A reminder about the history of the budget as context for the histrionics over the deficit

Let some truth be told. 

This is a clip from the Newshour and it is important.  Mark Shields walks us back over recent history and reminds us of the facts. 

I need to remember we had a national budget surplus not  long ago and that those who now protest so violently about the deficit seem to have a very different vision of what is good for America. Listening to the threats to dissemble health care reform, planned parenthood, public broadcasting, and most public workers jobs is unbelievable and sad. Am I being asked to accept that I may enter my 80th year working at Walmart sans health insurance watching my grandchildren attend an ever declining education system?  If so then why o why must they also take away public radio?

Make a fuss, do not let the chanting of untruth overwhelm good sense and kindness.
We must not let our best programs and social supports be taken apart as waste or non-essential. I want a government, I want to contribute to joint action, I want nurses and teachers, public health workers, and to know my country has a plan that is more detailed and thoughtful than "Cut funding". To know if our government is too big then we need to talk about what we expect it to do. If we say we cannot afford something then it is because we have chosen not to either because we don't want to afford it or we have decided something else is more important.  In the recent budget wrangling it is clear that cutting taxes for higher income people is more important than education, heat assistance, secure aging, and public health.

I would like to know what the vision is for people who are old, cannot work, lost their retirement savings to wall street, and now have a medical condition that their insurance will not cover. If there is a plan that does not punish these people but provides some semblance of kindness and support now would be a good time to start talking about it.  The strident repetition of slogans about socialism, big government, and the President give me the willies. Fear mongering is not a plan. Taking the government apart sounds more like treason than fiscal responsibility.  In this case, here in the US, we are supposed to be nation building.
Mr Boehner stop telling me about what you are going to take apart and talk about a specific series of steps that will be taken to invest in America.  How shall my grandchildren live and will they still be paying for or fighting in the fake war?

  

Alarming Cost cutting measures-- UGH-- make a fuss

UGH!  Now what will they feed us?

Linda Hanson (Photographer San Francisco) who shared a link to a NYT article ( "Governments go to extremes as downturns wears on") and a follow up editorial in Calitics by Robert Cruickshank that
describe bone-chilling measures to cut costs in various states -- reducing school days, turning off street lights, cutting community policing-- just to name a few. After I shout at the computer and stomp around the house I wear a look on my face much like the turtle above. UGH....

The buildings, institutions, and infrastructure that we inherited from our grandparents and their grandparents rose from the urge to create the future and demonstrated their belief in a national society.  But, we have re-framed their investments and  accomplishments -- making them admirable and relevant for those days but not these.  The view of joint action and shared costs as efficient, as a sign of wealth and civilization, as a gift to our children, the same force that created firehouses, libraries, and laboratories, is now spoken of with distrust and cast as oppression -- Big Government, socialism and taxation as over-burdensome.

The long run of good fortune and global economic dominance that was the the hope then the reality for the US during most of the 20th century was a byproduct not a birthright.  The optimism that characterized Americans, and for which we were belittled and beloved, has been replaced by magical thinking and denial. I am puzzled and alarmed by our willingness to abdicate the strategies and products of our national optimism and power.  Have we really decided that well proven solutions and critical investments are not important anymore or will not benefit us or those we care about? 

It seems we no longer consider our society or community as a valuable commodity that can be created and inherited.  I want to be proud of what we have contributed.  We cannot afford to do less or to back away.  Our national security is tightly bound to much much more than military spending and selling arms.  We must not be fooled, by these "cost cutting" steps and the situation that made it necessary was constructed, partly designed, and it is not simply to be accepted.  Make a fuss.
Or, at least make a face.
Sharon