by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Back sometime during Barack Obama's earliest days in the White House and while I was working as a social worker at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, a young sergeant in our office and her husband invited me to an immigration rally. It was an evening affair, outdoors, and though I do not remember the exact nature of the event, it was focused on young, college-aged immigrants and was probably one of the precursors to the "Dreamers" program. I remember there were two chartered buses at the event, and at the conclusion of the speeches, young people boarded the buses and headed out toward Washington, DC, with other stops planned along the way.
The friend who invited me to the rally was doing graduate study in social work at Arizona State University, and she wanted me to see one of her professors, a young woman named Dr. Krysten Sinema. Sinema was the main speaker at the evening rally. I remember her as being a dynamo on that outdoor stage, parading back and forth and extolling the crowd to get fired up and politically active on the subject of legalizing immigrants who were already living, working, and going to school in the United States.
But a few years later Professor Sinema became Congresswoman Sinema, and a few years after that she fought her way into the United States Senate. That dynamo, Krysten Sinema, was really going places - or so we thought!
Once Dr. Sinema completed her transformation into Senator Sinema she seems to have quickly forgotten the principles that fueled her initial launch into the political sphere. Now that she is firmly established in the Senate, the still young legislator seems to be totally focused on meeting her own needs rather than those of the folks back home. In less than two years, the novice senator has refocused her energies and is now more at home fundraising than she is worrying about how government programs could serve the folks back in Apache Flats.
Krysten Sinema has become one of a pair of conservative Democrats in the Senate who appear to be sabotaging President Biden's effort's to rebuild America's basic infrastructure and its human infrastructure. She and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia hold outsized portions of political leverage in the evenly divided Senate, and neither is bashful about using that power to meet their own personal needs.
Sinema, who was once a proponent of affordable medical care is now fighting efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies, a situation which makes drugs in the United States cost much more than those same drugs do in foreign markets. Coincidentally, Sinema has also received somewhere north of half a million dollars in campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies and PACs and people associated with pharmaceutical companies. Some in the industry have even bragged that she is one of their "blockers" in Congress, people whose job it is to stall certain pieces of legislation for the benefit of their corporate donors.
Aside from wanting to torpedo any legislation that places limits on the profits of Big Pharma, Senator Sinema is being cagey with what it would take for her to get on board with Biden's infrastructure package. She had said that she is not interested in meeting with House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Schumer, and it is rumored that she is avoiding or not taking calls from the White House.
Congress creatures traditionally rush home during work breaks to meet with constituents and fundraise. It was recently discovered, almost by accident, that during this summer's August recess, Senator Sinema went to the beautiful Sonoma Valley of California where she participated in a paid internship at Three Sticks, one of the area's well known wineries. A paid internship. Someone who needed the money and had a true interest in working in a winery had to stand back so that Krysten could spend a few days enjoying her hobby.
Recently the Senate has again been adjourned for a few days, and the New York Times is reporting that Sinema has been in Europe - London and Paris - fundraising. She has reportedly been working on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), an organization that works primarily to keep incumbents in office, and her office has declined to say whether she is also in Europe seeking campaign donations for herself. France, of course, is home to some of the world's best wines, and the budding wine expert will undoubtedly taste a few - just for the educational value of the experience, of course.
I no longer live, nor do I vote, in Arizona, but Kyrsten Sinema's shameless efforts to sell her integrity and political favors to the highest bidders will eventually impact the width and depth of the potholes in the road in front of my house, and her support of Big Pharma gets into my pocket every time I have a prescription filled - so I feel that I have some rights to fuss - at least a little.
I am disappointed in Kyrsten Sinema, but my friends who still live and vote in Arizona ought to be mad as hell and spitting cactus needles at her shenanigans! $enator $inema had best be stuffing her pockets to beat hell, because this ex-Arizonan senses that her gravy train is fixing to derail!
Maybe then Krsyten Sinema will wind up finally worrying about the good people of Apache Flats - when her circumstances force her to live there!
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