It couldn't be clearer; the answer depends on who is elected this November.
If Republicans are returned to power, the Middle Class and the Poor will bear the entire bill. There no longer will be a middle class, nor will there be a consumer economy. This does not strike me as a path to prosperity for the vast majority of Americans who have to show up to work every day - if they're lucky enough to have a job. Seeing people starving in the streets will be a day-in-day-out occurrence for all of us.
Unless you expect to be a billionaire in the next twelve months with fairly great certainty, this plan WILL be a royal pain in your ass, as your company's customers dry up, because economic failure DOES trickle up.
Clearly, the history of the last century and the last three and a half years shows that Democrats and unions have done much to make middle-class life in these United States possible.
Democrats gave us:
*Social Security
*Medicare
*Medicaid
*Unemployment Compensation
*Public Education and schools
*The Medical Leave Act
*Equal rights regardless of race or sex
*Clean energy and the emerging green economy
Unions gave us:
*Child labor laws
*The 40-hour work week and overtime pay
*Weekends off
*Healthcare benefits
*Paid vacations
*Workplace safety rules
The question has been raised as to whether we are better off than we were four years ago. Perhaps it might be instructive to remember where we actually were four years ago:
*We were embroiled in TWO ground wars costing billions of dollars per week.
*The economy was losing over 800,000 jobs every month.
*The GLOBAL banking system was on the verge of utter collapse and George Bush was being forced to hand the banks $700 Billion dollars with no hope of it being ever repaid, all because of practices initiatef by AMERICAN Ivy-League business types running scams on Wall Street.
*The government was routinely disappearing people around the globe and committing torture on them.
*The banks were secretly taking $25 TRILLION from the Federal Reserve at nearly 0% interest in an additional under-the-table bailout.
*The banks were still almost completely un-regulated, as was Wall Street
*The US automobile industry was on the brink of total collapse.
*The housing industry was in total free-fall, having already gone over a cliff with no end in sight.
*Military spending was almost doubled from what it had been prior to George Bush taking office, despite all of the above, and not counting the cost of either war.
*Osama Bin Laden was still alive, on hiding, and hatching plots against the USA.
*Most of our foreign allies were thoroughly angered by our bullying, clumsy foreign policy, not to mention our financial mess eating the global economy.
*Renewable energy and jobs were about a third or less what they are now.
*Our roads and bridges were crumbling and falling into rivers during rush hour, with very little being done about it.
*The levees around New Orleans were still hopelessly under-par for the job.
*The federal agencies regulating offshore oil rigs where pencil-whipping the inspections and watching porn because they were drastically under-staffed and filled with cronies.
*US attorneys were being fired for not advancing politically-motivated prosecutions.
*Intelligence agents were under threat of being exposed in the midst of classified operations by their own government if their spouses said something the Executive office didn't like.
*The biggest veterans' hospital in the country was falling apart and it's staff falling down on the job.
*Your 20-something child was no longer eligible for health insurance on your work plan.
*Your 401K plan value was dropping like a rock.
*Restaurants and other service businesses were failing and closing daily; strip malls all over the country were being emptied and boarded up.
Would you really say any of the above are still true or worse, despite maximum Republican opposition to everything this President has attempted? With a straight face and no malice?
The Republicans want to return to the policies that put us THERE. Take a good, hard look at that list, and tell me you want that back.
Give this President another term and a Congress that WILL work with him, and give his policies a REAL chance.
All the best, if you work and vote for it,
Dan Stafford
Democratic Precinct Committeeman
York Township precinct 112
DuPage county, IL
http://york112dem.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment