Once upon a time in America, a great man stood before the people and proclaimed that"government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth." Well, that dream has died. And while it may be easy to blame Lincoln's own party for the failure, the truth is, that the Democrats have as much to do with it's death.
We no longer have a government of the people. By this, Lincoln meant that our representatives in Congress should be like us, farmers, doctors, people from every walk of life. Now, we just have one kind of representative, the professional politician. his job is not to represent the people, it's to increase the power of his party, and increase the contributions to his own, as well as his party's campaign war chest. Legislation detrimental to his own constituency is passed, often times against the objections of said constituency. The core constituency of the Democratic Party has always been organized labor. When NAFTA passed, a treaty that would hurt organized labor the most, passed, it was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Democratic President. And in that time, we have seen more and more jobs filled by organized labor moved out of this country.
We no longer have a government by the people. Too often, issues are not defined by the needs or wants of the people, but set by the propaganda ministers of the corporate media. Illegal immigrants and undocumented workers have been a part of the American landscape. Why has this suddenly become an issue? With real unemployment at 12%, why has now been chosen to flood the labor pool, at the expense of those born in, or legally immigrated to, this country? Do the people benefit from this, or only a select few.
Congress just voted to spend $92 billion more on a war that the American people increasingly do not want. The have raised the debt ceiling to $9 trillion. How does miring future generations with a debt for a war that should never have been fought benefit America?
The answer to all these questions is, it doesn't. The only ones to benefit from any of this are corporations. We have become a country of, by and for the corporations. At a time when CEOs are posting record salaries (Capital One President Richard Fairbank at the top with $249 million) the average workers wage has fallen 2.3% since Bush took office. So who got the tax cut? The people who are gaining the most as they slowly squeeze out the middle class.
And so as I look back over the last five years, has any legislation been enacted that has benefited the American people? The prescription drug program? Social security reform? The Patriot act? The answer, in my eyes, is no, we haven't. And as for Lincoln's dream that a government of, by and for the people not perish from the Earth?
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The government claims unemployment is 5%, this website claims its closer to 9%, but not the 12% you claim.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2004/01/chart_of_the_we_2.html
If you would have clicked on the link I provided, you would have found the stats I quoted were compiled by Walter J. Williams, BA in economics and MBA from Dartmouth College, and is an economic consultant for Fortune 500 companies.And they aren't from two years ago.
I would have had you been able to write HTML.
The problem is that Blogger sometimes will screw up between the time the post is written and into the publishing process. The link has been fixed.
This is from msn. It is what he actually said, not a quick bullet from the wingnut website you linked.
"Williams starts by discussing the headline economic data: "Real unemployment right now -- figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression -- is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP probably is in contraction." (By "real," he means calculating the data the way they used to be calculated, not as inflation-adjusted.)"
So your right with superspin figured in.
Oh, and MSN isn't a wingnut website?
C'mon dude, theres a full length letter(with very poor grammer) from Cindy Sheehan right smack dab in the middle of your page...thats not good for credibility.
As boot licking O'reily says, I'll let you have the last word.
Grammar. O'Reilly. Pot. Kettle. Black.
If your going to be a punk about...
" a great man stood before the peole "
Thanks! I'll fix that immediately!
The party of Lincoln has been gone a long time as well, unfortunately. All that remains is for the remnants to renounce the what's left of the so-called faith and find somewhere else to go.
That was fun.
Representative government has been sold out to special interest groups, all of whom now have as much government as they can afford.
Both political parties have betrayed the American people, and both are working to make it increasingly impossible for a third political party to mount a challenge.
America has become a tragedy.
Spooky and Lew- do you know you are hilarious?
Are you going to meet at the playground at four???
Darn. Now I forgot the original point. Oh yeah that its interesting you mention Lincoln who is credited for starting the civil war "to end slavery" just as Bush now claims he wanted to "liberate the Iraqi people". Interesting how history explains things, isn't it. I guess Bush will just keep giving reasons until he settles on one.
PS- Spooky, I'm jealous! You're back to fighting with Lew instead of me! What does he have that I don't have, anyway!!!! OK well there's the obvious. But my typing is bad too... (sniff)
I have to agree with Diane who said, Both political parties have betrayed the American people, and both are working to make it increasingly impossible for a third political party to mount a challenge.
Unfortunately, even if a viable third party candidate found the means to run, too many Americans are brainwashed. They'd never vote for anyone outside of their own party. Sheeple.
By the way, Spooky, the numbers don't matter as much as the hardship millions upon millions of people are feeling in this country. Poverty is up and the divide between the haves and the have nots has widened. That's inexcusable in this country. We have the means to help each other, but not the will.
The unemployment rate is much higherr than they say. (accurate if you use dishonest means to calculate it) There are many people who havent gone back into the workforce, and instead became stay at home parents. or are simply just long term unemployed and not counted. We need a march for regular poeple, the 280 million who arent wealthy or ilegaly in the country.
Spooky,
Even if you were to be right (which I doubt) you would still be wrong anyway. Why? Because the way the government measures unemployment makes what I consider real unemployment to look less severe when it actually is. Unemployment numbers don't include people who have just given up on looking for work. Eventually what do you do when the corporate terrorists at Walmart having taken over your town and their is no where left to apply for a job. So that leads me to my final questions and one of my favorite to ask idiots like you, are you a corporate terrorist or just an stupid idiot brainwashed by them?
If you are a stupid brainwashed idiot you better watch out because the corporate terrorists are coming for you and your job too.
Citisucks,
Uh, I don't think that'll happen to spooky.
NO, I don't think so.
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