Letters From the Middle Class - Intro
On Thursday’s NewsGang Live, Rob LaGesse made the rather sweeping pronouncement that we were “much better off today than we were 30 years ago.” I disagreed. I also thought he had a rather arrogant idea of what people could and could not do when it came to picking up and moving from an economically disadvantaged area to one that was experiencing growth.
He compared such a migration to the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930’s. At the time, I didn’t have the words or the heart to educate him on what hell most of those migrants went through. Today, their children and grandchildren do indeed have better lives than their parents, but they are in danger of losing that once again to the greed and avarice of our time.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked his constituents to write letters telling him about how their lives have changed. These are not letters from the poor and destitute. They are letters from the middle class — the people who live next door or across the street from most of us. I plan to publish a few of these over time here on the blog.
If you have a story and are willing to share, I will compile those too, in a category called, appropriately enough, “Letters from the Middle Class.” Yes, we have computers today, and we have TVs, and we have some comforts that weren’t around when we were young. But over the last 8 years, our quality of life has deteriorated nonetheless. People are losing their homes. Even Ed McMahon is facing foreclosure.
This is the product of a government whose primary philosophy has been “Keep it all for the rich, conquer the innocent, and above all, do not share.” While leaving the middle class to sink, this government has bailed out Bear Stearns, allowed corrupt brokerage and mortgage brokers to prosper, and lost track of 7.8 billion dollars in Iraq. Imagine what that same 8 billion dollars could have done to help the people who wrote to Senator Sanders.
When you hear the right wing characterize Barack Obama’s presidency as “dangerous”, understand that danger to them is not the same as danger to us. Danger, as it’s understood by the right-wing money-hackers, means that someone besides their friends and corporate pimps have opportunities. Their goal is to make things better for THEM. That’s not service, folks.
It’s also not leadership you can count on. Consider John McCain’s close relationship to the author of the current mortgage crisis, Phil Gramm, who walks hand in hand with John McCain, shaping his economic policies.
This, ‘my friends’, is one reason McCain is running for a third Bush term. It’s not leadership you can count on, it’s the systematic marginalization of the middle class.
Here’s some change you can believe in. But you won’t get it from McCain or the Republicans.
DNC - Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Some things change; some things stay the same. The constants are good. Howard Dean is staying on as the chair of the DNC.
However, as of yesterday, no contributions from lobbyists or PACs will be accepted by the DNC. Senator Obama announced it on the campaign trail today in Bristol, VA. Chairman Dean’s statement:
“Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. “The American people’s priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests.”
I made a vow that I would make a contribution to the DNC when they did the right thing. To me, “the right thing” was sorting out the Michigan and Florida delegate debacles, and standing up to the political machine of the Clintons through the entire primary season.
Yesterday’s announcements, along with the RBC meeting on Saturday, satisfied both of those requirements. I have made my donation to the DNC today and hope you will, too.
