Everybody keeps acting like politicians on the national level are somehow going to attempt to work for the best interests of this country, even though they may be mis-guided in their actions. As far as I'm concerned, that's just some nice fairy tale we the people all tell one another so we don't have to recognize what a mess our democracy has become.
Walrus's comments on the international trade situation are but one example. The US stance on trade and outsourcing has hurt the economy of this country, no two ways about it. People speak glibly of "globalization." Well and good - for the big, international corporations. For the rest of us globilization means pulling the US standard of living down toward that of the third world. In my town I have seen good paying job after good paying job being sent overseas. Even MCI has outsourced its call center to Mexico. I have a friend who worked for them and recently got laid off because MCI moved its operations out of the country. I have another friend who worked in the electronics manufacturing industry. He, too, lost his job when the company moved its operations to somewhere in east Asia. He is now working another job that pays about 2/3's of his old salary. The politicians who fostered a climate allowing corporations to do this were not acting for the good of the country, but rather the good of the company.
The real wage of the average American worker has steadily gone down while expenses for things like medical care and insurance have increased. More and more Americans are now without health insurance which means without medical care. Education was once the great equalizer in this country. Each child had access to the same quality of education, and, thus, each child had the same ability to make something of himself if he put forth enough effort. Now the disparity in our public schools is astounding. In poor neighborhoods children are crammed into classroms with 40 kids or more for each teacher. Libraries in these schools lack books and computers. The well-to-do send their kids to private schools with low student to teacher ratios and excellent learning facilities. With all the best effort in the world, which child will score higher on his SAT's? The one from the inner city school or the one from the elite private school? Don't all raise your hands at once.
If Bush is re-elected 600,000 families, consisting of about one million low income elderly and disabled people will be put out on the streets or in homeless shelters or institutionalized by 2009 thanks to cuts in the housing voucher program. That figure sounds like extremist polemic. It is so high as to be unbelievable, yet it is true. These figures come form the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Here:
http://www.cbpp.org/housingvoucher.htm#Appropriations
and here:
http://www.centeronbudget.org/2-12-04hous.htm
The savings in 2005 through 2009 from all of the domestic discretionary cuts combined would be substantially less than the cost in those years of the income tax cuts just for the one percent of households with the highest incomes. In other words, these cuts are NOT about fiscal responsibility - we are spending 25 BILLION on Homeland Security alone and 200 BILLION on the war in Iraq. These cuts in housing assistance are about social policy, plain and simple. They are aimed at that portion of the population least able to fight back - the permanently disabled and the elderly living on fixed incomes.
Welcome to the America of George W. Bush Jr.
If he is re-elected I will become a person with utterly nothing left to loose.
OK, now it's jump all over Marichiko time. Go ahead, I'm used to it.