I Know What Maverick Does Not Mean

BY BRENDAN CONNOLLY

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

I'm not sure of the exact definition of maverick. Is it someone who doesn't kneel, or grovel, to peer pressure? Someone who enacts on what they say they will. Maybe, it's someone, whose sheer dedication to the principles and rights of freedom and happiness, imbued to us by men of action, that they stand out in history.

Even if they don't want to.

I've, and I imagine you have as well, heard John McCain call himself a maverick. The Original Maverick. Apparently, now, there are spin-offs, his running mate, Sarah Penal (R-AK), is the Alaskan Maverick. A soccer, I mean, hockey mom with an inherent driving force within her to shake things up. Maybe that's a maverick, someone who goes for the gusto, so to say, against the big guys.

The Establishment. That's what jugular John McCain, Maverick, will be sinking his canines into. Pork barrel spending and governmental programs will bleed out, and as he says, back into our pockets.

The Establishment. Fat Cats. Monocled blue-bloods. That's who John McCain, Maverick, is gunning for.

I find it slightly ironic, though, considering John McCain, Maverick, belongs to a rubber-stamping Republican party, who from 2000-2006 held the House of Representatives, the Senate, and that big easy chair John McCain, Maverick, has his hopes set on. Before 2000, Congress was controlled by the Republican Party that he, John McCain, Maverick, was and still is a part of for at least a decade prior.

That's like, sixteen years. For most of you, I imagine, that's a good portion of your life. To me, that sounds like the Establishment.

To be fair, Lincoln was the first Republican president, and to some, the best ever. Did you know that their second president, Andrew Johnson was impeached? By them? The Republicans. Because he had his own ideas that conflicted with theirs.

Some could call that a maverick. Perhaps a maverick is someone whose ideas could have them removed from their position. Maybe John McCain, Maverick, has been putting together some sort of revolutionary, but of course conservative, agenda.

John McCain, Maverick, wants to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent. Tax cuts that prompted 450 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize Laurents, to write a letter to President Bush not to sign them into law. The Congressional Budget Office, a federal agency, said it increased deficits by 60 billion dollars in 2003. They estimate, this year, that number has risen to 340 billion dollars.

John McCain, Maverick, wants to make the Alternative Minimum tax permanent. In 2006 the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate said it was the single most serious problem with the tax code. The Congressional Budget Office, huh them again, said by 2010 one in five people will qualify, or have to pay, for this. This grows amongst married people and, in essence, punishes people for having children and living in higher taxing states( it removes the deductibility of state and local taxes).

John McCain, Maverick, would like to Reduce Corporate tax. You know he, John McCain, Maverick, plans on cutting taxes for large corporation. The same corporations who employ us, pay us, and then get their money back when we need, or want, to purchase just about anything.

John McCain, Maverick, would like to limit the availability of abortion rights. And only grant them in such cases as rape, incest, or if there is a risk for the mother.

John McCain, Maverick, wants to start drilling in the ANWR Province, the Outer Continental Shelf, and begin extraction, and development of oil shale, which currently resides, in most part, around Wyoming and Montana. I could only assume when John McCain, Maverick, included Theodore Roosevelt, the first president to set aside land for it's beauty and not it's profitable resources, in his "Our Party produced..." portion of his acceptance speech at the RNC, he could only assume that Teddy had set aside the land for him, John McCain, Maverick, to dig up.

to be honest, i find politics quite repugnant. But i also understand the desperate hope of someone who is looking for salvation. Looking for a shining example of stoic determination. Looking for a maverick.

But John McCain is a self-described maverick. He is marketed as such. As someone who constantly follows their own way. But a majority of his votes conflate with conservative and Christian fundamentalist views on values. In a democracy the majority rules.

John McCain, self-described Maverick, accepted the endorsement of the worst American President, so far. There are pictures of him and Bush hugging, a maverick embracing an aloof tyrant. And it's no secret John McCain, marketed Maverick, does not like President Bush. But we all understand the practice of greasing wheels. The same old song and dance, so we can get where we want to be.

Mavericks do not and should not.

Especially when Mr. Maverick spent 7 years in a prison camp, while their new buddy's father got them, that would Bush, in the champagne squad of the armed forces. And while Mr. Maverick was being tortured and interrogated, the man whose mantle he will inherit, Bush again, went AWOL.

A maverick would not shake this man's hand.

When you sacrifice your beliefs and principles for a gain or a desire, that's called selling out. That's kneeling and groveling, asking for more from a mud-coated boot heel.

I may or may not know the exact definition of maverick, but I know what the definition isn't.