Hi. I’m just one of those Walmart shoppers. I’m 70 and my wife, also a Walmart shopper, is a touch older than me. We are retired and live on a fixed income. That income consists of a modest pension and modest Social Security. We worked all our lives for this modest income in retirement, just so you know. We were never on welfare of any kind and I only collected unemployment benefits one time for a six-month period even though I could’ve used them at other times too. We pay taxes on our modest, fixed income, state and federal.
So that’s us in a nutshell except that we have a child with special needs who requires full-time attention.
I’m writing this because the other morning I went to Walmart and I wanted you to know about us Walmart shoppers. The light switch in our dining room broke and we needed a new light switch, the thing in the wall that turns the light on and off. On our modest income, reduced due to the taxes we pay, we can’t afford $150 for an electrician (or maybe more) and so even though I’d never changed a light switch before, I did it this time with my wife’s help.
At Walmart, the switch cost $2.94 and with sales tax, the total was a bit over $3.00. It took us two hours and a little aggravation (because I’m not really adept with my hands), but we got it done.
Personally, I was afraid of the electricity the whole time even though we switched off the circuit breaker. I would’ve much preferred to call an electrician, but being on a fixed income and of modest means, saving the hundred fifty dollars to better use it on food, or oil, or the electric bill, or things needed by our child, seemed much more important.
I am writing this is because I wanted you to know that you and your party no longer represent people like my wife and me. In fact, even though you so arrogantly claim that you represent “the American People,” my wife and I seriously doubt that claim. We believe, instead, that you have lost the support of the everyday, ordinary people like us, the people who are the American People. Furthermore, we believe that each and every day now you continue to lose the support of more and more of us. This is because as a group and as a “party” you are arrogant. Worse, you are misguided, directionless, and blinded by your arrogant belief that you actually speak for us.
So just a few more things for you to know.
First, my wife and I are independents for the most part. We are not and never were one-party-all-the-way people.
Second, our heritage and what demographics we fit into would probably surprise you. But I will say that we are Jewish, that my father, Big Red One in WWII, spent three and a half years in a Nazi POW camp, Stalag IIIB Furstenberg, to be specific, and we find your party’s support of Talib and Omar reprehensible. We also find that your Nazi-comparison rhetoric toward your political opposition is worse than disgusting. You, as individuals and as a party, should be ashamed of yourselves for what you’re saying in this regard.
Third, we live in one of those sanctuary states, as it were, the one represented by Elizabeth Warren, whom we would never vote for in any election. In the last several years, due to the great influx of illegal aliens here, my child was kicked off the free school-lunch direct certification program and the requirements for free lunch were changed such that my child is no longer eligible for school lunch.
In effect, then, my wife and I, from our modest fixed income must not only pay for our child’s lunch, again a child with multiple special needs, but we must pay for the lunches of children who would not be here in the first place if you had done your jobs in Congress all along. The free-lunch rolls have more than doubled in the last two years. How did you let this happen? Why must our child now be denied and yet we still have to pay for those who’ve only gotten here by your dereliction of duty and negligence?
Last, and worst of all, the services our child with special needs requires simply to negotiate a normal day have been cut. Here too the rolls of children with special needs have mushroomed far more than the birth-rate percentage statistics suggest they should have. Our taxes have gone up, more money was allocated, but with the great influx of children you allowed here by neglecting your duties in Congress, the net services per child have dramatically decreased. This is unconscionable, and you are directly responsible.
I suppose that since most of you are multi-millionaires these dramatic effects upon the people of modest means who have to shop at Walmart mean very little to you personally. And that is why, dear people, I am writing this, to remind you of who we Walmart people are and how so many of us feel that you are not only misguided and have lost your way, but that you no longer represent our interests and thus have also lost our votes.
