What then?
By
-
To the editor:
OK. President Obama has not single-handedly stopped the free fall of the economy and brought civility back to Washington. Most Americans are more than a little disappointed about that and the ones who get their marching orders from right wing talk radio and Fox News are working up the equivalent of a political lynch mob to dispense political justice upon him for being solely responsible for our economic woes and lack of civility in D.C. and, with the constant encouragement from corporate media, the ranks of people willing to go along are growing.
If you have already joined the ranks angry masses ironically demanding an end to attempting to change things in Washington and an end to attempts to prevent another great depression you might as well stop reading now. For the rest of you, I have a question. When we get rid of about the only person who has attempted to bring civility back to D.C. and work across the aisle to solve the problems facing the country, put the country back in the hands of people dedicated to not only restoring conditions that lead to the great depression but altering the constitution and putting in place a court system that will not allow another new deal to pull the country out of depression and lay the groundwork for a resurgence of the middle class, WHAT THEN?
Since Ronald Reagan, you have been inundated with the same basic message pretty much 24/7. Government is the problem, not the solution and you will be better off with government off everyones backs, especially backs of big business and Wall Street. Do away with all the rules and regulations that are holding corporations and lower tax rates on the "Job Creators" so that they can rake in profits and they will hire like crazy and while you're at it lower tax rates on the so called "Job Creators so they can have more money to create jobs. During the 30 plus years that this message has been blasting out over the public airwaves and primarily corporate owned media, how often have you heard any of the following?
That a government of for and by the people is the common peoples' only defense against the United States becoming a plutocracy. Plutocracy, for those who don't know is a political system in which those with wealth rule. Opportunities for those without it are limited and there is an enormous disparity between those with money and those without it. We have now reached a point at which the gap between rich and poor is nearly as wide as it was just prior to the great depression.
That, in the over 30 years the country has been pursuing Reaganomics (and waiting for the promised trickle down to start) the strongest period of economic was when Clinton, in spite of predictions of resulting recession by Republicans, increased taxes a bit on top incomes which led to an economic boom, creation of over 20 million jobs and the first balance budgets since WWII.
Contrary to what is pumped out practically 24/7 by the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media that President Obama did not waste vast sums on stimulus and bailouts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that provides the official information and estimates required by the congressional budget process, the stimulus produced at leasts 1.3 million net new jobs and possible as many as 3.3 million. Not enough to get us back to employing the 14 million who have lost jobs in the economic meltdown caused by a combination of Wall Street greed and government acquiescence if not complicity but enough to pull us out of the steep dive and start us on a gradual climb.
Contrary to what is being pumped out practically 24/7 by the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media, Texas is not the economic role model the country needs emulate. All the hullabaloo about its creating jobs while the country nationwide has lost millions of them ignores some pertinent facts such as Texas and Mississippi lead the country in highest share of low paying and below minimum wage jobs. Such a large percentage of the jobs created were created by oil companies with facilities in Texas that had record profits and pumped an estimated $325 billion into the state's economy while financing 20% of the state's budget. Such as in the last ten years Federal spending in Texas, primarily for NASA and military instillations more than doubled. Such as of all the US Government jobs added between 2007 and 2010, 47% were in Texas.
The motto of the New York Times was, and I guess still is, "All the news That's Fit To Print" and it does a pretty fair job living up to that. There are also PBS news shows on the public airwaves that do a fair job presenting all the news they can within the limited time available, although I sometimes want to scream at my radio when they include right wing nut cases on panels in a useless attempt to please people whose only interest in public broadcasting is cutting remaining government funding. As for most of what passes as news sources these days, the motto might as well be "All The News That Wall Street & Big Money Interests Decide Is Fit To Print."
Unless we the people go beyond what the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media pump out practically 24/7 and seek the whole truth we are in danger of making the United States into one big version of Texas. WHAT THEN?
Sincerely,
Charles Leach
Lynchburg[[In-content Ad]]
OK. President Obama has not single-handedly stopped the free fall of the economy and brought civility back to Washington. Most Americans are more than a little disappointed about that and the ones who get their marching orders from right wing talk radio and Fox News are working up the equivalent of a political lynch mob to dispense political justice upon him for being solely responsible for our economic woes and lack of civility in D.C. and, with the constant encouragement from corporate media, the ranks of people willing to go along are growing.
If you have already joined the ranks angry masses ironically demanding an end to attempting to change things in Washington and an end to attempts to prevent another great depression you might as well stop reading now. For the rest of you, I have a question. When we get rid of about the only person who has attempted to bring civility back to D.C. and work across the aisle to solve the problems facing the country, put the country back in the hands of people dedicated to not only restoring conditions that lead to the great depression but altering the constitution and putting in place a court system that will not allow another new deal to pull the country out of depression and lay the groundwork for a resurgence of the middle class, WHAT THEN?
Since Ronald Reagan, you have been inundated with the same basic message pretty much 24/7. Government is the problem, not the solution and you will be better off with government off everyones backs, especially backs of big business and Wall Street. Do away with all the rules and regulations that are holding corporations and lower tax rates on the "Job Creators" so that they can rake in profits and they will hire like crazy and while you're at it lower tax rates on the so called "Job Creators so they can have more money to create jobs. During the 30 plus years that this message has been blasting out over the public airwaves and primarily corporate owned media, how often have you heard any of the following?
That a government of for and by the people is the common peoples' only defense against the United States becoming a plutocracy. Plutocracy, for those who don't know is a political system in which those with wealth rule. Opportunities for those without it are limited and there is an enormous disparity between those with money and those without it. We have now reached a point at which the gap between rich and poor is nearly as wide as it was just prior to the great depression.
That, in the over 30 years the country has been pursuing Reaganomics (and waiting for the promised trickle down to start) the strongest period of economic was when Clinton, in spite of predictions of resulting recession by Republicans, increased taxes a bit on top incomes which led to an economic boom, creation of over 20 million jobs and the first balance budgets since WWII.
Contrary to what is pumped out practically 24/7 by the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media that President Obama did not waste vast sums on stimulus and bailouts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that provides the official information and estimates required by the congressional budget process, the stimulus produced at leasts 1.3 million net new jobs and possible as many as 3.3 million. Not enough to get us back to employing the 14 million who have lost jobs in the economic meltdown caused by a combination of Wall Street greed and government acquiescence if not complicity but enough to pull us out of the steep dive and start us on a gradual climb.
Contrary to what is being pumped out practically 24/7 by the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media, Texas is not the economic role model the country needs emulate. All the hullabaloo about its creating jobs while the country nationwide has lost millions of them ignores some pertinent facts such as Texas and Mississippi lead the country in highest share of low paying and below minimum wage jobs. Such a large percentage of the jobs created were created by oil companies with facilities in Texas that had record profits and pumped an estimated $325 billion into the state's economy while financing 20% of the state's budget. Such as in the last ten years Federal spending in Texas, primarily for NASA and military instillations more than doubled. Such as of all the US Government jobs added between 2007 and 2010, 47% were in Texas.
The motto of the New York Times was, and I guess still is, "All the news That's Fit To Print" and it does a pretty fair job living up to that. There are also PBS news shows on the public airwaves that do a fair job presenting all the news they can within the limited time available, although I sometimes want to scream at my radio when they include right wing nut cases on panels in a useless attempt to please people whose only interest in public broadcasting is cutting remaining government funding. As for most of what passes as news sources these days, the motto might as well be "All The News That Wall Street & Big Money Interests Decide Is Fit To Print."
Unless we the people go beyond what the right wing noise machine and its partners in the corporate media pump out practically 24/7 and seek the whole truth we are in danger of making the United States into one big version of Texas. WHAT THEN?
Sincerely,
Charles Leach
Lynchburg[[In-content Ad]]