It is true that we, collectively, as a government, spend too much if you compare that to government income.
A monstrous amount of what we spend is spent on military adventures such as the war in Iraq, which our (then) President and Congress refused to pay for. They just shifted money around, short-changed our own social needs, and borrowed. We still spend far too much for military expenditures; about as much as the next eight nations comnbined!
As a consequence, we citizens scorn our Congress for the decisions it has made, fiscally, militarily, and politically. They deserve scorn, and so do we. We elected them, and agreed that they should not pay for their adventures, and urged them to look for new places to send in troops.
Our tax system is a disgrace. Taxes on the wealthy have rarely been so low in memory. The wealth of our country is running uphill to the most wealthy like a river defying gravity.
The state of our infrastructure--roads, sewers, water supply, power grids, rail travel, educational institutions and quality of education are way down the list of what countries in the rest of the world are doing. We insist on being the only modern country in the world that does not provide health insurance for everyone, and we insist that providing health insurance should make massive amounts of money for the private companies that provide it, and howl like wolves at every suggestion that it should be a public sector program, like Medicaid, and Social Security. One of my friends did remodeling work for a man who walked away from his health insurance job with something like a billion dollars. Not his money: ours.
Historically, periods of low taxation have been followed by periods of higher taxation, because even morons eventually figure out that we need schools, and roads, and hospitals, and ports and railroads, and parks, and more health care than emergency rooms can provide. We need immigrants for their labor and brains and imagination and ideas. We need to fix the bridges, and get smart about buying medicine.
The dismal state of our own decision-making about whom to elect, and what to ask them to do, and what kind of a country we want to build, gives people like Donald Trump a grand hearing. Of course we want to be great, again! Donald Trump does not know what that might be. He only says he will provide it, and we say, "Sic 'em, Donald!" And Donald says he has a deal for us, and that he reads the Bible--especially Two Corinthians--and we say he is the real deal. He is the real dealer.
And that is what is scary! Not that Donald Trump is the problem, but that we are. Ignorance and self-imposed wounds are scary.
I almost wanted Hillary Clinton to become President. Not any more. She does not have a vision for America. She has a vision of becoming President. Bernie Sanders sounds like F.D.R., and we say Bernie is a Socialist--not a Democratic Socialist, such as much of the world affirms it, but a Soviet Union Communist--so we actually listen to Ted Cruz, whose own partners in Congress despise him, and blow our tin trumpets for getting involved in more theological wars between Islamic religious factions.
Jeez, Louise! Have we gone mad?
A monstrous amount of what we spend is spent on military adventures such as the war in Iraq, which our (then) President and Congress refused to pay for. They just shifted money around, short-changed our own social needs, and borrowed. We still spend far too much for military expenditures; about as much as the next eight nations comnbined!
As a consequence, we citizens scorn our Congress for the decisions it has made, fiscally, militarily, and politically. They deserve scorn, and so do we. We elected them, and agreed that they should not pay for their adventures, and urged them to look for new places to send in troops.
Our tax system is a disgrace. Taxes on the wealthy have rarely been so low in memory. The wealth of our country is running uphill to the most wealthy like a river defying gravity.
The state of our infrastructure--roads, sewers, water supply, power grids, rail travel, educational institutions and quality of education are way down the list of what countries in the rest of the world are doing. We insist on being the only modern country in the world that does not provide health insurance for everyone, and we insist that providing health insurance should make massive amounts of money for the private companies that provide it, and howl like wolves at every suggestion that it should be a public sector program, like Medicaid, and Social Security. One of my friends did remodeling work for a man who walked away from his health insurance job with something like a billion dollars. Not his money: ours.
Historically, periods of low taxation have been followed by periods of higher taxation, because even morons eventually figure out that we need schools, and roads, and hospitals, and ports and railroads, and parks, and more health care than emergency rooms can provide. We need immigrants for their labor and brains and imagination and ideas. We need to fix the bridges, and get smart about buying medicine.
The dismal state of our own decision-making about whom to elect, and what to ask them to do, and what kind of a country we want to build, gives people like Donald Trump a grand hearing. Of course we want to be great, again! Donald Trump does not know what that might be. He only says he will provide it, and we say, "Sic 'em, Donald!" And Donald says he has a deal for us, and that he reads the Bible--especially Two Corinthians--and we say he is the real deal. He is the real dealer.
And that is what is scary! Not that Donald Trump is the problem, but that we are. Ignorance and self-imposed wounds are scary.
I almost wanted Hillary Clinton to become President. Not any more. She does not have a vision for America. She has a vision of becoming President. Bernie Sanders sounds like F.D.R., and we say Bernie is a Socialist--not a Democratic Socialist, such as much of the world affirms it, but a Soviet Union Communist--so we actually listen to Ted Cruz, whose own partners in Congress despise him, and blow our tin trumpets for getting involved in more theological wars between Islamic religious factions.
Jeez, Louise! Have we gone mad?
Comments
Post a Comment