To the Editor:

I met Representative Leo Ryan once. A fiercely independent politician determined to pursue constituents’ complaints, he lived to help those who couldn’t help themselves. A teacher, he took a job in a ghetto school to gain insight into the Watts Riots. While serving on a prison reform committee, he got himself locked up at Folsom Prison. He created the guardian ad litem system and was responsible for admitting the first female into the Air Force Academy. Leo paid a condolence call on a friend whose son was found dead in 1976.

The Dad blamed Jim Jones’s cult. November 1978 Leo flew to Guyana where he gathered disciples begging to escape.  Ambushed and shot to death at the airport by the Peoples Temple assassins, Ryan got 26 defectors home and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Ryan personified a representative democracy and I am proud to claim him as a Democrat. You know what Leo Ryan didn’t do? Beg for money.

Today nobody thinks a politician will risk his life to save theirs. Money is the only story and everybody knows it. Like Trump, it’s been “normalized”. The next campaign begins 15 minutes after the last one ended. Tammy hates Vets came out years before the midterms. That was countered by Tammy loves Vets and she’s got a telenovela opioid ad playing nonstop. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said “Beware of opioid commercials”.

Americans see the reality of the corruption of money in politics with greater acumen than the Supreme Court.  Get this: Justice Kennedy claimed the internet would make transparency a non-issue.  Pity the nation whose breath is money. The preferences of the voters have zero impact on public policy. Lawmakers respond to money.  The starving woman with a sweet tooth laments that she can’t bake a cake because she doesn’t have any ounces. She has butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just doesn’t have any ounces.

Republicans, the NRA, Fox and Putin have their dirty money pipeline and their voters have their hate, furnished by the aforementioned, to keep their minds off who’s picking their pockets. Elect pro reform Democrats who will make money in politics a priority, and dismantle Citizens United. Then we will have representatives who truly are civil servants, like Leo Ryan.

Jody Hurrish
Stevens Point