This week we’ve witnessed some remarkable events. The financial crisis and candidate McCain changing from a financial-sector deregulator to a regulator. As today wore on, the angrier I bacame. I can't afford stocks and my mutual funds have been decimated. More friends lost work today. But, what me most angry? What shouldn’t surprise anyone of advanced years is that once again, the government is stepping in to hand out more welfare to the rich and corporations or how quickly most of our Republican friends change economic positions. If ever there was an indication of how serious the financial crisis is, their colossal flip-flop is it. What disturbs me most is how the average, middle class, taxpayer gets crushed in these transactions. Would allowing AIG to fail have grave implications for the average American? How could the government have played out the crisis differently and use $1 trillion in a way that would directly give every American a financial break? That $1 trillion could have wiped out every outstanding student loan debt; meant every American man, woman and child got a check for $3600 to spend at will; or, chopped $15,000 off every American homeowner’s mortgage. The first item would have given this middle class voter an extra $367 a month for 20 years to spend or invest. The final insult is that the Republicans insist the middle class won’t be taxed if they are elected. Who do they think is going to pay for these bail-outs? Who is going to pay for the wars; the crumbling infrastructure; the failing schools? Maybe when the oil we get from offshore drilling hits the world market and is bought up by the highest bidder, the oil companies will use some of their profits to help bail us out?
A black friend of mine and I used to go to lunch every few weeks to talk about race. We thought about it as "sharing what people of our race were saying to each other in the locker rooms"; meaning, what were black folk saying to other black folk about whites and vice versa. This valuable, albeit often uncomfortable, exercise never left me feeling especially good but it was instructive and informally demonstrated that when the topic of race comes up between members of the same race about another race, there is still a tremendous amount of distrust and racism floating around out there. I'm reminded of these conversations when I think about why Obama isn't crushing McCain in the polls and I wonder is it simply because he's black?
I've been impressed by the number of people on my team (the white team) who couldn't care less about race or gender and it's not just young, well-educated transplants from Manhattan. The white voters who support Obama surprise me and they should give hope to everyone because so many of them defy geographic, economic, and social conventional wisdom. I speak of rural, white, North Carolinians I know who are finally putting their economic self-interest first; people who put quality and righteousness above race. These people aren't well-educated, they haven't travelled more than a few hundred miles from their homes, and, cringe, they will use the "n" word.
Equally surprising, but perhaps more distressing, is when I talk to my relatives and friends in "the North" (Connecticut, Massachusetts - yes, Massachusetts, and New Jersey). The things that come out of their college-educated, top-10%-income-bracket, world-travelled mouths is shocking. Add to these poor souls, working-class whites in western Massachusetts, south Boston, rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia or Alabama and white, working class, senior citizens and you have the disappearance of a landslide. Race is an issue for many people.
On November 4th, I sense white voters who have told pollsters that they support Obama will probably vote for Obama. What I hope also happens is that white voters who told pollsters they support McCain because they don't want anyone to know that they could support a black man will get inside the voting booth and vote knowing that voting for McCain and the Republicans is not in their own best interest.
No matter what the result this election year has in equal measure restored my faith in the United States and made me angry at the ignorance that still so widely pervades our country. In any case, it reminds me that I need to start having lunch with my friend again soon and you should too.
Not my own - but good material to combat the lies and disinformation. Mike
Debunked: Ten Conservative Myths About National Security By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future Posted on September 15, 2008, Printed on September 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98766/
True confession: I was terrified on 9/11 -- for all the right reasons. I wasn't afraid of the terrorists. There are plenty of countries where people have lived for decades under the constant threat of unholy acts of terror -- and yet people still get on buses and subways and airplanes, and life goes on. I'd like to think that Americans are at least as courageous as Israelis or Indonesians. Our "land of the free and home of the brave" mythos insists we should be. So I was damned if I was going to respond to the crisis by giving into irrational fears and thereby, as we used to say, "let the terrorists win." No, what I was really afraid of was that too many of my fellow Americans would forget the lessons of their own history -- that they'd lose track of who we are and where we've been and what we're made of. I knew there was a real possibility that this time, we'd fail to live up to our reputation for cool, calm clarity in the face of crisis, and instead be goaded into taking counsel of our fears. I feared the bad choices that would inevitably follow if we stampeded down that road. And I dreaded that it would be the soul death of the country I loved.
Who has the better tax plan for your future? Depends on you but before you read another email blasting one candidate with claims that "his plan will raise your taxes!" Get the facts.The source of this comparison is the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan, unaffiliated, non-profit. It's not Republican or Democratic. They show the plans side-by-side: you get to decide what's important to you. The Tax Policy Center employs economists who also look at both plans and offer nonpartisan opinions of the impact of the both. Their latest summary (late August 2008) agree that neither plan will shrink the deficit. McCain's plan will raise the deficit by $4.2 trillion; Obama's plan will raise the deficit by $2.9 trillion. The other question is whether taxes for the "middle class" go up? In fact, the middle class actually gets more money back under the Obama plan. How the tax plans impact the economy; what they say vs. the facts, etc. are outlined below. Make up your own mind, but do it with the facts.
All oil drilled goes on the WORLD market.
The highest bidder gets the oil.
Increased drilling off the coasts of America will guarantee two things. Oil companies will make more money and oil and gas extracted will be sold to the highest bidder and the highest bidder could the US, or, it could be China or Japan or India or France. If you think more drilling is going to save you money, or make America "free from foreign oil", think again. Can oil be drilled off our shores without a major environmental disaster destroying your favorite beach? Probably. But that's not really the question we should be asking...the question should be who does off shore drilling really help?
The average American consumer, giant multinational corporations or anyone really? In this political season when the facts get lost and are replaced by lies that appeal to the emotional instincts in all of us, it's good to have information from non-partisan, unaffiliated, sources to understand that not all problems have easy answers. This is one of them...to drill or not drill is not as simple as some would have us believe.
