McConnell is a corporation masquerading as a human being. He abuses voters' trust

McConnell is a corporation masquerading as a human being. He abuses voters' trust

In the late '60s, while working to press Congress for the enactment of the coal mine safety and “black lung” compensation laws, I saw firsthand the ravages of pneumoconiosis afflicting coal miners and the torn-up coal country of eastern Kentucky. Miners felt daily the brutish power of the absentee, under-taxed coal barons on their lives and their deprived communities. “King Coal” was the corporate state in Kentucky. Miners expected no protection from lawmakers in Frankfort or Washington, D.C.

What do the people of Kentucky expect of Sen. Mitch McConnell today? I am astonished by the reelections of McConnell — a corporation masquerading as a human being — enabling unbridled corporate power to exploit the health, safety and livelihoods of Kentuckians.

Most alarming is the unprecedented ways McConnell — the tyrant of the Senate — has half the Congress subordinating impoverishment and humane values to the supremacy of corporate commercial greed and power.

I have studied and interacted with many members of Congress. McConnell is the most brazen evil, cruel and powerful legislator in the last 50 years. His lack of empathy for the vulnerable and disadvantaged is stunning.

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Ultra wealthy himself, McConnell’s monetized mind, marinated with corporate campaign cash, believes whenever corporate demands conflict with people’s necessities, he should put Wall Street over Main Street. His cruelty is consistent. Why should he care about regular Kentuckians when a plurality of eligible voters have sent him back to D.C. six times? No matter is his relentless record of votes and positions that are anti-labor, anti-consumer, anti-environment. He even wants to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

McConnell must view bluegrass country as a paradise of impunity for his reckless abuses of voters’ trust. He unabashedly calls himself the “Grim Reaper” and proves it repeatedly.

He is Senator “NO” to the House-passed extension of the COVID-19-driven $600-a-week assistance for millions of lower-income workers. And he is blocking aid to desperate local authorities, schools, hospitals, small businesses and the Postal Service. He is Senator NO to increasing the frozen $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage. He is Senator NO to programs that transition to renewable energy because he is in total sync with his paymasters, the Koch brothers, and the fossil fuel industry that denies the crisis of horrendous climate disruptions.

Instead of using tax monies for repairing and modernizing America's infrastructure and creating good-paying jobs in every community, McConnell gave in 2017, with Trump, a massive $2 trillion tax cut for the ultra-rich and corporations. It so happens, tax escapees Trump and the Senate Majority leader benefited from this giveaway.

Related: Trump, McConnell promised to bring back coal. But Kentucky lost 2,700 jobs on their watch

Unfortunately, McConnell is Senator “YES” to insatiable demands of corporate profiteers:

Yes, to protecting sky-high drug prices, yes to huge billing fraud and abuse, yes to the corporate exploiters of student loan debtors;

Yes, to continual pay gaps between men and women, yes even for tax breaks to make it easier for corporations moving jobs to China and other communist or fascist dictatorships;

Yes, to massive corporate welfare, or what conservatives call crony capitalism, instead of, returning peoples tax dollars for the necessities of the people; and

Yes, to the wars of empire, starting with the criminal destruction of Iraq and expiration of nuclear arms reduction treaties, at the expense of spending those trillions back home for the benefit of the American people.

McConnell, comfortably embraced by the Congress’ socialized medicine, loses no sleep saying yes to a corporate-profit-glutted, wasteful corporatized health care industry whose denials, co-payments and exemptions are costing thousands of uninsured and insured American lives a year. He fought but failed to end Obamacare, pleased to consign another 22 million people to the dreaded, uninsured hell.

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Covering for all of Trump's massive law-breaking, self-enriching, chaotic quack-pitching COVID-19 misbehavior, McConnell prides himself for blocking a half-dozen election security and voter-protection bills passed by the House, some with bipartisan support. With the Trumpsters hyperactively suppressing the vote in swing states an unbothered McConnell remains silent about continuing Russian interference in our elections. Hence, his abhorred, deserved nickname “Moscow Mitch.”

McConnell’s back-of-the-hand to coal mine workers’ safety, survivors’ pensions and continuing black lung payments, mainly harms Kentucky, but his other aggressions against people in favor of big business affect the entire country. He bragged at an event in Owensboro that he and he alone decides what issues this Senate votes on.

McConnell is a majority of One. He and he alone has kept the Senate open for outrageous corporate subsidies, unsafe deregulation and confirming corporatist judges. On the other hand, he closed the Senate to the people, their needs and just treatment.

McConnell has the gall to campaign on “Kentucky Values?” Voters in Kentucky, with a little homework, or a factual memory of this Senatorial oligarch, shouldn't have difficulty in rejecting those claims. McConnell has gotten away with ferociously shredding Kentucky values for 36 years. He smugly expects six more years.

How can that be? This arch enforcer of corporate coercion, bullying innocent Americans and their posterity. How can that be?

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate. He is the co-author of "Wrecking America: How Trump's Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All."