Two Step to Destruction

Under President Obama so far the highest unemployment got was 9.6% and the Republicans called it a record high. During Regan’s eight years as president unemployment got up to 9.7% and he is heralded as a great fiscal conservative and today’s Republicans are trying to rehash a lot of his programs to help the economy (even though they didn’t work for eight years). The Democrats say they are the party that cares for social programs however they along with Obama voted into law the Congressional Budget for the last fiscal year that once again gives tax cuts to the upper 2% of Americans, while cutting a program that subsidies heating for seniors who are below the poverty line. I’m not trying to make an economic debate about if giving tax cuts to rich people stimulates the economy all I’m saying is that if we can give those taxes cuts, there has to be a way to not having our seniors freeze to death. Isn’t one of government’s responsibilities to protect those who can’t protect themselves? Both parties say one thing and then do another, then blames the other party and then they pray we fall for it.

            So everyone (myself included) is freaking out about the economy and wondering how we are going to fix it. People from both sides are throwing out ideas but here is the scary truth, there are no easy answers to the economic downfall we are facing right now. The main problem is that we have a two party system. Look what is going on in Washington D.C. right now. The House Republicans voted through a new budget for this fiscal year that essentially will destroy Medicare as we know it in about five years turning it into a voucher program. Which means people who have paid that Medicare tax every month they worked and now depend on it to get the medical care they need to survive will no longer have it. More than likely when you will have a pre-existing medical condition so good luck finding an insurance company with your voucher.  Unfortunately it gets worse when we look at the other party's response. The Democrat response to this is to just vote it down in the Senate and then campaign across the country about how bad this budget is (and it truly is) but since we have a two party system they don’t have to feel rushed about putting forth a budget of their own. Here where it gets even worse, they don’t even have to put forth the best plan they could, they just have to change a few glaring things in the Republican plan, tell the American people they aren’t going to kill Medicare and their plan gets approved.

            The Republicans and Democrats have done this for decades for political gain and the only losers in this game is the American people. Wouldn’t you love to be able to put your children through college if they got accepted and you couldn’t afford it? Well Congress is also slashing the PELL Grant program (that was in the aforementioned budget). Wouldn’t you love to know that after the BP disaster in the Gulf Coast last year that the government cracked down on the oil companies and made them be safer so that innocent people wouldn’t be killed and the environment would be protected? Well, they didn’t, they didn’t change anything and the CEO’s got bonuses for last year for their “safety record.” Way to do your job EPA.  I could go on and on but you get the point, both these parties act like they are opponents but routinely they vote together for their interests, not ours. We need a fundamental change in Washington; the two party system obviously isn’t working. If you were to look at the voting records of Congressmen over a year and took the Republican and Democrat from in front of their names, you wouldn’t be able to tell which party each individual belonged to. This is the two step to destruction we must stop. We need change indeed.

That day in...

That day in...

by Nicole Bollhalder on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 1:50pm

Thursday April 7th was the worst day I have ever experienced....The day started with light drizzle, low-laying fog over Lake Zurich and a trip - short in kilometers, but long and endless emotionally - carrying the remains of my brother.

The feeling of having him this close, but also knowing that what we carried, was not really him, knowing he is no longer what he once was, knowing he is somewhere, anywhere, but not here, knowing I never got the chance to actually say bye, knowing that we have lost a person we loved, still love and always will love, knowing my mother's bottomless sadness, knowing that life is not fair and even cruel, knowing that things have to go on, knowing the fear of eventually forgetting how he looked and spoke, knowing that with time pain does get easier....Knowing all this, even on that day, even now, I am still in disbelief and I am angry, angry that I have to feel this helpless, this weak....this lost.

Looking out the car window that day, the world had lost its color, its beauty, its taste. The rain eventually stopped, the fog cleared and the sun came through. But the pain remained...

On that day, right after the sun set, we said our 'good byes' to Roger, to one of the male figures in my life I owe my upbringing. To one of my 'musketeers'...

What is left now, on one side, is a deep and tormenting emptiness; and on the other side, a growing Olive tree, branching out and shining with life in the Swiss-Italian sunshine...

What's Really Going On?

            President Obama promised hope we could believe in. He promised transparency, a rejection of the Patriot Law that essentially stripped many civil rights from ALL Americans in order to win the war on terror. Yet we are still conducting military tribunals on people that we are not even sure are terrorists at all, in complete secrecy. Were they terrorists or just in the wrong place at the wrong time? We are being stonewalled completely as to what is going on at Gitmo, so much for change.

            On top of all this we are in the 9^th year of the Afghan War that has deteriorated into a quagmire at best. Most Afghan citizens do not know what happened on 9/11/01 so most of them have no idea why the most powerful nation in the world is invading/disrupting their lives. Whether the invasion was justified or not we have to ask ourselves if 20% of Afghanistan has no clue why we are there in the first place, can we fault them for being enraged when their sons, daughters, fathers or mothers are killed by foreigners? What exactly are we doing over there if the native people don’t know? And this is supposed to be what winning "hearts and minds" is all about? During WWII the French knew exactly why we were invading their country and they welcomed us as liberators (yes that was a dig against Rumsfeld). Is the Afghan War a debacle on purpose or by accident? I don’t know and I don't know which would be worse.

            While back in America the majority of us are struggling to pay our bills and not succumb to the weight of depression, debt and unemployment. We spend billions of dollars to warmonger yet our politicians are wringing their hands about what programs to cut that will surely leave the most helpless of our citizens defenseless and relegated to die alone and poor. Do we want to be known as the originator of the military industrial complex or a nation that honored the promise we made to our citizens decades ago? Why should we suffer so some Wall Street wife can get a bailout of millions when she is already a millionaire? Why is socialism for the rich accepted but socialism for the middle class and poor characterized as hand-outs?

            Where is the action for the American poor? Madison, WI showed up, so did others but when are we going to say to our politicians, “We know you are lying to us you only want what is best for your corporate bosses and we will have no more of it?!” Who wants some action! The arts (music, movies, literature) that usually lead to social change (RIP Langston Hughes) have been co-opted and bought by the very same corporations that are economically enslaving us. Few artists escape this trap and speak the truth and give us hope.

            The legal system has a hard on for convicting and destroying peoples lives for profit, not justice. A casual study of our legal system will prove this is true. Overpaid jesters/celebrities distract us from the fact that the wealthty want more wealth and want us to struggle with less. The pundits are mouthpieces to make us focus on tertiary non-sense instead of what matters. Our differences in this country are not racial or gender based they are socio-economic, if you are a have you are down with the haves, if you are a have-not you are shunned to only to socialize and be forgotten with the rest of the have-nots. We all sit by and let banks, oil barons, etc. take advantage of maids, teachers and other hard working Americans for profit and what do we say? That’s the free market. The free market is bankrupting this country. Democrats and Republicans know this and benefit greatly from it, that’s why they staunchly defend it. Ask yourself; if 2% of Americans own 60% of the wealth how does that benefit the rest of us? The natural human compulsion of greed compels us to want more, we have an economic system that feeds this need and right now greed is consuming compassion, that is what is happening now. Turn off the news and research yourself; we are not near an economic collapse in this country. The wealthy just want more and they don’t want to give up more, they want us to. Who’s ready for some action?!