I'm told the President has a very difficult job, I should give him a break and not speak up when I see our focus misplaced on the wrong national priorities. He is dealing with a obstructionist and irrational Republican minority after all so he must be "pragmatic". He said he would not yield to their blackmailing tactics they used to hold the nations working people hostage over the debt ceiling last year, and not extend the Bush Tax Cuts to the richest 2% of Americans ever again. He said "we have to break them of that habit right now". You all saw the video on television just as I did. He said during his campaign to be re-elected that the poor, the elderly and most vulnerable should not be asked to sacrifice more so people like him who never asked for a tax cut and don't need one can keep it. So now we should accept that those were only words in a campaign, and now he must be "pragmatic"?
We all know he has a horrible tough job that's not the point. I've worked my hardest for four plus years every day to hold the pro big business lobby occupying the Congress called the GOP accountable, and the point is they are not a party that is bargaining or negotiating in good faith with us. They have been taken over by Grover Norquist anti-government extremists. How extreme? When asked for money to help the victims of Sandy they demand offsetting cuts to the poor?
This GOP is intent on making the working people of America become like a 3rd world country working at slave wages so the people who fund their campaigns can continue dismantling the Federal Government so they can further enrich the rich. These new brand of Republicans far from my fathers brand of Republicans, voted three times to risk our Seniors health insurance with Wall Street in a risky voucher plan that America rejected in re-electing the President. Most of America cares about our promise to them, to our children and their future. But these Republican extremists care about Corporations and quarterly profits and tax cuts for the rich more than any other priority!
We must have a President and Congress that Fights during the negotiation as hard as he did during his re-election campaign. When he said the poor, the sick and the elderly did not create our financial problems and solving it should not be done on their backs, millions of us stood in line for up to 10 hours to vote to re-elect him to the White House!
When during his campaign he asked "Why should we return to the same failed policies that got us into this situation in the first place", millions of us knocked doors, made phone calls and donated money to re-elect him because we agreed the answer is We Should Not! We should not return to those same disastrous policies of cutting programs to help the most vulnerable to pay for continued tax cuts for the very rich and powerful!
Some of my friends ask me to not be so hard on the President and instead only speak out about the Republicans. He has a hard job but he worked like hell to get it. He wants it. He's earned it. He fought to get the terrible job that he now has the burden to speak the brutal truth to all Americans in the same way he did when he campaigned for a second term.
The truth is Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit and if the deficit. If the reducing the deficit is the real purpose of this negotiation which I think it should not be, then Social Security should not be on the bargaining table at all.
Reducing the Deficit should not be the immediate goal of our budget, reducing poverty and suffering in our country should! Putting Americans back to work at jobs that provide a living wage and dignity, that should be our top priority! Creating the most broad based economic growth and prosperity possible, that should be our immediate goal and highest priority! Cutting life sustaining funds from our parents and grandparents, from the sick and disabled in convalescent homes via cuts to Medicaid, and cutting the tax contribution of people making millions of dollars even billions a year, that should be met with scorn, shame and derision not compromise.
Firstly the Deficit which was largely created by 2 immoral unnecessary and unfunded wars and Tax cuts to the Richest 2% which not only created No New Jobs but robbed us all from resources for our schools and cities, that Deficit IS NOT the great crisis of our current time. Not in this still very painful recession its not! It is Jobs, good paying American Jobs that is the Crisis! It is that 7 of every 10 new Jobs created next year will be at Poverty Wages! That there are people who are 30,40,50 years old who have been out of work for more than 2 years and may never be returned to the workforce. And those who do who previously made $50 to $100k a year will only find work at Half of that! That my friend is the Crisis in America! NOT the Deficit which is a phony crisis concocted by the Big Business Right wing to Attack the Social Safety Net so they can privatize it and hand it over to Wall Street Corporations!
We need politicians who will defend the American people and our children and not the status quo! We need this because too many have suffered and sacrificed too much for too long and the status quo is morally unacceptable!
That I should be silent while I think my President is not asking for enough investment to help the millions of suffering poor, working poor and seniors is frankly unacceptable to me. I will not. We should be asking for new tax brackets on people earning over 1 million, 10 million and 100 million dollars a year. We should eliminate the carried interest deduction and tax Capital Gains the same as income from labor!
Back during the great financial boom of the Clinton era, the President spoke of building a "Bridge to the 21st Century". President Clinton hand in hand with Vice President Gore came out on stage to the song, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, it will soon be here" and I cheered and we all believed in a town called Hope!
He raised taxes on the well to do and invested in education and technology and created 22 Million good American jobs! Well, here we are! After 12 years of Bush's job killing tax cuts to the rich and wars and millions of people out of work, we sit at the start of the 21st century, the future is here! What bridges is our President calling on us to build? Where is the bold transformative change he spoke about creating since his early days as a Senator in Illinois? This is his chance to lead us across a new bridge to a more economically just, equitable and sustainable America.
Mr. President it is your time just as Reverend Martin Luther King spoke out against the immorality of War and Poverty to face the American people and say Enough is Enough! It is the costly, bloody and immoral War Economy with its MASSIVE so called Defense Budget that is driving the deficit and robbing us of our young men and women and of our national treasure. As President Eisenhower said every dollar spent for a bomb, plane or bullet is one that isn't going to hiring more Teachers, building more schools, roads, bridges, and building our future. Have the courage and conviction to face down the Defense Industrial Complex and Wall Street Mr. President! Like President Lincoln free the people from the slavery of debt and poverty!
Rule number one must be help the suffering. It is not protect the rich or cut the deficit. What is the "deal" doing to help the suffering in this country, put people back to work, provide food for the millions of children going to bed hungry tonight? That is a Deficit of Moral Priorities and that is the true Deficit Crisis. I will stand up and tell the President and any people I have voted for to keep focus on the most important priorities and speak and fight for those priorities with the Very same vigor with which they did while campaigning for my vote. To do any less in the face of this level of terrible poverty and suffering, that would not be Pragmatic!
We all know he has a horrible tough job that's not the point. I've worked my hardest for four plus years every day to hold the pro big business lobby occupying the Congress called the GOP accountable, and the point is they are not a party that is bargaining or negotiating in good faith with us. They have been taken over by Grover Norquist anti-government extremists. How extreme? When asked for money to help the victims of Sandy they demand offsetting cuts to the poor?
This GOP is intent on making the working people of America become like a 3rd world country working at slave wages so the people who fund their campaigns can continue dismantling the Federal Government so they can further enrich the rich. These new brand of Republicans far from my fathers brand of Republicans, voted three times to risk our Seniors health insurance with Wall Street in a risky voucher plan that America rejected in re-electing the President. Most of America cares about our promise to them, to our children and their future. But these Republican extremists care about Corporations and quarterly profits and tax cuts for the rich more than any other priority!
We must have a President and Congress that Fights during the negotiation as hard as he did during his re-election campaign. When he said the poor, the sick and the elderly did not create our financial problems and solving it should not be done on their backs, millions of us stood in line for up to 10 hours to vote to re-elect him to the White House!
When during his campaign he asked "Why should we return to the same failed policies that got us into this situation in the first place", millions of us knocked doors, made phone calls and donated money to re-elect him because we agreed the answer is We Should Not! We should not return to those same disastrous policies of cutting programs to help the most vulnerable to pay for continued tax cuts for the very rich and powerful!
Some of my friends ask me to not be so hard on the President and instead only speak out about the Republicans. He has a hard job but he worked like hell to get it. He wants it. He's earned it. He fought to get the terrible job that he now has the burden to speak the brutal truth to all Americans in the same way he did when he campaigned for a second term.
The truth is Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit and if the deficit. If the reducing the deficit is the real purpose of this negotiation which I think it should not be, then Social Security should not be on the bargaining table at all.
Reducing the Deficit should not be the immediate goal of our budget, reducing poverty and suffering in our country should! Putting Americans back to work at jobs that provide a living wage and dignity, that should be our top priority! Creating the most broad based economic growth and prosperity possible, that should be our immediate goal and highest priority! Cutting life sustaining funds from our parents and grandparents, from the sick and disabled in convalescent homes via cuts to Medicaid, and cutting the tax contribution of people making millions of dollars even billions a year, that should be met with scorn, shame and derision not compromise.
Firstly the Deficit which was largely created by 2 immoral unnecessary and unfunded wars and Tax cuts to the Richest 2% which not only created No New Jobs but robbed us all from resources for our schools and cities, that Deficit IS NOT the great crisis of our current time. Not in this still very painful recession its not! It is Jobs, good paying American Jobs that is the Crisis! It is that 7 of every 10 new Jobs created next year will be at Poverty Wages! That there are people who are 30,40,50 years old who have been out of work for more than 2 years and may never be returned to the workforce. And those who do who previously made $50 to $100k a year will only find work at Half of that! That my friend is the Crisis in America! NOT the Deficit which is a phony crisis concocted by the Big Business Right wing to Attack the Social Safety Net so they can privatize it and hand it over to Wall Street Corporations!
We need politicians who will defend the American people and our children and not the status quo! We need this because too many have suffered and sacrificed too much for too long and the status quo is morally unacceptable!
That I should be silent while I think my President is not asking for enough investment to help the millions of suffering poor, working poor and seniors is frankly unacceptable to me. I will not. We should be asking for new tax brackets on people earning over 1 million, 10 million and 100 million dollars a year. We should eliminate the carried interest deduction and tax Capital Gains the same as income from labor!
Back during the great financial boom of the Clinton era, the President spoke of building a "Bridge to the 21st Century". President Clinton hand in hand with Vice President Gore came out on stage to the song, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, it will soon be here" and I cheered and we all believed in a town called Hope!
He raised taxes on the well to do and invested in education and technology and created 22 Million good American jobs! Well, here we are! After 12 years of Bush's job killing tax cuts to the rich and wars and millions of people out of work, we sit at the start of the 21st century, the future is here! What bridges is our President calling on us to build? Where is the bold transformative change he spoke about creating since his early days as a Senator in Illinois? This is his chance to lead us across a new bridge to a more economically just, equitable and sustainable America.
Mr. President it is your time just as Reverend Martin Luther King spoke out against the immorality of War and Poverty to face the American people and say Enough is Enough! It is the costly, bloody and immoral War Economy with its MASSIVE so called Defense Budget that is driving the deficit and robbing us of our young men and women and of our national treasure. As President Eisenhower said every dollar spent for a bomb, plane or bullet is one that isn't going to hiring more Teachers, building more schools, roads, bridges, and building our future. Have the courage and conviction to face down the Defense Industrial Complex and Wall Street Mr. President! Like President Lincoln free the people from the slavery of debt and poverty!
Rule number one must be help the suffering. It is not protect the rich or cut the deficit. What is the "deal" doing to help the suffering in this country, put people back to work, provide food for the millions of children going to bed hungry tonight? That is a Deficit of Moral Priorities and that is the true Deficit Crisis. I will stand up and tell the President and any people I have voted for to keep focus on the most important priorities and speak and fight for those priorities with the Very same vigor with which they did while campaigning for my vote. To do any less in the face of this level of terrible poverty and suffering, that would not be Pragmatic!