destruction for the GOP.
How the GOP can ever recover from allowing Culberson to rally against the citizens of the United States in ways deleterious to the citizens outside his own district, while he feasts like a gourmand, will remain to be seen. There are those who defend him, but there can be no defense for harming the innocent. For that would put Culberson in the camp with Timothy McVeigh. (though Culberson tried to make himself look faux heroic by misappropriating the real hero, Todd Beamer’s epithet “let’s roll,’ as Culberson’s rally cry this past week. Todd Beamer and other truly brave heroes tried to overtake the terrorists on the plane doomed to hit the ground in Pennsylvania woods on 9-11). When McVeigh was questioned about how could he harm the children dead and injured in the Murah building bombings. He nonchalantly said, ‘collateral damage.’ “Collateral damage and trying to fault the poor for being poor, or deserving of this mayhem is indefensible. That a huge proportion of those afffected by Headstart shutdowns are black, Latino, poor whites, does not go un-noticed.
Nor does the fact, most all parents affected are voting age.
Thereby another incredibly shortsighted impulsive move by Culberson for the poor GOP which once had far finer and TRUE principles.
CODA
the image is of the mouth of a lamprey eel that attaches itself to fish, sucking the guts out of them til dead. The GOP elephant which has such relationship with others, appears to have wandered off out of disgust.