No atheists in Congress and religion and capitalism killed people

Peter Stark, the only avowed atheist in Congress, lost his bid for re-election. Ironically, another progressive beat him, and beat him in part by attacking Stark's vote against re-affirming "One Nation, under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance. This shouldn't be in the Pledge of course, because it is the government taking a position on religion. The government should be neutral. The man who beat Stark, Eric Swalwell, stated that Stark doesn't represent the views of the people of that congressional district by his vote.

Maybe, maybe not but atheists as a whole are way under represented in the halls of Congress. About 5% of Americans are either atheist, agnostics, humanists or freethinkers. More so would state they don't believe in a god. But not one member is an atheist? We need more members of Congress who aren't beholden to religious dogma and superstitions at all. Members who want to ensure that we continue to be the secular Enlightenment based republic that the Founders gave us.

There is a new member of Congress from Arizona named Krysten Sinema, who though she says she is secular, denies being an atheist. Maybe she is or maybe she isn't, but it is sad that politicans must run away from that title.

A woman from India named Savita Halappanavar died because of Ireland's ban on abortions. Even though it was obvious that her life was in severe jeopardy, the hospital (not a Catholic one by the way) refused to give her an abortion. She died of blood poisoning. This is what happens when religion dominates public policy, which it still does to a certain extent in Ireland.

In Bangladesh 112 garment workers died because of laizze fair capitalism. Or outsourcing. Whatever you want to call it. See, this nation, which exports a whole heck of a lot of clothing to the U.S., doesn't have much in safety standards. See, this is the ideal of multi-national corporations that want to export our manufacturing base to nations like this.

This factory is owned by Tuba Group, which makes prodcuts for Wal Mart, the company most responsible for the lost of good paying manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and a company that wanted the government to effectively ban the free speech rights of Wal Mart employee strikers. Anyway, $20 billion is earned by that nation in the making of garments, what pittance do the workers get of it, and what chunk do the rich factory owners (who own these horrible unsafe factories) get?