LETTER: Joe Manchin is exploiting America

Editor, Regsiter-Mail: Why did senators Manchin and Sinema promise McConnell, before Biden's inauguration, that they would NOT vote to abolish the filibuster? Because they are DINOs (Democrats in name only); in their next campaigns, both should run as Republican candidates. They are NOT centrists; they're paid-obstructionists!

Under the Trump regime, McConnell worked a carve-out of the filibuster to get Supreme Court justices confirmed; Dems need to do the same, or better yet abolish the last remnant of Jim Crow senate tactics, to pass federal voting protections to ensure liberty, equality and justice for all Americans, and to pass the Build Back Better Act to help bring our country into the 21st century by implementing necessary social and physical infrastructure, and climate-change initiatives.

Besides the entire GOP, two thorny obstacles hinder our path toward progressive change, namely: Manchin & Sinema. On Nov. 18, 2021, in an hours-long speech to stall a House vote on the 'BBB' social spending bill, House Minority 'ring-leader' Kevin McCarthy exhorted, "Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sharp as ever, shouted, "I did," another voice chimed in, "me too." Millions of us voted for Biden to be a transformational president, like FDR, but there are plenty of dark-money forces that seek to staunch his power, especially forces behind the right-wing donors and fossil fuel industries, from which Joe Manchin has been greatly enriched.

I urge you all to Google and read the Jan. 10 Rolling Stone article, written by Jeff Goodell, "Manchin's Coal Corruption Is So Much Worse Than You Know." It's long and gives damning evidence of Manchin's powerful, political roots in West Virginia, his longtime financial involvement with fossil fuel and the pharmaceutical industries, his ownership of coal mining operations, his smarmy political tactics, his greed and indifference to the welfare of West Virginians, who pay exorbitant rates for the energy that cooks the climate, in a state raped for coal, and most negatively affected by the opioid crises.

Manchin assumes his folksy manner with reporters, but he's an unethical, hardcore grifter. Manchin is the face of the fossil fuel confederacy, and their disinformation campaign to keep fooling the public, but coal is the new lost cause," though Manchin rakes in millions of dollars annually from the "confederacy." As Manchin worries aloud about Americans' sense of entitlement, while in D.C. he stays on his houseboat (or yacht) in Washington Marina and drives an Italian-made Maserati. Manchin is exploiting America and his swing vote position, "paradoxically controlling the trajectory of the climate-crises." — Trish Forsyth Voss, Galesburg

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: LETTER: Joe Manchin is exploiting America