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Which Party Represents the Majority of Us?
by Sudhama Ranganathan •
Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011 at 7:31 AM
uconnharassment@gmail.com
Right now in encampments across the country protesters are occupying parks, plazas and/ or other public spaces. These protesters have been inspired to move because a lack of action on the part of the elected leadership of this country. In many ways they are a symbol of the broken promises made by this country's many representatives claiming to be ready to bring change. They are an outgrowth of the very lies spun by so many claiming they would bring accountability and a change from the all too close lobbyist/representative relationships that so many ordinary Americans had become tired of. We all knew it was those close relationships that had hijacked American politics and stolen power by way of gifts, jobs upon retirement and campaign contributions.
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We tried to run away from this in 2006 to no avail. It seemed there was a group of people angry like the rest of us about such corruption that were running for office, but they were unable to get anything done because they were blocked at every turn. That's what they told us and that seemed to be what we were watching on the nightly news programs. The problem seemed to be the things most of us said we wanted addressed were being blocked by the same party of the administration that gave us the bad economy, the two wars and that cut back more than necessary on constitutional freedoms.
The nation as a whole responded by electing the party that kept reminding us they would address our concerns and that they simply needed the numbers in both chambers of Congress to do so. They said they needed the kind of majority that would give us a Washington tilted in favor of the people not special interests which really seemed to be a buzz word that election cycle.
So in 2008, we gave that party what was termed a “super majority.” The majority of Americans voted that party in because we believed they would address many of these issues. The economy, jobs, the wars, encroachments on our daily freedoms, the main things that kept being repeated over and over during the campaign, not as side issues, but as the promised areas of change that party would bring if they were given a chance.
Voila! The nation gave them that chance. They had a certain window of opportunity within which to act on our behalf. They missed that window by focusing on a promise that had come up a few times during the run up to the 2008 elections, but which was not why we elected them. As far as wars, we were pretty sure they would be addressed and wrapped up as soon as possible. We were promised no new wars of opportunity and that we should use force only to defend our shores from imminent threat.
The man we elected to be our president was the kind of man that said in 2002 regarding Iraq, “So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
“You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.
”You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.
“You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.” (http://wtpotus.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/a-dumb-war/) He said that not only as a politician opposed to such wars, but to really put an exclamation point on that, he was addressing an anti-war rally.
He also said at that rally, “What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.” During his campaign for presidency he did talk about health insurance for all and that is an important thing – no doubt. But it was not why he was elected. It was not the main issue we were looking at, or was it a main campaign promise.
We wanted to turn around the economy, make sure what happened never happened again and have a president focused on jobs. We elected him because he said he would focus on that. Turning around an economy that took eight to nine years to wreck was not going to be easy; it has been slower than predicted. But not only did he not sufficiently protect us from another too big to fail and the subsequent bets on that failure tax payers would have to cover were made on the remaining piece of that legacy, but he never held accountable those responsible for what led us here. He even appointed people that were high up in the very firms that were deepest into the practices that caused the subprime housing crash to positions in his administration.
Regarding the wars, once in office he tried to extend our involvement in Iraq beyond the Bush timeline, and thus tried to increase how much we were borrowing from China to keep the war going, beyond a timetable he promised to stick to while running for office. There was no crisis dictating an emergency change in plans in Iraq, just oil. There was a goal he talked about while running for office in 2008 that he even touched on at that anti-war rally back in 2002. At that rally he said, “After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance.” He continued that theme when he ran in 2008 saying we needed to locate Bin Laden, bring him to justice and be done with the wars.
Yet he accomplished that goal successfully, but wants to stay there in Afghanistan until 2014 and hints at maybe even longer. He himself has said these things are distractions from the things we need to take care of at home. Every minute of every day this happens, we allow the nation's future to slip via declining education standards and it is another day we fall behind in the race to secure our place in the world among the best and the brightest. We decline to continue that tradition of shaping the mind as our greatest asset in remaining a world power.
We have slipped and just don't have the money to spend as perhaps we once did. It isn't fair to the youth to burden them with debt like no other generation has known and without the educational resources to get themselves out of debt in the future. Will we have to outsource the positions of generals in our military, top government officials and even the president because we no longer have people smart enough to run the nation on a level comparable to the levels of the minds running the other most powerful nations in the world? If he knows already we need to be focusing at home why aren't we? If he knows we need to fix problems in the financial sector and hold people accountable for the financial crash, as he has said we needed to when he ran for president, why hasn't he?
Does he think we're all just stupid? Were we all just babies in need of lollipops in his opinion? Whatever works to grab a hold of power? Of course the other party that got us into the mess in the first place has done nothing either. They have put up roadblocks to making change happen as if it was alright to watch the country go into a deeper tailspin so long as it meant they got some power for themselves. They had their year of being heard while the other party stayed mum last year and this year oddly enough it is the other party again being loud while the party from last year is much quieter. Interesting dance.
And while these two entities that fight so hard in an almost planned way over power busy themselves trying to outmaneuver each other it is we who lose. The American people still are borrowing from China to pay for conflicts – two new ones since the current anti-war rally president was elected – and are still watching things like our educational standards slip.
And though he lectured the Bush administration about people that needed freedom in the Middle East at that anti-war rally when the time came he hesitated and even stayed quiet in some instances. How much did Exxon and Mobil contribute to his campaign? What's worse is when people in his own country were protesting peacefully and were attacked by police, he stayed quiet and allowed it. The party of the people allowed this to happen in their own districts like Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. The party of the people? Not according to their actions. There's time though before the next election to prove differently.
To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.
www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com
