I have long contended that Republicans are hazardous to your and your family’s health. That is much more than hyperbole. I am deadly serious and they are just plain deadly. Let’s explore.

In November of 1970 a warning label mandated by 1969 legislation began to appear on cigarette packs sold in America. By that time we had realized that smoking was hazardous to your health and felt it was prudent to warn smokers of the danger. For the fiftieth anniversary of the enabling legislation I am suggesting we mandate something similar for the November 2020 ballots. Namely, a warning that reads along the lines of: Voting for a Republican may prove hazardous to your health.

Last Friday there was another mass shooting in a high school resulting in several fatalities and casualties. The House has passed several bills aimed at regulating guns and in the process reducing mass shootings. They are all sitting on Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk as he refuses to bring them to the Senate floor for debate or votes. This has earned McConnell the new moniker of Massacre Mitch.

Likewise there is election protection legislation aimed at protecting the integrity of our elections passed by the House that McConnell refused to bring to the Senate floor. Vladimir Putin likes to interfere in American elections and approves of Mitch’s actions (as does Donald Trump). These actions have earned McConnell the moniker of Moscow Mitch. I contend that we are healthier if we have elections free from foreign interference and influence.

Under Republican Donald Trump there has been a plethora of pollution protection regulations all under the guise of being business friendly. One that strikes close to home is allowing utilities three more years to clean up coal ash dumps. The drinking water in my region was adversely affected by a coal ash spill from a Duke Energy facility into the Dan River on Sunday February 4, 2014. Wasn’t the former deadline of 2023 enough time? How many more people will become ill and/or die in those extra three years?

Can anyone name even one consumer or worker protection that has been enacted under the reign of Trump and McConnell? If consumers are getting ripped off and workers are getting paid less per actual hour worked that adversely affects their disposable income. If they have fewer discretionary disposable dollars health care and nutrition will suffer. If you sleep less, skip medicine, ignore the warning signals your body sends you and eat a lot of junk how can you reasonably expect better health outcomes? The answer is that you can’t.

Now there are signs that even sans warnings American voters are starting to wake up to the fact that Republicans pose a health hazard. This year Democratic Gubernatorial candidates won narrow victories in Kentucky and Louisiana. The Republican spin is that the wins were narrow (which they were) and that Republicans did very well down ballot. I’d have to get some final numbers (which are not yet available) and analyze them but initially gerrymandering comes to mind. You can gerrymander a district, but you can’t gerrymander a state. My home state of North Carolina comes to mind as a prime example. In recent House elections the vote is approximately 50-50; yet under Republican gerrymandered districts our House delegation is 10-3 Republican. That is more of a 77-23 split.

With the realization that you can’t gerrymander a state in mind I might be concerned if I were Republicans McConnell and Bill Cassidy running for reelection to the Senate in 2020 in Kentucky and Louisiana respectively.

The above are but a few examples; there are many more. I know there is zero chance of my proposal becoming reality but it is undeniable that today’s Republicans are hazardous to Americans health and a warning label would constitute prudent action.

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