I just did the weirdest thing. I sent a message to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.
This is out of character and it makes me wonder – how else will I be spurred to take action if things continue as they’re going.
The message is short and there is much more I could have said, but here it is in its brief glory. My message to the President:
I’m horrified to hear you tout budget cuts as the right move. You won us over with your insistence on smart, people-supporting spending. Oh, and that whole anti-war thing. I’ve been uncomfortable with your actions around the wars and now I feel attacked here at home with your new budget. Tax and spend, baby – it’s the only way to win us back. Spread the wealth or lose us completely.
…I think that budget cuts are not only in order, but in a very big way! If Obama was a fraction of the man he told us he was he’d cut the military budget after ending ALL of our wars, legalize and tax ALL of the drugs that he’s personally done and divert all of those monies back to education, health, infrastructure and alternative energies. Maybe then he might just earn that Nobel prize he stole.
…But, He already knows that he sold us out to the big banks and the generals, if he didn’t he wouldn’t be where he is today. Fuck that dude.
I agree with everything you just said, but letting the conversation be framed as “budget cuts” plays into the Republican language around spending=bad and tax=bad. If we had two parties, the Democrats would have owned the language of tax and spend. They would have concentrated on refusing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and on making corporate taxes represent a fair portion of their income. (Which, by the way, would constitute a natural cap on income in corporations, since they wouldn’t get the tax-evasion benefit of paying ridiculous salaries and bonuses.)
Were we really looking at two parties, they would have turned our wars into humanitarian support efforts, decriminalized drugs, reversed the trend for putting sensitive state functions in the hands of private corporations (prisons, military support, utilities, etc, etc), and invested in education that was accountable to the government/people who pay for it.
What we would not have done? Allowed the Republicans to convince a fragile nation that making the class war worse will make their empty pockets bulge with cash. Given in to the rhetoric of spending cuts, and left the big military immune.
Cutting spending that is harmful – yes. Making it all about the cuts – no. Obama was so good in the debates. He never agreed that cuts were, in and of themselves, good. He focused on getting the most improvement in quality of life for our spending, and that’s what I’m angry about. Quality of life is sinking in this country. And he just hacked another hole in the hull.
James U R right!!!!
Same BS different Color!