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As Portman steps aside, I keep thinking about my tweet thread about Manchester, a small town on the Ohio River that is struggling.

It’s a symbol of the failed GOP agenda of the past generation

Manchester is in Ohio’s 2nd District, where Portman served for 12 years

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If anyone knew the challenges of Manchester, it would be Senator Portman, who represented it all that time.

Then he served as Senator for another 12 years.

No one in Ohio, and few in DC, had more influence, more sway, in the majority, than Senator Portman.

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And in that time, towns like Manchester voted for Portman again and again and again

And what did they get from Portman and the GOP?

Tax cuts for the best off, attacks on health care, precious little infrastructure, attacks on new ideas to lift new jobs (Ie. green jobs).

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Supports for big businesses and monopolies that are crushing small towns. Etc.

And an Ohio Republican Party and legislature that has attacked local government for years, both their autonomy as well as their funding.

Towns like Manchester needed so much. They got nothing.

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As a result, after 24 years of representation from as connected a Congressman or Senator as any town can have in America, Manchester’s Main Street looks like this today...

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There is little understanding within Australian society of the requirement to and legitimacy of adopting special measures.


Government policy does not acknowledge the applicability to Indigenous people of the right to self-determination. In 1997 the cruel Howard government actively rejected self- determination as the basis of Indigenous policy.

Key reports which make recommendations for redressing Indigenous disadvantage, including the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and Bringing them home, .....

the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, have ’NOT’  been fully implemented.

Many recommendations, particularly those concerning the application of the principle of self-determination, have been actively rejected.