Change Is Upon Us
At long last, the election is over. This makes everyone in the country happy either because Obama won or just that the election is over. From the results it would appear that indeed the people of the United States are pretty fed up with the way the country has been run. Republicans were last seen packing up their offices in droves. I’m for that. But what kinds of reactions have we heard?
My seriously conservative, staunch Republican friends expect the U.S. to adopt a formal policy of socialism. When you have time, look up “socialism” in the dictionary. I doubt any of my conservative friends have ever done so. This country will never be socialist. The people wouldn’t stand for it. Leave that to Russia, China and other such countries. So what DO they mean? They mean that wealth is going to be redistributed a wee bit, and this certainly is a good thing.
For instance, do you think our Social Security system would be in such a mess if there were no cut-off point for when you stop contributing to it? I don’t know the exact number, but let’s for the sake of argument say it’s $100,000. If you make more than that, you don’t pay any Social Security taxes on earnings above that. Why in hell is that fair? If you earn $1 million, then by God you should pay taxes on the entire $1 million. Social Security is paid out by what you have earned over your working life. We working-class folks who have never even come close to the upper earnings limit for Social Security will get our fair share, but so will the rich folk who really didn’t contribute like they should have.
We should get out of the Mideast. Period. We have spent years over there at an incredible cost in money, virtually bankrupting our country, lives and well more than 130,000 wounded veterans who now must be taken care of. We have lost some 4,200 of our young men and women. This is shameful. If the word on the street says, “We can’t leave until there’s peace in Iraq,” then we’ll be there forever. There will never be peace in Iraq. They don’t like us, and they don’t like each other. Who the hell cares? If they want to keep killing each other, let them. It is NOT our war! Neither was Vietnam, and I have many friends who are Vietnam vets; only one of them seems normal.
The country is in a financial crisis, and that’s one of the two main items Mr. Obama must address first when he takes office. War and finance. They are partly connected, but in another sense our anti-socialist friends have gotten us into this financial mess. Subprime mortgages, foreclosures, unemployment, the auto industry going into the tank. There’s so much greed on Wall Street, it makes grown men and women cry. I’ve watched my tremendously small portfolio drop by 40% in the past 6 months. Amazing, because in the previous 6 years since I started it, until this crisis hit, it was showing a consistent 25% profit. I love reading about some Wall Street firm paying their employees $43 million in bonuses for this year. Uh folks, you got us into this by greed…is there not an end to it?
Now the Big Three might soon become the Big Two, and thousands more jobs may be lost. This really hurts in the state of Michigan. We lead the country in unemployment, lost jobs, home foreclosures and probably a few other things. We also have people bailing out of the state. Our godawful governor’s solution is to raise taxes since there are fewer people. She’s on her way out too in two years. Keep raising taxes and there won’t be anyone in the state. It’s gotten ridiculous. The intersection at my corner, one house away, is a good example of government waste. Two weeks ago they ripped up half that intersection, as well as about 3 others in the immediate area, then poured new concrete. For the life of me I could not determine why. There certainly was nothing wrong with the quality of the street. This week they tore up the other half of all these intersections and then refilled them with concrete. Duh. Does this sound like pork barrel spending? This happens at the same time the city is considering switching to a public safety department to have more police and firefighters on hand.
We have come to a historic moment in our country. I’ve seen many of them. I was a bit precocious as a kid, and remember well the election campaign between Eisenhower and Stevenson. I almost remember the Truman “upset” of Dewey. I remember McArthur getting fired. I remember our first catholic president being elected, and how the church somehow managed to not take over running our country. I remember Mr. Kennedy’s assassination, and am one of millions who believes Lee Harvey Oswald had little or nothing to do with it. I remember Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights bill. I watched him on TV when he signed it. That was a historic moment. I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. That was truly astonishing. I remember our surrender, essentially, in Vietnam and the troops finally bailing out of the country. Of course I remember the protesters, the idiot national guardsmen who shot and killed the four students at Kent State University, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where protesters were beaten, arrested and treated like criminals.
I remember George Wallace and his storm troopers trying to prevent integration in Alabama. I remember Rosa Parks telling them all to go to hell. Today, I’m still trying to comprehend our first black president. It’s a tremendous accomplishment that might finally do something to heal the wounds in this country. Though realistically some wounds will never be healed. California just repeated in this election gay marriages. Though I don’t comprehend or understand or much appreciate the lifestyle, if gays want to get married, who the hell cares? Michigan passed a stem cell research proposition. About time. Such research might help this old dog walk better again someday, but “Right to Lifers” got all in a snit again. It’s our bodies, folks. We can do with them what we want. Leave us alone! Michigan also passed (overwhelmingly) a medical marijuana proposition. Anyone remember the movie Reefer Madness? It’s hilarious what some people think marijuana will do to you. One thing it will do is help the seriously ill lead better lives. This is a good thing.
I also think marijuana use should be decriminalized, the state or feds should grow it and sell it and tax it. There are two tremendous benefits to that: 1. We will save millions of dollars in law enforcement costs seeking out marijuana fields in state forests for pity’s sake, as well as prosecuting and jailing growers and users. It’s senseless. 2. We’ll also gain as much money from the tax thereof. Marijuana is so innocuous. Concentrate those law enforcement efforts on folks who are selling crack, heroin, ecstasy and other such far more dangerous drugs. Hell, I don’t have any friends from the ’60s or ’70s hardly who didn’t try LSD at least once. None of them are deranged. Deal with carjackings, murder, arson, muggers, armed robberies and the like.
This country has to change. It just has to. I think it will begin to in January. It will take time. It will take a LOT of work. It will take good people to work with Mr. Obama. But in time it will change. And as we should know by now, it can only change for the better.
Blackdog